As compared with the other languages of the world, its grammar and vocabulary have alike undergone but little alteration in the course of the centuries during which we can trace its existence.

The very words which were used by the Babylonians four or five thousand years ago, can still be heard, with the same meaning attached to them, in the streets of Cairo.

_Kelb_ is "dog" in modern Arabic as _kalbu_ was in ancient Babylonian, and the modern Arabic _tayyib_, "good," is the Babylonian _tabu_.

One of the results of this unchangeableness of Semitic speech is the close similarity and relationship that exist between the various languages that represent it.

They are dialects rather than distinct languages, more closely resembling one another than is the case even with the Romanic languages of modern Europe, which are descended from Latin.
Most of the Semitic languages--or dialects if we like so to call them--are now dead, swallowed up by the Arabic of Mohammed and the Qoran.