Can Hebrew and Arabic speakers understand each other? I answer that question, and take a look at some similarities and differences between Hebrew and Arabic, sister languages of the Semitic Language family.

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Hebrew and Arabic are two languages of the Semitic language family, meaning that both languages developed from the same ancestor language thousands of years ago.
They are not mutually intelligible, meaning that they can't understand each other unless they study the other language. But they have many similarities in grammar and vocabulary.

If you isolate individual words, many are very similar and clearly cognate words (meaning they're equivalent words that developed from the same root in an earlier Semitic language). For example, the word for "dog" is "kelev" in Hebrew and "kalb" in Arabic. Some words are exactly the same: "yad" means "hand in both Hebrew and Arabic, and "dam" means "blood" in both.

In terms morphology, or how words are formed, Hebrew and Arabic use almost the same system of roots and "templates" as I call them: word patterns consisting of certain consonants and vowels that the three consonant root can be placed. The word's meaning is determined by the root's core meaning, and the specific meaning that is added to it by the word template.

Anyone who speaks either language well will have a huge advantage when learning the other. But they will still have to learn the other language before they'll be able to understand or use it.

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