Semitic languages
The similarity of the Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic languages was accepted by Jewish and Islamic scholars since medieval times. The languages were familiar to Western European scholars due to historical contact with neighbouring Near Eastern countries and through Biblical studies, and a comparative analysis of Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic was published in Latin in 1538 by Guillaume Postel. Almost two centuries later, Hiob Ludolf described the similarities between these three languages and the Ethiopian Semitic languages. However, neither scholar named this grouping as "Semitic".
Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic is spoken in the fertile strip on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. To the east, in the desert, Northwest Arabian Arabic varieties are spoken by Bedouins. The transition to Egyptian Arabic in the south via the Negev and Sinai Peninsula, where Northwest Arabian Arabic is spoken and then the dialect of Sharqia Governorate, was described by de Jong in 1999. In this direction, the Egyptian city of Arish is the last one to display proper Levantine features. In a similar manner, the region of el-Karak announces Hijazi Arabic. In the North, the limit between Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic starts from the Turkish border near el-Rāʿi, and Sabkhat al-Jabbul is the north-eastern limit of Levantine Arabic, which includes further south al-Qaryatayn Damascus, and the Hauran.