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".
Yemenite Hebrew
Among the dialects of Hebrew preserved into modern times, Yemenite Hebrew is regarded as one of the forms that retains very many features of Hebrew as used in ancient times, particularly Tiberian Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew. This perception is motivated in part by the fact that Yemenite Hebrew preserves many consonant sounds represented by individual letters in the Hebrew alphabet that have been lost elsewhere - except for "sāmeḵ" () and "śīn" (), which are both pronounced , but which had already merged in ancient times, as evident in the spelling variants in the Dead Sea Scrolls.