In an attempt to vault the overly-technical barrier for students entering comparative Semitic linguistics, Gray wrote this accessible introduction. Although it is a discipline with a venerable heritage, comparative Semitic linguistics has long suffered from the difficulty of finding an introduction that does not already require a specialists’ knowledge of the field. The primary language Gray selected was Hebrew, the language most Semitic readers begin with. Basing his comparison on Arabic, the most extensively known Semitic language and the one which best preserves many proto-Semitic elements, he brings a fresh approach to an old field. Many comparative Semitic studies base much of their material on Akkadian, a language difficult for beginning students to master. Gray has judiciously selected languages based on their ease of use rather than their technical formality. It what may be termed the first American “descriptivist” treatment of a Semitic language, Gray has provided a service to beginning students everywhere.

Louis H Gray

(1875-1955) studied at Princeton and Columbia Universities, earning his Ph.D. from the latter. He was a professor at the University of Nebraska, and he edited The Mythology of All Races, revised entries for the Jewish Encyclopedia, and was associate editor for The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. Interestingly, he was also an American commissioner sent to help negotiate the peace in Paris in 1918.