germanic and semitic languages

Viking is an activity, not a people. When Viking is used to refer to people, it means the same as pirate, and could refer to the Norse, the Danes or the Svear/Gutar (the Swedes or Goths), or the Frisians.

The form of writing of the Phoenicians and the Aramaeans was consonantal, and did not include vowels as letters. Linguists believe that their writing was derived from the hieratic script of the Egyptians. To suggest that no one would have been able to write if such a limited alphabet had not been invented is laughably absurd. The Sumerians were able to write, and express compex ideas and manage complex social and economic systems without alphabetic writing. The Chinese have used their logograms since the late second millennium BCE. The Koreans have used their own alphabet, developed without reference to any western source, since the 15th century. Maya script is the only Mesoamerican writing deciphered so far, and dates to the third century BCE--there were other systems used before theirs, but they have not been deciphered. Linear A was in use in the third millennium BCE, and therefore much older than the alphabet of the Semites of the middle east.

Once again, it is an absurdity to suggest that no one would have been able to write if a middle eastern alphabet had not been adopted and adapted. That is carrying ethnocentric pride to a ludicrous extreme.

Viking is in Scandinavia used not only to refer to pirates since around 1850.
We talk about Viking area, viking grave, also call the merchants vikings, which really is not correct.
Historians try now to change the idea that vikings are the same as nordic people and make a difference between the vikings and the others who were farmers, fishermen and merchants.
Wonder if it will succeed. Guess it sounds more interesting to see a Viking ship than a merchant´s ship from 800.

Many merchants were opportunistic vikings--if they saw a village they thought they could take, they'd come back just before dawn and raid it. They acted as spies, too. A merchant would pay attention to local gossip, and pass the word along when they returned to their home base. Haithabu (now called Hedeby) was not just a place to trade merchandise, but information, too. Although there is a romantic and completely unreliable explanation for the invasion of Northumbria in 866 by Ivar the Boneless and Ubbe Ragnarson, the most obvious explanation was that Aelle of Northumbria was facing civil war, and the Ragnarson brothers exploited the situation, which would have been widely know through merchant gossip.

But a lot of people think Viking sounds cool. I have a copy of BBC's History magazine for the 2013, 1000 year anniversary of the conquest.n of England by Sweyn Forkbeard. The article is entitled "The First Viking King of England," and not the first Danish King of England. Viking probably sells better.

The men in those days were taller than over the next centuries
Around year 2000 BC men were 167 cm and women 156 as an average
Around year 1000 men were 173 cm and women 150 as an average
500 years later men were 169 cm and women 158
around 1800 men were 163 cm and women 152
around 1900 men were 169 cm and women 157
It is not so strange that over the centuries one imagen the viking man as big
and strong.

When I said: '' You would not be able to write'', I meant that the Alphabet you use in the English language today, was invented by the people who were living in the region of Mesopotamia. Whether they are Phoenicians or Akkadians or Assyrians or Sumerians or Jews or Arameans or what so ever, I call them all Arameans.

Th Phoenician's Alphabet consists of 22 letters and it did include vowels. The Greek adapted this alphabet thousands of years ago. Thereafter, it was spread through whole Europe.

Read this: http://www.historian.net/hxwrite.htm
[ The Phoenician Alphabet was adopted by the early Greeks who earned their place in alphabetic history by symbolizing the vowels. Therefore, the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek scripts all came from the Phoenician. The Greek alphabet led to Latin and Cyrillic. Aramaic led to Arabic and most of the scripts used in India. The entire Western World became the inheritors of those beer drinkers in Mesopotamia and the torquoise miners in the Sinai.]

I am sure the Western people would have been able to write and read using an alphabet invented in this parts of the world.
Our ancestors were not that dumb. They would have found a way to comminicate without talking.
Samuel Morse invented the morse alphabet

I thought that the concept of a shibolleth had some relationship to who was who, and not just words in a language. For example, the guttural "ch" sound in the correct (original) pronounciation of Chanukah, is a sound that is in Arabic, Hebrew and German. Many Americans cannot make that guttural "ch" sound, only making it when they are spitting up phlegm during a bad cold.

Also, there's the "trilled R" in Spanish that many English only speakers, in high school Spanish class, cannot master if their first Spanish class was as late as the eighth grade, oftentimes.

And, in Ireland today, remnants of Gaelic (I don't know; just guessing) makes the "th" in "the" for example, not possible for some. (Compared to Hyacinth in Keeping Up Appearances calling her neighbor Elizabeth, where here tongue practically sticks out of Hyacinth's mouth as she says the "th" in Elizabeth.)

The guttural "ch" is the eighth letter of the Aramaic Alphabet "heth". This letter can be pronounced in two different ways, "ha" from the depths of the throat, and "kh" also from the depths of the throat, it is the same sound of the letter "g" in Dutch.

The sound of this letter is shifted in the most European languages to "h" or "g" also "ch" and "kh" or "gh".
The word "god" comes from the Aramaic word "hd" the pronunciation is "had" or another pronunciation is "khad", which means the number One or the first.