The
Aramaic alphabet is adapted from the
Phoenician alphabetThe Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to originate around 1050 BCE. Unlike its Canaanite predecessor, the Phoenician alphabet was non-pictorial. It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization...
, and became distinctive from it by the eighth century BCE. The letters all represent
consonantIn articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract that lies above the larynx...
s, some of which are
matres lectionis, which also indicate long
vowelIn phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s.
The Aramaic alphabet is historically significant since virtually all modern
Middle EastThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, southeastern Europe, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East...
ern writing systems use a script that can be traced back to it, as well as numerous
AltaicAltaic is a language family that is generally held by its proponents to include the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, and Japonic language families . These languages are spoken in a wide arc stretching from northeast Asia through Central Asia to Anatolia and eastern Europe...
languages of Central and East Asia. This is primarily due to the widespread usage of the Aramaic language as both a
lingua francaA lingua franca is a language systematically used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both persons' mother tongues.Lingua franca is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic history or...
and the official language of the
Neo-AssyrianThe Neo-Assyrian Empire was a period of Mesopotamian history which began in 934 BC and ended in 609 BC. During this period, Assyria assumed a position as a great regional power, vying with Babylonia and other lesser powers for dominance of the region, though not until the reforms of Tiglath-Pileser...
, and its successor, the
Achaemenid EmpireThe Achaemenid Empire or Persian Empire was the successor state of the Median Empire, ruling over significant portions of what would become Greater Iran. The Persian and the Median Empire taken together are also known as the Medo-Persian Empire, succeeding the Neo-Assyrian Empire...
. Among the scripts in modern use, the
Hebrew alphabetThe Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, and because of its place of origin, the Assyrian script is the better-known of two script standards used to write the...
bears the closest relation to the Imperial Aramaic script of the 5th century BCE, with an identical letter inventory and for the most part nearly identical letter shapes.
Writing systems that, like the Aramaic one, indicate consonants but do not indicate most vowels, or indicate them with added diacritical signs, have been called
abjadAn abjad is a type of writing system in which each symbol always or usually stands for a consonant; the reader must supply the appropriate vowel....
s by
Peter T. DanielsPeter T. Daniels is a scholar of writing systems, specializing in typology. He was co-editor of the book The World's Writing Systems , and he introduced the terms abjad and abugida as modern linguistic terms...
, to distinguish them from later alphabets like Greek that represent vowels more systematically. This is to avoid the notion that a writing system that represents sounds must be either a syllabary or an alphabet, which implies that a system like Aramaic must be either a syllabary (as argued by Gelb) or an incomplete or deficient alphabet (as most other writers have said); rather, it is a different type.
Origins
The earliest inscriptions in the
Aramaic languageAramaic is a Semitic language with a 3,000-year history. It has been the language of administration of empires and the language of divine worship...
use the
Phoenician alphabetThe Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to originate around 1050 BCE. Unlike its Canaanite predecessor, the Phoenician alphabet was non-pictorial. It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization...
. Over time, the alphabet developed into the form shown below. Aramaic gradually became the lingua franca throughout the Middle East, with the script at first complementing and then displacing Assyrian cuneiform as the predominant writing system.
Achaemenid period
Around 500 BCE, following the
AchaemenidThe Achaemenid Empire or Persian Empire was the successor state of the Median Empire, ruling over significant portions of what would become Greater Iran. The Persian and the Median Empire taken together are also known as the Medo-Persian Empire, succeeding the Neo-Assyrian Empire...
conquest of Mesopotamia under
Darius IDarius I or Darius the Great , was a Zoroastrian Persian Shahanshah of Persia...
, Old Aramaic was adopted by the conquerors as the "vehicle for written communication between the different regions of the vast empire with its different peoples and languages. The use of a single official language, which modern scholarship has dubbed Official Aramaic or Imperial Aramaic, can be assumed to have greatly contributed to the astonishing success of the Achaemenids in holding their far-flung empire together for as long as they did".
Imperial Aramaic was highly standardised; its orthography was based more on historical roots than any spoken dialect, and was inevitably influenced by Old Persian.
For centuries after the fall of the Achaemenid Empire in 331 BCE, Imperial Aramaic or near enough for it to be recognisable would remain an influence on the various native
Iranian languagesThe Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family and its subfamily, Indo-Iranian. They are spoken by the Iranian peoples. Avestan is the oldest recorded Iranian language....
. The Aramaic script would survive as the essential characteristics of the
Pahlavi writing systemPahlavi or Pahlevi denotes a particular and exclusively written form of various Middle Iranian languages. The essential characteristics of Pahlavi are*the use of an Aramaic-derived script Pahlavi or Pahlevi denotes a particular and exclusively written form of various Middle Iranian languages. The...
.
A group of thirty Aramaic documents from
BactriaBactria was the ancient name of a historical region in Central Asia, located between the range of the Hindu Kush and the Amu Darya...
have been recently discovered. An analysis was published in November 2006. The texts, which were rendered on leather, reflect the use of Aramaic in the fourth century BCE Achaemenid administration of Bactria and
SogdianaSogdiana or Sogdia was the ancient civilization of an Iranian people and a province of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, the eighteenth in the list in the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great...
.
Its widespread usage led to the gradual adoption of the Aramaic alphabet for writing the
Hebrew languageHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
. Formerly, Hebrew had been written using an alphabet closer in form to that of Phoenician (the
Paleo-Hebrew alphabetThe Paleo-Hebrew alphabet is an abjad offshoot of the ancient Semitic alphabet, identical to the Phoenician alphabet. At the very least it dates to the 10th century BCE...
).
Aramaic-derived scripts
Since the evolution of the Aramaic alphabet out of the Phoenician one was a gradual process, the division of the world's alphabets into those derived from the Phoenician one directly and those derived from Phoenician via Aramaic is somewhat artificial. In general, the alphabets of the Mediterranean region (Anatolia, Greece, Italy) are classified as Phoenician-derived, adapted from around the 8th century BCE, while those of the east (the Levant, Persia, Central Asia and India) are considered Aramaic-derived, adapted from around the 6th century BCE from the "Imperial Aramaic" script of the Achaemenid Empire.
After the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the unity of the Imperial Aramaic script was lost, diversifying into a number of descendant cursives.
The
HebrewThe Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, and because of its place of origin, the Assyrian script is the better-known of two script standards used to write the...
and Nabataean alphabets as they stood by the
Roman eraThe Roman era is a period in Western history, when Ancient Rome was the centre of power of the world around the Mediterranean Sea, where Latin was the lingua franca. The era precedes the Middle Ages....
were little changed in style from the Imperial Aramaic alphabet.
A Cursive Hebrew variant developed from the early centuries AD, but it remained restricted to the status of a variant used alongside the non-cursive. By contrast, the cursive developed out of the Nabataean alphabet in the same period soon became the standard for writing Arabic, evolving into the
Arabic alphabetThe Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic and Urdu. After the Latin alphabet, it is the second-most widely used alphabet around the world....
as it stood by the time of the early spread of Islam.
The development of cursive versions of Aramaic also led to the creation of the
SyriacThe Syriac alphabet is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language from around the 2nd century BC. It is one of the Semitic abjads directly descending from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet and shares similarities with the Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabets.-General...
, Palmyrenean and
MandaicThe Mandaic alphabet is based on the Aramaic alphabet, and is used for writing the Mandaic language.The Mandaic name for the script is Abagada or Abaga, after the first letters of the alphabet...
alphabets. These scripts formed the basis of the historical scripts of Central Asia, such as the
SogdianThe Sogdian alphabet was originally used for the Sogdian language, a language in the Iranian family used by the people of Sogdiana. The alphabet is derived from Syriac, the descendant script of the Aramaic alphabet. The Sogdian alphabet is one of three scripts used to write the Sogdian language,...
and
MongolianMany Mongolian writing systems have been devised over the centuries. The number of scripts dedicated to the Mongolian language is matched by few other tongues.The oldest has also been the most successful one, and still in active use today...
alphabets.
The Indian
KharosthiThe script, is an ancient abugida used by the Gandhara culture, nestled in the historic northwest Asian subcontinent to write the Gāndhārī and Sanskrit languages. It was in use from the middle of the 3rd century BCE until it died out in its homeland around the 3rd century CE...
and Brahmi scripts, and by extension the
Brahmic familyThe Brahmic family is a family of abugidas used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and parts of Central Asia and East Asia, descended from the Brāhmī script.The individual writing systems may be called Brahmic scripts or Indic scripts....
of scripts, are also considered derivations from the Aramaic script. The Old Turkic script evident in epigraphy from the 8th century likely also has its origins in the Aramaic script, possibly via Karosthi.
Modern
Today,
Biblical AramaicBiblical Aramaic is the form of the Aramaic language that is used in the books of Daniel, Ezra and a few other places in the Hebrew Bible and should not be confused with the later Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible known as targumim...
, Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects and the Aramaic language of the
TalmudThe Talmud is a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, customs, and history. It is a central text of mainstream Judaism....
are written in the Hebrew alphabet.
SyriacSyriac is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Classical Syriac became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from the 4th to the 8th centuries...
and Christian Neo-Aramaic dialects are written in the
Syriac alphabetThe Syriac alphabet is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language from around the 2nd century BC. It is one of the Semitic abjads directly descending from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet and shares similarities with the Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabets.-General...
.
MandaicThe Mandaic language is the liturgical language of the Mandaean religion. Classical Mandaic is used by a section of the Mandaean community in liturgical rites. However, a living, vernacular form developed from Classical Mandaic, known either as Neo-Mandaic or Modern Mandaic, is spoken by a small...
is written in the
Mandaic alphabetThe Mandaic alphabet is based on the Aramaic alphabet, and is used for writing the Mandaic language.The Mandaic name for the script is Abagada or Abaga, after the first letters of the alphabet...
.
Due to the near-identity of the Aramaic and the classical Hebrew alphabets, Aramaic text is mostly typeset in standard Hebrew script in scholarly literature.
Consequently,
UnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
as of version 5.1 (2008) does not consider Aramaic an alphabet separate from the Hebrew one.
Imperial Aramaic alphabet
Redrawn from
A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic, Franz Rosenthal; forms are as used in Egypt,
5th century BCThe 5th century BC started the first day of 500 BC and ended the last day of 401 BC.-Overview:This century saw the beginning of a period of philosophical brilliance among Western civilizations, particularly the Greeks which would continue all the way through the 4th century until the time of...
E. Names are as in Biblical Aramaic.
| Letter name |
Letter form |
Equivalent Hebrew |
Equivalent Arabic |
Equivalent Syriac |
Sound value |
| Ālaph * Aleph or Alef is the first letter of the Semitic abjads descended from Proto-Canaanite, Arabic alphabet, Phoenician alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Syriac alphabet-People:*Aleph , an Italo disco artist and alias of Dave Rodgers...
|
 |
א |
أ |
ܐ |
|
BēthBet, Beth, or Vet is the second letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Syriac and Arabic alphabet ...
|
 |
ב |
ب |
ܒ |
/b/, /v/ |
| Gāmal Gimel is the third letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew , Syriac and Arabic...
|
 |
ג |
ج |
ܓ |
|
| Dālath Dalet is the fourth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew , Syriac and Arabic...
|
 |
ד |
د |
ܕ |
/d/, /ð/ |
| Hē He is the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician , Aramaic, Hebrew , Syriac and Arabic . Its sound value is a voiceless glottal fricative ....
|
 |
ה |
ﻫ |
ܗ |
/h/ |
WawWaw is the sixth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic...
|
 |
ו |
و |
ܘ |
|
| Zain Zayin is the seventh letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Aramaic , Hebrew , Syriac and Arabic alphabet []...
|
 |
ז |
ز |
ܙ |
/z/ |
| Ḥēth ' or ' is the reconstructed name of the eighth letter of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, continued in descended Semitic alphabets as Phoenician , Syriac , Hebrew chet , Arabic , and Berber .Heth originally represented a voiceless fricative, either...
|
 |
ח |
خ,ح |
ܚ |
/ħ/ |
| Ṭēth ' is the ninth letter of many Semitic abjads , including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Tet , Syriac and Arabic ; it is 9th in abjadi order and 16th in modern Arabic order....
|
 |
ט |
ط |
ܛ |
emphatic Emphatic consonant is a term widely used in Semitic linguistics to describe one of a series of obstruent consonants which originally contrasted with series of both voiced and voiceless obstruents. In specific Semitic languages the members of this series may be realized as pharyngealized,...
|
| Yudh Yodh is the tenth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Yud , Syriac and Arabic...
|
 |
י |
ي |
ܝ |
|
| Kāph Kaph is the eleventh letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Kaf , Arabic alphabet , Persian alphabet...
|
 |
כ ך |
ك |
ܟܟ |
/k/, /x/ |
| Lāmadh Lamed or Lamedh is the twelfth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Lamed and Arabic alphabet . Its sound value is .The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Lambda , Latin L, and Cyrillic El .-Origins:...
|
 |
ל |
ل |
ܠ |
/l/ |
| Mim Mem is the thirteenth letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic...
|
 |
מ ם |
م |
ܡܡ |
/m/ |
| Nun Nun is the fourteenth letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabet . It is the third letter in Thaana , pronounced as "noonu"...
|
 |
נ ן |
ن |
ܢܢ ܢ |
/n/ |
SemkathSamekh or Simketh is the fifteenth letter in many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Hebrew, and Aramaic, representing . The Arabic alphabet, however, uses a letter based on Phoenician šin to represent ; however, that glyph takes Samekh's place in the traditional Abjadi order of the Arabic...
|
 |
ס |
س |
ܣ |
/s/ |
‘Ē' or ' is the sixteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic . It is the twenty first letter in the new Persian alphabet...
|
 |
ע |
غ,ع |
ܥ |
|
| Pē Pe is the seventeenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Pei , Persian alphabet Pe and Arabic alphabet ....
|
 |
פ ף |
ف |
ܦ |
/p/, /f/ |
| Ṣādhē Tsade is the eighteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Tsadi and Arabic ' . Its oldest sound value is probably , although there is a variety of pronunciation in different modern Semitic languages and their dialects...
|
 ,  |
צ ץ |
ص |
ܨ |
|
| Qoph Qoph or Qop is the nineteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabet . Its sound value is an emphatic velar stop, , or uvular stop...
|
 |
ק |
ق |
ܩ |
|
| Rēsh Resh is the twentieth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabet . Its sound value is one of a number of rhotic consonants: usually or but also or in Hebrew....
|
 |
ר |
ر |
ܪ |
|
| Shin Shin is the twenty-first letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Aramaic/Hebrew , and Arabic .Its sound value is a voiceless sibilant, or ....
|
 |
ש |
ش,س |
ܫ |
|
| Tau Tav or Taw is the twenty-second and last letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Tav and Arabic alphabet .Its original sound value is a voiceless alveolar plosive, IPA ,...
|
 |
ת |
ت,ث |
ܬ |
/t/, /θ/ |
Matres lectionis
The letters Waw and Yudh, put following the consonants that were followed by the vowels
u and
i (and often also
o and
e), used to indicate the long vowels
û and
î respectively (often also
ô and
ê respectively). These letters, which stand for both consonant and vowel sounds, are known as
matres lectionis. The letter Alaph, likewise, had some of the characteristics of a mater lectionis: in initial positions, it indicated a specific consonant called "glottal stop" (followed by a vowel), and in the middle of the word and word finally it often also stood for the long vowels
â or
ê. Among Jews, influence of Hebrew spelling often led to the use of He instead of Alaph in word final positions. The practice of using certain letters to hold vowel values spread to child writing systems of Aramaic, such as Hebrew and Arabic, where they are still used today.
External links