Aramaic is a
Semitic languageThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
with a 3,000-year history. It has been the language of administration of empires and the language of divine worship. It was the day-to-day language of Israel in the Second Temple period (539 BCE – 70 CE), the original language of large sections of the
biblicalThe Bible contains the central religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. Modern Judaism generally recognizes a single set of canonical books known as the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, as it is written almost entirely in the Hebrew language, with some small portions in Aramaic...
books of
DanielThe Book of Daniel is a book in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic, it is set during the Babylonian Captivity, a period when Jews were deported and exiled to Babylon following the Siege of Jerusalem of 597 BC...
and
EzraThe Book of Ezra is a book of the Bible in the Old Testament and Hebrew Tanakh. It is the record of events occurring at the close of the Babylonian captivity, especially The Return to Zion. At one time, it included the Book of Nehemiah, and the Jews regarded them as one volume...
, likely to have been the
mother tongueMost scholars believe that the historical Jesus primarily spoke Aramaic, with some Hebrew and Greek, although there is some debate in academia as to what degree. The towns of Nazareth and Capernaum, where Jesus lived, were primarily Aramaic-speaking communities, though Greek was widely spoken in...
of
Jesus of NazarethJesus of Nazareth —also known as Jesus Christ or occasionally Jesus the Christ—is the central figure of Christianity. Within most Christian denominations...
and is the main 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....
.
Aramaic belongs to the
AfroasiaticThe Afroasiatic languages constitute a language family with about 375 living languages and more than 350 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Southwest Asia, as well as parts of the Sahel, West Africa and East Africa. Arabic is the most widespread Afroasiatic...
language familyA language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family.As with biological families, the evidence of relationship is observable shared characteristics...
. Within that diverse family, it belongs to the
SemiticThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
subfamily. Aramaic is a part of the
Northwest SemiticThe Northwest Semitic languages form a medium-level division of the Semitic language family. The languages of this group are spoken by approximately eight million people today. The group is generally divided into three branches: Ugaritic , Canaanite and Aramaic...
group of languages, which also includes the
Canaanite languagesThe Canaanite languages or Hebraic languages are a subfamily of the Semitic languages, which were spoken by the ancient peoples of the Canaan region, including Canaanites, Israelites and Phoenicians...
such as
HebrewHebrew 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...
and Phoenician. Aramaic script was widely adopted for other languages, and is ancestral to the
ArabicThe 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....
and
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...
alphabets.
Aramaic's long history and diverse and widespread use has led to the development of many divergent varieties which are sometimes treated as
dialectThe term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by scholars of language. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other...
s. Thus, there is no one Aramaic language, but each time and place has had its own variety. Aramaic is retained as a liturgical language by certain Eastern Christian sects, in the form of
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...
, the Aramaic variety by which
Eastern ChristianityEastern Christianity refers collectively to the Christian traditions and churches which developed in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Asia Minor, the Middle East, Northeastern Africa and southern India over several centuries of religious antiquity. The term is generally used in Western Christianity to...
was diffused, whether or not those communities once spoke it or another form of Aramaic as their
vernacularVernacular is the native language of a country or a locality. In general linguistics, it is used to describe local languages as opposed to lingua francas, official standards or global languages. It is sometimes applied to nonstandard dialects of a global language...
, but have since shifted to another language as their primary community language.
Modern AramaicNeo-Aramaic, or Modern Aramaic, languages are varieties of Aramaic that are spoken vernaculars in the medieval to modern era, evolving out of Middle Aramaic dialects around AD 1200 ....
is spoken today as a first language by many scattered, predominantly small, and largely isolated communities of differing
ChristianA Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who Christians believe was the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, and the Son of God.The term "Christian" is also used adjectivally to...
,
JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
ish and
Muslim:A Muslim , , is an adherent of the religion of Islam. The feminine form is Muslimah . Literally, the word means "one who submits ". Muslim is the participle of the same verb of which Islam is the infinitive. Muslims believe that there is only one God, translated in Arabic as Allah...
groups of the
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...
—most numerously by the
AssyriansThe Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac people are an ethnic group whose origins lie in the Fertile Crescent, their homeland today being divided between Northern Iraq, Syria, Western...
in the form of
Assyrian Neo-AramaicAssyrian Neo-Aramaic is a modern Eastern Aramaic language. Assyrian Neo Aramaic is neither to be confused with Assyrian Akkadian, nor the Old Aramaic dialect that was adopted as a lingua franca in Assyria in the 8th century BC. Although this latter Aramaic is also an Aramaic language, it is...
—that have all retained use of the once dominant
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...
despite subsequent
language shiftLanguage shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a given mother tongue who speak...
s experienced throughout the Middle East. The Aramaic languages are considered to be
endangeredAn endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use. If it loses all its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language.The total number of contemporary languages in the world is not known...
.
Geographic distribution
During 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 the
Neo-BabylonianThe term Neo-Babylonian or Chaldean refers to Babylonia under the rule of the 11th dynasty, from the revolt of Nabopolassar in 626 BC until the invasion of Cyrus the Great in 539 BC, notably including the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II....
period,
AramaeansThe Aramaeans are a West Semitic semi-nomadic and pastoralist people who lived in upper Mesopotamia . Aramaeans never had a unified empire; they were divided into independent kingdoms all across the Near East...
, the native speakers of Aramaic, began to settle in greater numbers in
MesopotamiaMesopotamia "land between the rivers" is a name for the Tigris–Euphrates region in the eastern Mediterranean, largely corresponding to Iraq, as well as northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khūzestān Province of southwestern...
(modern-day
SyriaSyria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south and Israel to the southwest....
,
IraqIraq , officially the Republic of Iraq , also known as Mesopotamia, is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert.Iraq shares borders with Jordan to the west, Syria...
and eastern
TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey
, is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in Western Asia and Thrace in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe...
). The influx eventually resulted in the Assyrian and Babylonian empires becoming operationally
bilingualMultilingualism is the use of two or more languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population.-Multilingual individuals:...
, with Aramaic used alongside
AkkadianAkkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
. As these empires, and the
Persian 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...
that followed, extended their influence in the region, Aramaic gradually became the
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...
of most of Western Asia and Egypt. From the seventh century CE onwards, Aramaic was replaced as the lingua franca of the
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...
by
ArabicArabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as...
. However, Aramaic remains a literary and liturgical language among Jews,
MandaeansMandaeism or Mandaeanism is a monotheistic religion with a strongly dualistic worldview. Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enosh, Noah, Shem, Aram and especially John the Baptist....
and some Christians, and is still spoken by small isolated communities throughout its original area of influence. The turbulence of the last two centuries has seen speakers of first-language and literary Aramaic dispersed throughout the world.
Aramaic languages and dialects
Traditionally, Aramaic is considered a single language. However, it could equally well be considered a group of closely related languages, rather than a single monolithic language—something which it has never been. Its long history, extensive literature, and use by different religious communities are all factors in the diversification of the language. Some Aramaic dialects are mutually intelligible, whereas others are not. Some Aramaic languages are known under different names; for example,
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...
is particularly used to describe the Eastern Aramaic of Christian communities. Most dialects can be described as either "Eastern"' or "Western", the dividing line being roughly the
EuphratesThe Euphrates is the longest and historically one of the most important rivers of Southwest Asia. Together with the Tigris, the Euphrates is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia...
, or slightly west of it. It is also helpful to draw a distinction between those Aramaic languages that are modern living languages (often called
Neo-Aramaic), those that are still in use as literary languages, and those that are extinct and are only of interest to scholars. Although there are some exceptions to this rule, this classification gives "Modern", "Middle" and "Old" periods, alongside "Eastern" and "Western" areas, to distinguish between the various languages and dialects that are Aramaic.
Writing system
The earliest Aramaic alphabet was based on the
Phoenician scriptThe 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...
. In time, Aramaic developed its distinctive 'square' style. The ancient Israelites and other peoples of
CanaanCanaan is an ancient term for a region encompassing modern-day Israel and Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, plus adjoining coastal lands and parts of Jordan, Syria and northeastern Egypt...
adopted this alphabet for writing their own languages. Thus, it is better known as 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...
today. This is the writing system used in
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...
and other Jewish writing in Aramaic. The other main writing system used for Aramaic was developed by Christian communities: a cursive form known as 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...
(one of the varieties of the Syriac alphabet, Serto, is shown to the left). A highly modified form of the Aramaic alphabet, 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...
, is used by the
MandaeansMandaeism or Mandaeanism is a monotheistic religion with a strongly dualistic worldview. Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enosh, Noah, Shem, Aram and especially John the Baptist....
.
In addition to these writing systems, certain derivatives of the Aramaic alphabet were used in ancient times by particular groups: Nabataean in
PetraPetra is an archaeological site in the Arabah, Ma'an Governorate, Jordan, lying on the slope of Mount Hor in a basin among the mountains which form the eastern flank of Arabah , the large valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. It is renowned for its rock-cut architecture...
, for instance and Palmyrenean in
PalmyraPalmyra was in ancient times an important city of central Syria, located in an oasis 215 km northeast of Damascus and 120 km southwest of the Euphrates. It has long been a vital caravan city for travellers crossing the Syrian desert and was known as the Bride of the Desert...
. In modern times,
TuroyoTuroyo/Surayt is traditionally spoken in eastern Turkey and north-eastern Syria by the Assyrian/Syriac people.-Etymology:From the word , meaning 'mountain', is the mountain tongue of the Tur Abdin in southeastern Turkey....
(see below), has sometimes been written in an adapted
Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, and was initially developed by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language.During the...
.
History
The history of Aramaic is broken down into three broad periods:
- Old Aramaic (1100 BCE–200 CE), including:
- The Biblical Aramaic
Biblical 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...
of the Hebrew BibleThe Hebrew Bible is a term referring to the books of the Jewish Bible as originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew with some Biblical Aramaic...
.
- The Aramaic of Jesus
Most scholars believe that the historical Jesus primarily spoke Aramaic, with some Hebrew and Greek, although there is some debate in academia as to what degree. The towns of Nazareth and Capernaum, where Jesus lived, were primarily Aramaic-speaking communities, though Greek was widely spoken in...
.
- Middle Aramaic (200–1200), including:
- Literary Syriac
Syriac 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...
.
- The Aramaic of the Talmud
The Talmud is a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, customs, and history. It is a central text of mainstream Judaism....
s, TargumA targum , referred to in critical works by the abbreviation ...
im, and MidrashMidrash is a homiletic method of biblical exegesis. The term also refers to the whole compilation of homiletic teachings on the Bible....
im.
- Mandaic
The 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...
.
- Modern Aramaic (1200–present), including:
- Various modern vernaculars.
This classification is based on that used by Klaus Beyer*.
Old Aramaic
The term ‘Old Aramaic’ is used to describe the varieties of the language from its first known use until the point roughly marked by the rise of the Sasanian Empire (224 CE), dominating the influential, eastern dialect region. As such, the term covers over thirteen centuries of the development of Aramaic. This vast time span includes all Aramaic that is now effectively extinct.
The central phase in the development of Old Aramaic was its official use by 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...
(500–330 BCE). The period before this, dubbed ‘Ancient Aramaic’, saw the development of the language from being spoken in Aramaean city-states to become a major means of communication in diplomacy and trade throughout
MesopotamiaMesopotamia "land between the rivers" is a name for the Tigris–Euphrates region in the eastern Mediterranean, largely corresponding to Iraq, as well as northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khūzestān Province of southwestern...
, the
LevantThe Levant describes, traditionally, the Eastern Mediterranean at large, but can be used as a geographical term that denotes a large area in Western Asia formed by the lands bordering the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, roughly bounded on the north by the Taurus Mountains, on the south by...
and
EgyptEgypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia...
. After the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, local vernaculars became increasingly prominent, fanning the divergence of an Aramaic
dialect continuumA dialect continuum is a range of dialects spoken across a large geographical area, differing only slightly between areas that are geographically close, and gradually decreasing in mutual intelligibility as the distances become greater. Dialects separated by great geographical distances may not be...
and the development of differing written standards.
Ancient Aramaic
‘Ancient Aramaic’ refers to the earliest known period of the language, from its origin until it becomes the official ‘lingua franca’ of the
Fertile CrescentThe Fertile Crescent is a region in the Near East, incorporating the Levant and Mesopotamia, and often incorrectly extended to Egypt. Mesopotamia is considered the cradle of civilization and saw the development of the earliest human civilizations and is the birthplace of writing and the wheel.The...
. It was the language of the
AramaeanThe Aramaeans are a West Semitic semi-nomadic and pastoralist people who lived in upper Mesopotamia . Aramaeans never had a unified empire; they were divided into independent kingdoms all across the Near East...
city-states of
DamascusDamascus is the capital and largest city of Syria. It is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world and its current population is estimated at about 1,669,000...
,
HamaHama is a city on the banks of the Orontes River in central Syria north of Damascus. It is the provincial capital of the Hama Governorate. The city is the location of the historical city Hamath...
th and
ArpadArpad was an ancient Aramaean city located in north-western Syria, north of Aleppo. In 743 BC, the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III led a military expedition to Syria, defeating there the Uraratian army. But the city of Arpad, which had formed an alliance with Urartu, did not surrender easily...
.
There are inscriptions that evidence the earliest use of the language, dating from the tenth century BCE. These inscriptions are mostly diplomatic documents between Aramaean city-states. The orthography of Aramaic at this early period seems to be based on
PhoenicianThe 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 there is a unity in the written language. It seems that, in time, a more refined orthography, suited to the needs of the language, began to develop from this in the eastern regions of Aram. Oddly, the dominance of
AssyriaAssyria was a civilization centered on the Upper Tigris river, in Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times in history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur...
n Empire of Tiglath-Pileser III over Aram in the middle of the eighth century led to the establishment of Aramaic as 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...
, rather than it being eclipsed by
AkkadianAkkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
.
From 700 BCE, the language began to spread in all directions, but lost much of its homogeneity. Different dialects emerged in
MesopotamiaMesopotamia "land between the rivers" is a name for the Tigris–Euphrates region in the eastern Mediterranean, largely corresponding to Iraq, as well as northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khūzestān Province of southwestern...
,
BabyloniaBabylonia was a civilization in Lower Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged when Hammurabi created an empire out of the territories of the former kingdoms of Sumer and Akkad...
, the
LevantThe Levant describes, traditionally, the Eastern Mediterranean at large, but can be used as a geographical term that denotes a large area in Western Asia formed by the lands bordering the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, roughly bounded on the north by the Taurus Mountains, on the south by...
and
EgyptEgypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia...
. However, the Akkadian-influenced Aramaic of Assyria, and then
BabylonBabylon was a city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad...
, started to come to the fore. As described in
2 KingsThe Books of Kings are books included in the Hebrew Bible. They were originally written in Hebrew and are recognised as scripture by Judaism and Christianity...
18:26,
HezekiahHezekiah was the 12th king of the Kingdom of Judah, not counting queen Athaliah's reign....
, king of
JudahThe Kingdom of Judah existed at two periods in Jewish history. According to the Hebrew Bible, a kingdom emerged in Judah after the death of Saul, when the tribe of Judah elevated David, who came from the Tribe of Judah, to rule over it. After seven years David became king of a reunited Kingdom of...
, negotiates with Assyrian ambassadors in Aramaic so that the common people would not understand. Around 600 BCE, Adon, a
CanaanCanaan is an ancient term for a region encompassing modern-day Israel and Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, plus adjoining coastal lands and parts of Jordan, Syria and northeastern Egypt...
ite king, used Aramaic to write to the Egyptian
PharaohPharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. In antiquity this title began to be used for the ruler who was the religious and political leader of united ancient Egypt. This was true only during the New Kingdom, specifically during the middle of...
.
‘Chaldee’ or ‘Chaldean Aramaic’ used to be common terms for the Aramaic of the Chaldean dynasty of
BabyloniaBabylonia was a civilization in Lower Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged when Hammurabi created an empire out of the territories of the former kingdoms of Sumer and Akkad...
. It was used to describe
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...
, which was, however, written in a later style. It is not to be confused with the modern language
Chaldean Neo-AramaicChaldean Neo-Aramaic is a Northeastern Neo-Aramaic language. Chaldean Neo-Aramaic is spoken on the Plain of Mosul in northern Iraq, as well as by the Chaldean communities worldwide...
.
Imperial Aramaic
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...
, Aramaic (as had been used in that region) 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". In 1955, Richard Frye questioned the classification of Imperial Aramaic as an 'official language', noting that no surviving edict expressly and unambiguously accorded that status to any particular language. Frye reclassifies Imperial Aramaic as the
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...
of the Achaemenid territories, suggesting then that the Achaemenid-era use of Aramaic was more pervasive than generally thought.
Imperial Aramaic was highly standardised; its orthography was based more on historical roots than any spoken dialect, and the inevitable influence of
PersianPersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq and Bahrain, and has a status of official language in the first three countries under different names...
gave the language a new clarity and robust flexibility. 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....
. Aramaic script and as ideograms Aramaic vocabulary 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...
.
One of the largest collections of Imperial Aramaic texts is that of the
PersepolisPersepolis was the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire during the Achaemenid dynasty. Persepolis is situated northeast of the modern city of Shiraz in the Fars Province of modern Iran...
fortification tablets, which number about five hundred. Many of the extant documents witnessing to this form of Aramaic come from
EgyptEgypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia...
, and
ElephantineElephantine is an island in the River Nile, located just downstream of the First Cataract at at the southern border of Ancient Egypt. This region is referred to as Upper Egypt because the land is higher than that near the Mediterranean coast. It may have received its name because it was a...
in particular (see
Elephantine papyriThe Elephantine Papyri are a collection of ancient Jewish manuscripts dating from the fifth century BCE. They come from a Jewish community at Elephantine, then called Yeb, the island in the Nile at the border of Nubia, which was probably founded as a military installation in about 650 BCE during...
). Of them, the best known is the
Wisdom of AhiqarAhiqar or Ahikar was an Assyrian sage known in the ancient Near East for his outstanding wisdom.The Story of Ahikar, also known as the Words of Ahikar, has been found in an Aramaic papyrus of 500 B.C. among the ruins of Elephantine...
, a book of instructive aphorisms quite similar in style to the biblical
book of ProverbsThe Book of Proverbs is a book of the Hebrew Bible , included in the collected works known as the "Writings" or Ketuvim.-Title:...
. Achaemenid Aramaic is sufficiently uniform that it is often difficult to know where any particular example of the language was written. Only careful examination reveals the occasional loan word from a local language.
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...
.
Post-Achaemenid Aramaic
The conquest by
Alexander the GreatAlexander III of Macedon, popularly known as Alexander the Great , was an Ancient Greek king of Macedon who created one of the largest empires in ancient history...
did not destroy the unity of Aramaic language and literature immediately. Aramaic that bears a relatively close resemblance to that of the fifth century BCE can be found right up to the early second century BCE. The
SeleucidsThe Seleucid Empire was a Hellenistic empire, i.e. a successor state of Alexander the Great's empire. The Seleucid Empire was centered in the near East and at the height of its power included central Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, today's Turkmenistan, Pamir and parts of Pakistan...
imposed
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
in the administration of
SyriaSyria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south and Israel to the southwest....
and
MesopotamiaMesopotamia "land between the rivers" is a name for the Tigris–Euphrates region in the eastern Mediterranean, largely corresponding to Iraq, as well as northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khūzestān Province of southwestern...
from the start of their rule. In the third century BCE, Greek overtook Aramaic as the common language in Egypt and Syria. However, a post-Achaemenid Aramaic continued to flourish from
JudaeaIudaea is the term used by historians to refer to the Roman province that extended over parts of the former regions of the Hasmonean and Herodian kingdoms of Israel...
, through the Syrian Desert and into
ArabiaThe Arabian Peninsula , Arabia, Arabistan, and the Arabian subcontinent is a peninsula in Southwest Asia at the junction of Africa and Asia...
and
ParthiaParthia is a region of north-eastern Iran, best known for having been the political and cultural base of the Arsacid dynasts, after which the Arsacid Empire is then also known as the 'Parthian Empire'....
.
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...
is the Aramaic found in four discrete sections of the
Hebrew BibleThe Hebrew Bible is a term referring to the books of the Jewish Bible as originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew with some Biblical Aramaic...
:
- Ezra
The Book of Ezra is a book of the Bible in the Old Testament and Hebrew Tanakh. It is the record of events occurring at the close of the Babylonian captivity, especially The Return to Zion. At one time, it included the Book of Nehemiah, and the Jews regarded them as one volume...
4:8–6:18 and 7:12–26 documents from the Achaemenid period (fifth century BCE) concerning the restoration of the temple in Jerusalem.
- Daniel
The Book of Daniel is a book in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic, it is set during the Babylonian Captivity, a period when Jews were deported and exiled to Babylon following the Siege of Jerusalem of 597 BC...
2:4b–7:28 five subversive tales and an apocalyptic vision.
- Jeremiah
The Book of Jeremiah, or Jeremiah , is part of the Hebrew Bible, Judaism's Tanakh, and later became a part of Christianity's Old Testament...
10:11 a single sentence in the middle of a Hebrew text denouncing idolatry.
- Genesis 31:47 translation of a Hebrew place-name.
Biblical Aramaic is a somewhat hybrid dialect. Some Biblical Aramaic material probably originated in both Babylonia and Judaea before the fall of the Achaemenid dynasty. During
SeleucidThe Seleucid Empire was a Hellenistic empire, i.e. a successor state of Alexander the Great's empire. The Seleucid Empire was centered in the near East and at the height of its power included central Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, today's Turkmenistan, Pamir and parts of Pakistan...
rule, defiant Jewish propaganda shaped Aramaic
DanielThe Book of Daniel is a book in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic, it is set during the Babylonian Captivity, a period when Jews were deported and exiled to Babylon following the Siege of Jerusalem of 597 BC...
. These stories probably existed as oral traditions at their earliest stage. This might be one factor that led to differing collections of Daniel in the
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
SeptuagintThe Septuagint , or simply "LXX", referred to in critical works by the abbreviation ...
and the
Masoretic TextThe Masoretic Text is a Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible . It defines not just the books of the Jewish canon, but also the precise letter-text of the biblical books in Judaism, as well as their vocalization and accentuation for both public reading and private study...
, which presents a lightly
HebrewHebrew 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...
-influenced Aramaic.
Under the category of post-Achaemenid is Hasmonaean Aramaic, the official language of
HasmonaeanThe Hasmoneans were the ruling dynasty of the Hasmonean Kingdom of Israel , an independent Jewish state. The Hasmonean dynasty was established under the leadership of Simon Maccabaeus, two decades after his brother Judah the Maccabee defeated the Seleucid army during the Maccabean Revolt in 165 BC...
Judaea (142–37 BCE). It influenced the Biblical Aramaic of the
QumranQumran is located on a dry plateau about a mile inland from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea in the West Bank, just next to the Israeli kibbutz of Kalia...
texts, and was the main language of non-biblical theological texts of that community. The major
TargumA targum , referred to in critical works by the abbreviation ...
s, translations of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic, were originally composed in Hasmonaean. Hasmonaean also appears in quotations in the
MishnahThe Mishnah or Mishna is the first major written redaction of the Jewish oral traditions called the "Oral Torah" and the first major work of Rabbinic Judaism. It was redacted c...
and
ToseftaThe Tosefta is a secondary compilation of the Jewish oral law from the period of the Mishnah.-Overview:In many ways, the Tosefta acts as a supplement to the Mishnah . The Mishnah is the basic compilation of the Oral law of Judaism; it was compiled around 200 CE...
, although smoothed into its later context. It is written quite differently from Achaemenid Aramaic; there is an emphasis on writing as words are pronounced rather than using etymological forms.
Babylonian
TargumA targum , referred to in critical works by the abbreviation ...
ic is the later post-Achaemenid dialect found in the
Targum Onqelosright|thumb|Interlinear text of [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]] [[Book of Numbers|Numbers]] 6.3–10 with [[Aramaic language|Aramaic]] Targum Onkelos from the [[British Library]]....
and
Targum JonathanTargum Jonathan - otherwise referred to as Targum Yonasan/Yonatan is the official eastern targum to the Nevi'im. Its early origins, however, are western i.e. from the Land of Israel, and the Talmudic tradition attributes its authorship to Jonathan ben Uzziel...
, the 'official' targums. The original, Hasmonaean targum had reached Babylon sometime in the second or third centuries CE. They were then reworked according to the contemporary dialect of Babylon to create the language of the standard targums. This combination formed the basis of Babylonian Jewish literature for centuries to follow.
Galilean Targumic is similar to Babylonian Targumic. It is the mixing of literary Hasmonaean with the dialect of
GalileeGalilee , is a large region in northern Israel which overlaps with much of the administrative North District of the country...
. The Hasmonaean targum reached Galilee in the second century CE, and were reworked into this Galilean dialect for local use. The Galilean Targum was not considered an authoritative work by other communities, and documentary evidence shows that its text was amended. From the eleventh century CE onwards, once the Babylonian Targum had become normative, the Galilean version became heavily influenced by it.
Babylonian Documentary Aramaic is a dialect in use from the third century CE onwards. It is the dialect of Babylonian private documents, and, from the twelfth century, all Jewish private documents in Aramaic. It is based on Hasmonaean with very few changes. This was perhaps due to the fact that many of the documents in BDA are legal documents, the language in them had to be sensible throughout the Jewish community from the start, and Hasmonaean was the old standard.
Nabataean AramaicThe Nabataean language was a Semitic language and was the written language of the Nabataeans.-Origin:With the collapse of the Achaemenid Empire , the Aramaic language also increasingly lost importance as the lingua franca of the Near East. The Greek language now appeared beside it...
is the language of the Arab kingdom of
PetraPetra is an archaeological site in the Arabah, Ma'an Governorate, Jordan, lying on the slope of Mount Hor in a basin among the mountains which form the eastern flank of Arabah , the large valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. It is renowned for its rock-cut architecture...
. The kingdom (
c. 200 BCE–106 CE covered the east bank of the
Jordan RiverThe Jordan River or River Jordan is a river in Southwest Asia which flows into the Dead Sea. It is considered to be one of the world's most sacred rivers...
, the
Sinai PeninsulaThe Sinai Peninsula or Sinai The Sinai Peninsula or Sinai The Sinai Peninsula or Sinai (sina; Egyptian Arabic: سينا sina; sina'a; is a triangular peninsula in Egypt. It lies between the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Red Sea to the south, forming a land bridge between Africa and Southwest...
and northern Arabia. Perhaps because of the importance of the caravan trade, the Nabataeans began to use Aramaic in preference to
Old North ArabicAncient North Arabian is a language known from fragmentary inscriptions in Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia, dating to between roughly the 6th century BC and the 6th century AD, all written in scripts derived from Epigraphic South Arabian...
. The dialect is based on Achaemenid with a little influence from Arabic: 'l' is often turned into 'n', and there are a few Arabic loan words. Some Nabataean Aramaic inscriptions exist from the early days of the kingdom, but most are from the first four centuries CE. The language is written in a
cursiveCursive is any style of handwriting that is designed for writing notes and letters quickly by hand. In the Arabic, Latin, and Cyrillic writing systems, the letters in a word are connected, making a word one single complex stroke...
script that is the precursor to the modern
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....
. The number of Arabic loan words increases through the centuries, until, in the fourth century, Nabataean merges seamlessly with
ArabicArabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as...
.
Palmyrene Aramaic is the dialect that was in use in the city of
PalmyraPalmyra was in ancient times an important city of central Syria, located in an oasis 215 km northeast of Damascus and 120 km southwest of the Euphrates. It has long been a vital caravan city for travellers crossing the Syrian desert and was known as the Bride of the Desert...
in the Syrian Desert from 44 BCE to 274 CE. It was written in a rounded script, which later gave way to cursive
EstrangelaThe 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...
. Like Nabataean, Palmyrene was influenced by Arabic, but to a lesser degree.
Arsacid Aramaic, that in use during the Arsacid empire (247 BCE – 224 CE), represents a continuation of Achaemenid Aramaic, widely spoken throughout the west of the empire. Aramaic continued as the scribal basis for
PahlaviPahlavi 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...
as it developed for the needs of
ParthianThe Parthian language, also known as Arsacid Pahlavi and Pahlavanik, is a now-extinct ancient Northwestern Iranian language spoken in Parthia, a region of northeastern Greater Iran, to include a significant portion of Greater Khorasan....
: using an Aramaic-derived script and incorporating many 'heterograms', or Aramaic words meant to be read as Parthian ones. The Arsacids saw themselves as a continuation of Achaemenid rule, and so Arsacid Aramaic, more than any other post-Achaemenid dialect, continued the tradition of the chancery of
Darius IDarius I or Darius the Great , was a Zoroastrian Persian Shahanshah of Persia...
. Over time, however, it came under the influence of contemporary, spoken Aramaic,
GeorgianGeorgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 3.9 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...
and
PersianPersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq and Bahrain, and has a status of official language in the first three countries under different names...
. After the conquest of the Parthians by the Persian-speaking
SasanidsThe Sassanid Empire or Sasanian Empire, known to its inhabitants as Ērānshahr, was the last pre-Islamic Persian Empire, ruled by the Sasanian Dynasty who reigned from 224 to 651 CE...
, Arsacid Pahlavi and Aramaic were influential on Sasanian language use.
Late Old Eastern Aramaic
The dialects mentioned in the last section were all descended from Achaemenid Imperial Aramaic. However, the diverse regional dialects of Late Ancient Aramaic continued alongside these, often as simple, spoken languages. Early evidence for these spoken dialects is known only through their influence on words and names in a more standard dialect. However, these regional dialects became written languages in the second century BC. These dialects reflect a stream of Aramaic that is not dependent on Imperial Aramaic, and shows a clear division between the regions of Mesopotamia, Babylon and the east, and Judah, Syria, and the west.
In the East, the dialects of Palmyrene and Arsacid Aramaic merged with the regional languages to create languages with a foot in Imperial and a foot in regional Aramaic. Much later, Arsacid became the liturgical language of the
MandaeanMandaeism or Mandaeanism is a monotheistic religion with a strongly dualistic worldview. Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enosh, Noah, Shem, Aram and especially John the Baptist....
religion,
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...
.
In the kingdom of
OsroeneOsroene , also known by the name of its capital city, Edessa , was a historic Syriac kingdom located in Mesopotamia, which enjoyed semi-autonomy to complete independence from the years of 132 BC to AD 244.It was a Syriac speaking kingdom.Osroene,...
, centred on
EdessaEdessa is the historical name of a Syriac town in northern Mesopotamia, refounded on an ancient site by Seleucus I Nicator. For the modern history of the city, see Şanlıurfa.-Names:...
and founded in 132 BCE, the regional dialect became the official language: Old
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...
. On the upper reaches of the
TigrisThe Tigris is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, along with the Euphrates. The river flows from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq.-Geography:...
, East Mesopotamian Aramaic flourished, with evidence from
HatraHatra is an ancient ruined city in the Ninawa Governorate and al-Jazira region of Iraq. It is today called al-Hadr, and it stands in the ancient Persian province of Khvarvaran. The city lies 290 km northwest of Baghdad and 110 km southwest of Mosul.Hatra was founded as an Assyrian city...
,
AssurAssur , was one of the capitals of ancient Assyria...
and the
Tur AbdinTur Abdin is a hilly region of south east Turkey incorporating the eastern half of Mardin Province, and Sirnak Province west of the Tigris, on the border with Syria. The name 'Tur Abdin' is from the Syriac language meaning 'mountain of the servants '...
.
TatianTatian the Assyrian was an early Christian writer and theologian of the second century.Tatian's most influential work is the Diatessaron, a harmony of the four gospels that became the standard text of the four gospels in the Syriac-speaking churches until the 5th-century, when it gave way to the...
, the author of the gospel harmony the
DiatessaronThe Diatessaron is the most prominent Gospel harmony created by Tatian, an early Christian apologist and ascetic. The term "diatessaron" is from Middle English by way of Latin, diatessarōn , and ultimately Greek, dia tessarōn The Diatessaron (c 160 - 175) is the most prominent Gospel harmony...
came from Assyria, and perhaps wrote his work (172 CE) in East Mesopotamian rather than Syriac or Greek. In Babylonia, the regional dialect was used by the Jewish community, Jewish Old Babylonian (from
c. 70 CE). This everyday language increasingly came under the influence of Biblical Aramaic and Babylonian Targumic.
Late Old Western Aramaic
The western regional dialects of Aramaic followed a similar course to those of the east. They are quite distinct from the eastern dialects and Imperial Aramaic. Aramaic came to coexist with Canaanite dialects, eventually completely displacing Phoenician in the first century BCE and Hebrew around the turn of the fourth century CE.
The form of Late Old Western Aramaic used by the Jewish community is best attested, and is usually referred to as Jewish Old Palestinian. Its oldest form is Old East Jordanian, which probably comes from the region of Caesarea Philippi. This is the dialect of the oldest manuscript of
EnochThe Book of Enoch is a pseudepigraphic work ascribed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah and son of Jared .While this book today is non-canonical in most Christian churches, it was explicitly quoted in the New Testament and by many of the early Church Fathers...
(
c. 170 BCE). The next distinct phase of the language is called Old Judaean into the second century CE. Old Judaean literature can be found in various inscriptions and personal letters, preserved quotations in 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....
and receipts from
QumranQumran is located on a dry plateau about a mile inland from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea in the West Bank, just next to the Israeli kibbutz of Kalia...
.
JosephusJosephus , also known as Yosef Ben Matityahu and, after he became a Roman citizen, as Titus Flavius Josephus, was a first-century Jewish historian and apologist of priestly and royal ancestry who survived and recorded the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70...
' first, non-extant edition of his
Jewish WarThe Wars of the Jews is a book written by the 1st century Jewish historian Josephus.It is a description of Jewish history from the capture of Jerusalem by the Seleucid...
was written in Old Judaean.
The Old East Jordanian dialect continued to be used into the first century CE by pagan communities living to the east of the Jordan. Their dialect is often then called Pagan Old Palestinian, and it was written in a cursive script somewhat similar to that used for Old Syriac. A Christian Old Palestinian dialect may have arisen from the pagan one, and this dialect may be behind some of the Western Aramaic tendencies found in the otherwise eastern Old Syriac gospels (see
PeshittaThe Peshitta is the standard version of the Christian Bible in the Syriac language.The Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated from the Hebrew, probably in the second century...
).
Languages during Jesus' lifetime
In the first century CE, Jews in Judaea are believed to have primarily spoken Aramaic with a dwindling number using
HebrewHebrew 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...
as a native language. Many learned Hebrew as a liturgical language. Additionally,
Koine GreekKoine Greek is the popular form of Greek which emerged in post-Classical antiquity . Other names are Alexandrian, Hellenistic, Patristic, Common, Biblical or New Testament Greek...
was an international language of the Roman administration and trade, and was widely understood by those in the urban spheres of influence.
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
was spoken in the Roman army, but had almost no impact on the linguistic landscape.
In addition to the formal, literary dialects of Aramaic based on Hasmonaean and Babylonian there were a number of colloquial Aramaic dialects. Seven dialects of Western Aramaic were spoken in the vicinity of Judaea in
JesusJesus of Nazareth —also known as Jesus Christ or occasionally Jesus the Christ—is the central figure of Christianity. Within most Christian denominations...
' time. They were probably distinctive yet mutually intelligible. Old Judaean was the prominent dialect of
JerusalemJerusalem is the capital of Israel and its largest city in both population and area, with a population of 747,600 residents over an area of if disputed East Jerusalem is included...
and Judaea. The region of
EngediEin Gedi is an oasis in Israel, located west of the Dead Sea, close to Masada and the caves of Qumran. Location ....
had the South-east Judaean dialect.
SamariaSamaria, or the Shomron is a term used for a mountainous region roughly corresponding to the northern part of the West Bank.- Etymology :...
had its distinctive Samaritan Aramaic, where the consonants '
heHe is the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician , Aramaic, Hebrew , Syriac and Arabic . Its sound value is a voiceless glottal fricative ....
', '' and '
‘ayin' 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...
' all became pronounced as '
aleph* 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...
'. Galilean Aramaic, the dialect of Jesus' home region, is only known from a few place names, the influences on Galilean Targumic, some rabbinic literature and a few private letters. It seems to have a number of distinctive features:
diphthongIn phonetics, a diphthong, or , is a contour vowel—that is, a unitary vowel that changes quality during its pronunciation, or "glides", with a smooth movement of the tongue from one articulation to another, as in the English words eye, boy, and cow...
s are never simplified into monophthongs. East of the Jordan, the various dialects of East Jordanian were spoken. In the region of
DamascusDamascus is the capital and largest city of Syria. It is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world and its current population is estimated at about 1,669,000...
and the Anti-Lebanon mountains, Damascene Aramaic was spoken (deduced mostly from Modern Western Aramaic). Finally, as far north as
AleppoAleppo is a city in northern Syria, the second largest Syrian city and the capital of the Aleppo Governorate; the Governorate extends around the city for over 16,000 km² and has a population of 4,393,000, making it the largest Governorate in Syria by population...
, the western dialect of Orontes Aramaic was spoken.
The three languages mutually influenced each other, especially Hebrew and Aramaic. Hebrew words entered Jewish Aramaic (mostly technical religious words but also everyday words like
'wood'). Vice versa, Aramaic words entered Hebrew (not only Aramaic words like
māmmôn 'wealth' but Aramaic ways of using words like making Hebrew
rā’ûi, 'seen' mean 'worthy' in the sense of 'seemly', which is a loan translation of Aramaic
meaning 'seen' and 'worthy').
The Greek of the
New TestamentThe New Testament is the name given to the second major division of the Christian Bible, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament, both terms being associated with Supersessionism...
often preserves non-Greek
semiticisms, including transliterations of
SemiticIn linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages....
words:
- Some are Aramaic like talitha (ταλιθα) that can represent the noun (Mark 5:41).
- Others can be either Hebrew or Aramaic like Rabbounei (Ραββουνει), which stands for 'my master/great one/teacher' in both languages (John 20:16).
The 2004 film
The Passion of the ChristThe Passion of the Christ is a film co-written, co-produced and directed by Mel Gibson. It is based on the New Testament accounts of the arrest, trial, torture, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus, events commonly known as The Passion. The film’s dialogue is in Aramaic, Latin, and Hebrew, with...
is notable for its use of much dialogue in Aramaic only, specially reconstructed by a scholar, but not an Aramaic specialist,
William FulcoThe Reverend William J. Fulco is a Jesuit priest and National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California in the United States....
. Where the appropriate words (in first century Aramaic) were no longer known, he used the Aramaic of Daniel, fourth-century Syriac and Hebrew as the basis for his work. Modern Aramaic speakers found the language stilted and unfamiliar.
Middle Aramaic
The third century CE is taken as the threshold between Old and Middle Aramaic. During that century, the nature of the various Aramaic languages and dialects begins to change. The descendants of Imperial Aramaic ceased to be living languages, and the eastern and western regional languages began to form vital, new literatures. Unlike many of the dialects of Old Aramaic, much is known about the vocabulary and grammar of Middle Aramaic.
Eastern Middle Aramaic
Only two of the Old Eastern Aramaic languages continued into this period. In the north of the region, Old Syriac moved into Middle Syriac. In the south, Jewish Old Babylonian became Jewish Middle Babylonian. The post-Achaemenid, Arsacid dialect became the background of the new
Mandaic languageThe 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...
.
Syriac
Syriac (also "Middle Syriac") is the classical, literary and liturgical language of
Syriac ChristiansSyriac Christianity is an ancient near Eastern Christian group represented by denominations primarily in the Middle East and in Kerala, India. Particularly notable is the liturgical use of ancient Syriac, a dialect related to the Aramaic of Jesus.-History:...
to this day. Its golden age was the fourth to sixth centuries. This period began with the translation of the Bible into the language: the
PeshittaThe Peshitta is the standard version of the Christian Bible in the Syriac language.The Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated from the Hebrew, probably in the second century...
and the masterful prose and poetry of
Ephrem the SyrianEphrem the Syrian was a Syriac deacon and a prolific Syriac-language hymnographer and theologian of the 4th century...
. Middle Syriac, unlike its forebear, is a thoroughly Christian language, although in time it became the language of those opposed to the
ByzantineThe Byzantine Empire or Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on the capital of Constantinople, and ruled by Emperors in direct and de jure succession to the ancient Roman Emperors...
leadership of the church in the east. Missionary activity led to the spread of Syriac through
PersiaIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country in Western Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanid period and came into international use from 1935, before which the country was known internationally as Persia...
and into
IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
and
ChinaChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
.
Jewish Middle Babylonian Aramaic
Jewish Middle Babylonian is the language employed by Jewish writers in Babylonia between the fourth century and the eleventh century CE. It is most commonly identified with the language of the Babylonian
TalmudThe Talmud is a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, customs, and history. It is a central text of mainstream Judaism....
(which was completed in the seventh century) and of post-Talmudic (
GeonicGeonim were the presidents of the two great rabbinical colleges of Sura and Pumbedita, in Babylonia, and were the generally accepted spiritual leaders of the Jewish community world wide in the early medieval era, in contrast to the Resh Galuta who wielded secular authority over the Jews in...
) literature, which are the most important cultural products of Babylonian Jewry. The most important epigraphic sources for the dialect are the hundreds of Aramaic magic bowls written in the Jewish script.
Mandaic
Mandaic is a sister dialect to Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, though it is both linguistically and culturally distinct. Classical Mandaic is the language in which the Mandaean's religious literature was composed. It is characterized by a highly phonetic orthography.
Western Middle Aramaic
The dialects of Old Western Aramaic continued with Jewish Middle Palestinian (in
Hebrew 'square script'The 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...
), Samaritan Aramaic (in the
old Hebrew scriptThe 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 Christian Palestinian (in cursive
Syriac scriptThe 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...
). Of these three, only Jewish Middle Palestinian continued as a written language.
Jewish Middle Palestinian Aramaic
In 135, after the Bar Kokhba revolt, many
JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
ish leaders, expelled from
JerusalemJerusalem is the capital of Israel and its largest city in both population and area, with a population of 747,600 residents over an area of if disputed East Jerusalem is included...
, moved to
GalileeGalilee , is a large region in northern Israel which overlaps with much of the administrative North District of the country...
. The Galilean dialect thus rose from obscurity to become the standard among Jews in the west. This dialect was spoken not only in Galilee, but also in the surrounding parts. It is the linguistic setting for the
Jerusalem TalmudThe Jerusalem Talmud or Talmud Yerushalmi , often the Yerushalmi for short, is a collection of Rabbinic notes about the Jewish Oral tradition as detailed in the 2nd-century Mishnah...
(completed in the fifth century), Palestinian
targumA targum , referred to in critical works by the abbreviation ...
im (Jewish Aramaic versions of scripture), and
midrashMidrash is a homiletic method of biblical exegesis. The term also refers to the whole compilation of homiletic teachings on the Bible....
im (biblical commentaries and teaching). The standard
vowel pointing| align="right" class="wikitable" | colspan="2" |
Niqqud |- | colspan="2" align="center" style="background:white;height:100px"|
[[ְ]], Hebrew BibleThe Hebrew Bible is a term referring to the books of the Jewish Bible as originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew with some Biblical Aramaic...
, the Tiberian system (seventh century), was developed by speakers of the Galilean dialect of Jewish Middle Palestinian. Classical Hebrew vocalisation, therefore, in representing the Hebrew of this period, probably reflects the contemporary pronunciation of this Aramaic dialect.
Middle Judaean, the descendant of Old Judaean, is no longer the dominant dialect, and was used only in southern Judaea (the variant Engedi dialect continued throughout this period). Likewise, Middle East Jordanian continues as a minor dialect from Old East Jordanian. The inscriptions in the synagogue at Dura-EuroposDura-Europos
was a Hellenistic, Parthian and Roman border city built on an escarpment ninety meters above the right bank of the Euphrates river....
are either in Middle East Jordanian or Middle Judaean.
Samaritan Aramaic
The Aramaic dialect of the SamaritanThe Samaritans are an ethnoreligious group of the Levant. Religiously, they are the adherents to Samaritanism, a parallel but separate religion to Judaism or any of its historical forms...
community is earliest attested by a documentary tradition that can be dated back to the fourth century. Its modern pronunciation is based on the form used in the tenth century.
Christian Palestinian Aramaic
The language of Western-Aramaic-speaking Christians is evidenced from the sixth century, but probably existed two centuries earlier. The language itself comes from Christian Old Palestinian, but its writing conventions were based on early Middle Syriac, and it was heavily influenced by Greek. The name Jesus, although Yešû` in Aramaic, is written Yesûs in Christian Palestinian.
Modern Aramaic
Over 400,000 people of various communities from across the 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...
, and recent emigrantsEmigration is the act of leaving one's native country or region to settle in another. It is the same as immigration but from the perspective of the country of origin. Human movement before the establishment of political boundaries or within one state, is termed migration. There are many reasons why...
who have moved out of these communities, speak one of several varieties of Modern Aramaic (also called Neo-Aramaic) natively, including by religious adherence; ChristianA Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who Christians believe was the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, and the Son of God.The term "Christian" is also used adjectivally to...
s, JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
s, MandaeansMandaeism or Mandaeanism is a monotheistic religion with a strongly dualistic worldview. Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enosh, Noah, Shem, Aram and especially John the Baptist....
and Muslim:A Muslim , , is an adherent of the religion of Islam. The feminine form is Muslimah . Literally, the word means "one who submits ". Muslim is the participle of the same verb of which Islam is the infinitive. Muslims believe that there is only one God, translated in Arabic as Allah...
s. Having lived in remote areas as insulated communities, the remaining modern speakers of Aramaic dialects escaped the linguistic pressures experienced by others during the large scale language shiftLanguage shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a given mother tongue who speak...
s that saw the proliferation of other tongues among those who previously did not speak them, most recently the ArabizationArabization describes a growing cultural influence on a non-Arab area that gradually changes into one that speaks Arabic and/or incorporates Arab culture...
of the Middle East and North Africa by Muslim:A Muslim , , is an adherent of the religion of Islam. The feminine form is Muslimah . Literally, the word means "one who submits ". Muslim is the participle of the same verb of which Islam is the infinitive. Muslims believe that there is only one God, translated in Arabic as Allah...
ArabiansThe Arabian Peninsula , Arabia, Arabistan, and the Arabian subcontinent is a peninsula in Southwest Asia at the junction of Africa and Asia...
, during their spread of IslamIslam Islam Islam ( al-’islām,
[There are ten pronunciations of Islam in English, differing in whether the first or second syllable has the stress, whether the s is or , and whether the a is pronounced as in father, as in cat, or (when the stress is on the i) as in the a of sofa...]
. Most of the people of that region who converted to Islam, and many from the remaining unconverted population, also adopted Arabic as their first language. The Aramaic speakers have preserved their traditions with printing presses and now with electronic media.
The Neo-Aramaic languages are now farther apart in their comprehension of one another than perhaps they have ever been. The last two-hundred years have not been good to Aramaic speakers. Instability throughout the Middle East has led to a worldwide diaspora of Aramaic-speakers. The year 1915 is especially prominent for Aramaic-speaking Christians who experienced the Assyrian GenocideThe Assyrian Genocide was committed against the Assyrian/Syriac population of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War by the Young Turks...
(Sayfo or Saypā; literally meaning sword in 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 all Christian groups living in eastern TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey
, is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in Western Asia and Thrace in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe...
in general (see also Armenian GenocideThe Armenian Genocide , also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as the Great Calamity , was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I...
, Greek genocide) who were the subjects of the genocide that marked the end of the Ottoman EmpireThe Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299 to November 1, 1922 The Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State (Ottoman Turkish: دَوْلَتِ عَلِیَّهِ عُثْمَانِیَّه Dawlet-il ʿAliyyat-il ʿOs̠māniyye, Modern Turkish:...
. For Aramaic-speaking Jews 1950 is a watershed year: the founding of the state of IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
and consequent Jewish exodus from Arab landsThe Jewish exodus from Arab lands refers to the 20th century expulsion or mass departure of Jews, primarily of Sephardi and Mizrahi background, from Arab and Islamic countries...
, including IraqIraq , officially the Republic of Iraq , also known as Mesopotamia, is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert.Iraq shares borders with Jordan to the west, Syria...
, led most Iraqi Jews, both Aramaic-speaking and Arabic-speaking Iraqi Jews, to emigrate to Israel. However, immigration to Israel has led to the Jewish Neo-Aramaic (and Jewish Iraqi Arabic) being replaced by Modern Hebrew among children of the migrants. The practical extinction of many Jewish dialects seems imminent.
Modern Eastern Aramaic
Modern Eastern Aramaic exists in a wide variety of dialects and languages. There is significant difference between the Aramaic spoken by JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
s, ChristianA Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who Christians believe was the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, and the Son of God.The term "Christian" is also used adjectivally to...
s, and MandaeansMandaeism or Mandaeanism is a monotheistic religion with a strongly dualistic worldview. Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enosh, Noah, Shem, Aram and especially John the Baptist....
.
The Christian languages are often called Modern 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...
(or Neo-Syriac, particularly when referring to their literature), being deeply influenced by the literary and liturgical language of Middle Syriac. However, they also have roots in numerous, previously unwritten, local Aramaic dialects, and are not purely the direct descendants of the language of Ephrem the SyrianEphrem the Syrian was a Syriac deacon and a prolific Syriac-language hymnographer and theologian of the 4th century...
.
Modern Western Syriac (also called Central Neo-Aramaic, being in between Western Neo-Aramaic and Eastern Neo-Syriac) is generally represented by TuroyoTuroyo/Surayt is traditionally spoken in eastern Turkey and north-eastern Syria by the Assyrian/Syriac people.-Etymology:From the word , meaning 'mountain', is the mountain tongue of the Tur Abdin in southeastern Turkey....
, the language of the Tur AbdinTur Abdin is a hilly region of south east Turkey incorporating the eastern half of Mardin Province, and Sirnak Province west of the Tigris, on the border with Syria. The name 'Tur Abdin' is from the Syriac language meaning 'mountain of the servants '...
. A related language, MlahsôMlahsô is a Modern West Syriac language, a dialect of Aramaic. It was traditionally spoken in eastern Turkey and north-eastern Syria by members of the Assyrian/Syriac people....
, has recently become extinct.
The eastern Christian languages (Modern Eastern Syriac or Eastern Neo-Aramaic) are often called Sureth or Suret, from a native name. They are also sometimes called AssyrianAssyrian Neo-Aramaic is a modern Eastern Aramaic language. Assyrian Neo Aramaic is neither to be confused with Assyrian Akkadian, nor the Old Aramaic dialect that was adopted as a lingua franca in Assyria in the 8th century BC. Although this latter Aramaic is also an Aramaic language, it is...
or ChaldeanChaldean Neo-Aramaic is a Northeastern Neo-Aramaic language. Chaldean Neo-Aramaic is spoken on the Plain of Mosul in northern Iraq, as well as by the Chaldean communities worldwide...
, but these names are not accepted by all speakers. The dialects are not all mutually intelligible. East Syriac communities are usually members of either the Chaldean Catholic ChurchThe Chaldean Catholic Church or the Chaldean Church of Babylon The Chaldean Catholic Church or the Chaldean Church of Babylon The Chaldean Catholic Church or the Chaldean Church of Babylon ( ,Syriac ܥܕܬܐ ܟܠܕܝܬܐ ܩܬܘܠܝܩܝܬܐ is an Eastern particular church of the Catholic Church, maintaining full...
or Assyrian Church of the Eaststyle="float: right;"|- |The Assyrian Church of the East known officially as the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East , in Persian القدس وابسته به پاپ کاتولیک آشوری...
.
The Jewish Modern Aramaic languagesJudæo-Aramaic is a collective term used to describe several Hebrew-influenced Aramaic and Neo-Aramaic languages.-Early use:Aramaic, like Hebrew, is a Northwest Semitic language, and the two share many features. From the seventh century BCE, Aramaic became the lingua franca of the Middle East...
are now mostly spoken in IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
, and most are facing extinction (older speakers are not passing the language to younger generations). The Jewish dialects that have come from communities that once lived between Lake UrmiaLake Urmia Lake Urmia Lake Urmia ( Daryâcheh-ye Orumiyeh; ; , ; ancient name: Lake Matiene is a salt lake in northwestern Iran near Turkey. The lake is between the provinces of East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan, west of the southern portion of the similarly shaped Caspian Sea...
and MosulMosul is a city in northern Iraq and the capital of the Ninawa Governorate, some 400 km northwest of Baghdad...
are not all mutually intelligible. In some places, for example UrmiaUrmia or Orumieh , is a city in Northwestern Iran and the capital of West Azerbaijan Province. The city lies on an altitude of 1,330 m above sea level on the Shahar Chaye river...
, Christians and Jews speak mutually unintelligible dialects of Modern Eastern Aramaic in the same place. In others, the plain of Mosul for example, the dialects of the two faith communities are similar enough to allow conversation.
A few Mandaeans, living in the Khūzestān ProvinceKhūzestān is one of the 30 provinces of Iran. It is in the southwest of the country, bordering Iraq's Basra Province and the Persian Gulf. Its capital is Ahvaz and covers an area of 63,238 km²...
of IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country in Western Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanid period and came into international use from 1935, before which the country was known internationally as Persia...
, speak Modern 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...
. It is quite distinct from any other Aramaic dialect.
Modern Western Aramaic
Very little remains of Western Aramaic. It is still spoken in the villages of Ma'loula, Bakh`a and Jubb`adin on SyriaSyria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south and Israel to the southwest....
's side of the Anti-Lebanon mountains, as well as by some people who migrated from these villages, to DamascusDamascus is the capital and largest city of Syria. It is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world and its current population is estimated at about 1,669,000...
and other larger towns of Syria. All these speakers of Modern Western Aramaic are fluent in Arabic, which has now become the main language in these villages.
Sounds
Each dialect of Aramaic has its own distinctive pronunciation, and it would not be feasible here to go into all these properties. Aramaic has a phonological palette of 25 to 40 distinct phonemes. In general, older dialects tended to have a richer phonology than more modern ones. In particular, some modern Jewish Aramaic pronunciations lack the series of 'emphatic' consonants. Other dialects have borrowed from the inventories of surrounding languages, particularly ArabicArabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as...
, AzerbaijaniAzerbaijani is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran...
, Kurdish, PersianPersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq and Bahrain, and has a status of official language in the first three countries under different names...
and TurkishTurkish is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other...
.
Vowels
As with most Semitic languages, Aramaic can be thought of as having three basic sets of vowels:
- Open a-vowels
- Close front i-vowels
- Close back u-vowels
These vowel groups are relatively stable, but the exact articulation of any individual is most dependent on its consonantal setting.
The cardinal open vowel is an open near-front unrounded vowel ('short' a, somewhat like the first vowel in the English 'batter', ). It usually has a back counterpart ('long' a, like the a in 'father', , or even tending to the vowel in 'caught', ), and a front counterpart ('short' e, like the vowel in 'head', ). There is much correspondence between these vowels between dialects. There is some evidence that Middle Babylonian dialects did not distinguish between the short a and short e. In West Syriac dialects, and possibly Middle Galilean, the long a became the o sound. The open e and back a are often indicated in writing by the use of the letters 'alaph' (a glottal stopThe glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English the feature is represented for example by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those attempting an authentic pronunciation of...
) or 'he' (like the English h).
The cardinal close front vowel is the 'long' i (like the vowel in 'need', ). It has a slightly more open counterpart, the 'long' e, as in the final vowel of 'café' . Both of these have shorter counterparts, which tend to be pronounced slightly more open. Thus, the short close e corresponds with the open e in some dialects. The close front vowels usually use the consonant y as a mater lectionisIn the spelling of Hebrew and some other Semitic languages, matres lectionis , refers to the use of certain consonants to indicate a vowel. The letters that do this in Hebrew are aleph, he, waw and yod...
.
The cardinal close back vowel is the 'long' u (like the vowel in 'school', ). It has a more open counterpart, the 'long' o, like the vowel in 'low' . There are shorter, and thus more open, counterparts to each of these, with the short close o sometimes corresponding with the long open a. The close back vowels often use the consonant w to indicate their quality.
Two basic diphthongIn phonetics, a diphthong, or , is a contour vowel—that is, a unitary vowel that changes quality during its pronunciation, or "glides", with a smooth movement of the tongue from one articulation to another, as in the English words eye, boy, and cow...
s exist: an open vowel followed by y (ay), and an open vowel followed by w (aw). These were originally full diphthongs, but many dialects have converted them to e and o respectively.
The so-called 'emphatic' consonants (see the next section) cause all vowels to become mid-centralised.
Consonants
The various alphabets used for writing Aramaic languages have twenty-two letters (all of which are consonants). Some of these letters, though, can stand for two or three different sounds (usually a plosiveA stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The terms plosive and stop are usually used interchangeably, but they are not perfect synonyms. Plosives are oral stops with a pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. The term is also used to...
and a fricativeFricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
at the same point of articulation). Aramaic classically uses a series of lightly contrasted plosives and fricatives:
- Labial set: p/f and b/v,
- Dental set: t/θ and d/ð,
- Velar set: k/x and g/.
Each member of a certain pair is written with the same letter of the alphabet in most writing systems (that is, p and f are written with the same letter), and are near allophoneIn phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds that belong to the same phoneme. A phoneme is an abstract unit of speech sound that can distinguish words: That is, changing a phoneme in a word can produce another word...
s.
A distinguishing feature of Aramaic phonology (and that of Semitic languages in general) is the presence of 'emphatic' consonants. These are consonants that are pronounced with the root of the tongue retracted, with varying degrees of pharyngealization and velarisationVelars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
. Using their alphabetic names, these emphatics are:, a voiceless pharyngeal fricativeThe voiceless pharyngeal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is h-bar , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is X\.-Features:...
, (like the sound made breathing on glass),, a pharyngealized t, , (or in some dialects), a pharyngealized glottal stopThe glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English the feature is represented for example by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those attempting an authentic pronunciation of...
(sometimes considered to be a voiced pharyngeal fricativeThe voiced pharyngeal approximant/fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents it is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ?\....
), / or ,, a pharyngealized ts, ,, an uvularUvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be plosives, fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and...
k (a voiceless uvular plosiveThe voiceless uvular plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. It is pronounced like [k], except that the tongue makes contact not on the soft palate but on the uvula...
), .
Ancient Aramaic may have had a larger series of emphatics. Not all dialects of Aramaic give these consonants their historic values.
Overlapping with the set of emphatics are the 'guttural' consonants. They include and from the emphatic set, and add (a glottal stopThe glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English the feature is represented for example by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those attempting an authentic pronunciation of...
) and (as the English 'h').
Aramaic classically has a set of four sibilantsA sibilant is a type of fricative or affricate consonant, made by directing a jet of air through a narrow channel in the vocal tract towards the sharp edge of the teeth.-The term:...
(Ancient Aramaic may have had six):
- /s/ (as in English 'sea'),
- /z/ (as in English 'zero'), (as in English 'ship'), (the emphatic listed above).
In addition to these sets, Aramaic has the nasal consonantA nasal consonant is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the lips or tongue...
s m and n, and the approximantsApproximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and "typical" consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence. Approximants are...
r (usually an alveolar trillThe alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar trills is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r. It is informally and commonly called the rolling R or...
), l, y and w.
Historical sound changes
Six broad features of sound change can be seen as dialect differentials:
- Vowel change This occurs almost too frequently to document fully, but is a major distinctive feature of different dialects.
- Plosive/fricative pair reduction Originally, Aramaic, like Tiberian Hebrew
Tiberian Hebrew designates the canonical yet extinct pronunciation of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh and related documents. This traditional medieval pronunciation was committed to writing by Masoretic scholars based in the Jewish community of Tiberias in the period ca. 750-950 CE...
, had fricatives as conditioned allophoneIn phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds that belong to the same phoneme. A phoneme is an abstract unit of speech sound that can distinguish words: That is, changing a phoneme in a word can produce another word...
s for each plosive. In the wake of vowel changes, the distinction eventually became phonemic; still later, it was often lost in certain dialects. For example, TuroyoTuroyo/Surayt is traditionally spoken in eastern Turkey and north-eastern Syria by the Assyrian/Syriac people.-Etymology:From the word , meaning 'mountain', is the mountain tongue of the Tur Abdin in southeastern Turkey....
has mostly lost /p/, using /f/ instead; other dialects (for instance, standard Assyrian Neo-AramaicAssyrian Neo-Aramaic is a modern Eastern Aramaic language. Assyrian Neo Aramaic is neither to be confused with Assyrian Akkadian, nor the Old Aramaic dialect that was adopted as a lingua franca in Assyria in the 8th century BC. Although this latter Aramaic is also an Aramaic language, it is...
) have lost /θ/ and /ð/ and replaced them with /t/ and /d/. In most dialects of Modern Syriac, /f/ and /v/ become /w/ after a vowel.
- Loss of emphatics Some dialects have replaced emphatic consonants with non-emphatic counterparts, while those spoken in the Caucasus
The Caucasus or Caucas is a geopolitical region between at the border of Europe and Asia. It is home to the Caucasus Mountains, including Europe's highest mountain ....
often have glottalizedA glottalic consonant is a consonant produced with some important contribution of the glottis ....
rather than pharyngealized emphatics.
- Guttural assimilation This is the main feature of Samaritan pronunciation, also found in the Samaritan Hebrew language
The Samaritan Hebrew language is a descendant of Biblical Hebrew as pronounced and written by the Samaritans. It is used in the reading tradition of the Samaritan Pentateuch.-Writing:...
: all the gutturals are reduced to a simple glottal stop. Some Modern Aramaic dialects do not pronounce h in all words (the third person masculine pronoun 'hu' becomes 'ow').
- Proto-Semitic */θ/ */ð/ are reflected in Aramaic as */t/, */d/, whereas they became sibilants in Hebrew (the number three in Hebrew is 'šālôš', but '' in Aramaic). Dental/sibilant shifts are still happening in the modern dialects.
- New phonetic inventory Modern dialects have borrowed sounds from the surrounding, dominant languages. The usual inventory is (as the first consonant in 'azure'), (as in 'jam') and (as in 'church'). The Syriac alphabet
The 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...
has been adapted for writing these new sounds.
Grammar
As with other Semitic languages, Aramaic morphologyMorphology is the identification, analysis and description of the structure of words . While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most languages, words can be related to other words by rules...
(the way words are put together) is based on the triliteral root. The root consists of three consonants and has a basic meaning, for example, k-t-b has the meaning of 'writing'. This is then modified by the addition of vowels and other consonants to create different nuances of the basic meaning:
- , handwriting, inscription, script, book.
- , the Scriptures.
- , secretary, scribe.
- , I wrote.
- , I shall write.
Nouns and adjectives
Aramaic nouns and adjectives are inflected to show gender, number and state. The latter somewhat akin to case in Indo-European languagesThe Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, Iran, and northern India, and historically also predominant in Anatolia and Central Asia...
.
Aramaic has two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine. The feminine absolute singular is usually marked by the ending -â, which is usually written with an aleph* 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...
. Jewish varieties, however, often use heHe is the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician , Aramaic, Hebrew , Syriac and Arabic . Its sound value is a voiceless glottal fricative ....
instead, following Hebrew orthography.
Nouns can be either singular or plural, but an additional 'dual' number exists for nouns that usually come in pairs. The dual number gradually disappeared from Aramaic over time and has little influence in Middle and Modern Aramaic.
Aramaic nouns and adjectives can exist in one of three states; these states correspond in part to the role of cases in other languages.
- The absolute state is the basic form of a noun (for example, , 'handwriting'). The absolute state can be used in most syntactical roles. However, by the Middle Aramaic period, its use for nouns, but not adjectives, had been widely replaced by the emphatic state.
- The construct
The status constructus or construct state is a noun form occurring in Afro-Asiatic languages. It is particularly common in Semitic languages , Berber languages, and in the extinct Egyptian language...
state is a form of the noun used to make possessive phrases (for example, , 'the handwriting of the queen). In the masculine singular it is often the same as the absolute, but may undergo vowel reduction in longer words. The feminine construct and masculine construct plural are marked by suffixes. Unlike a genitive caseIn grammar, the genitive case is the case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
, which marks the possessor, the construct state is marked on the possessed. This is mainly due to Aramaic word order: possessed[const.] possessor[abs./emph.] are treated as a speech unit, with the first unit (possessed) employing the construct state to link it to the following word. In Middle Aramaic, the use of the construct state for all but stock phrases (like bar-nāšâ, 'son of man') begins to disappear.
- The emphatic or determined state is an extended form of the noun that functions a bit like a definite article
An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun, and may also specify the volume or numerical scope of that reference. there are only three articles, a, an and and. The articles in the English language are the and a...
(which Aramaic lacks; for example, , 'the handwriting'). It is marked with a suffix. Although its original grammatical function seems to have been to mark definiteness, it is used already in Imperial Aramaic to mark all important nouns, even if they should be considered technically indefinite. This practice developed to the extent that the absolute state became a virtual rarity in later varieties of Aramaic.
Whereas other Northwest Semitic languagesThe Northwest Semitic languages form a medium-level division of the Semitic language family. The languages of this group are spoken by approximately eight million people today. The group is generally divided into three branches: Ugaritic , Canaanite and Aramaic...
, like Hebrew, have the absolute and construct states, the emphatic/determined state is a unique feature to Aramaic. Case endingsIn grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language modifies word forms to handle grammatical relations and relational categories such as tense, mood, voice, aspect , person, number , gender, case . Beside conjugation and declension there is comparison with its maximum category number of two In...
, as in Ugaritic, probably existed in a very early stage of the language, and glimpses of them can be seen in a few compounded proper names. However, as most were short final vowels, they were never written, and the few characteristic long vowels of the masculine plural accusative and genitive are not clearly evidenced in inscriptions. Often, the direct objectAn object in grammar is a sentence element and is often part of the sentence predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb...
is marked by a prefixed l- (the preposition 'to') if it is definite.
Adjectives agree with their nouns in number and gender, but only agree in state if attributive. Predicative adjectives are in the absolute state regardless of the state of their noun (a copulaIn linguistics, a copula , also called a "passive verb" or "linking verb", is a word used to link the subject of a sentence with a predicate . The word copula derives from the Latin noun for a link or tie that connects two different things.A copula is sometimes a verb or a verb-like part of speech...
can, but need not be written). Thus, an attributive adjective to an emphatic noun, as in the phrase 'the good king', is written also in the emphatic state — king[emph.] good[emph.]. In comparison, the predicative adjective, as in the phrase 'the king is good', is written in the absolute state — good[abs.] king[emph.].
| ‘good’ |
masc. sg. |
fem. sg. |
masc. pl. |
fem. pl. |
| abs. |
ṭāḇ |
ṭāḇâ |
ṭāḇîn |
ṭāḇān |
| const. |
ṭāḇ |
ṭāḇaṯ |
ṭāḇê |
ṭāḇāṯ |
| det./emph. |
ṭāḇâ |
ṭāḇtâ |
ṭāḇayyâ |
ṭāḇāṯâ |
The final -â in a number of these suffixes is written with the letter aleph* 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...
. However, some Jewish Aramaic texts employ the letter heHe is the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician , Aramaic, Hebrew , Syriac and Arabic . Its sound value is a voiceless glottal fricative ....
for the feminine absolute singular. Likewise, some Jewish Aramaic texts employ the Hebrew masculine absolute singular suffix -îm instead of -în. The masculine determined plural suffix, -ayyâ, has an alternative version, -ê. The alternative is sometimes called the 'gentilic plural' for its prominent use in ethnonyms (yəhûḏāyê, 'the Jews', for example). This alternative plural is written with the letter aleph* 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...
, and came to be the only plural for nouns and adjectives of this type in Syriac and some other varieties of Aramaic. The masculine construct plural, -ê, is written with yodhYodh is the tenth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Yud , Syriac and Arabic...
. In Syriac and some other variants this ending is diphthongIn phonetics, a diphthong, or , is a contour vowel—that is, a unitary vowel that changes quality during its pronunciation, or "glides", with a smooth movement of the tongue from one articulation to another, as in the English words eye, boy, and cow...
ized to -ai.
Possessive phrases in Aramaic can either be made with the construct state or by linking two nouns with the relative particle d[î]-. As use of the construct state almost disappears from the Middle Aramaic period on, the latter method became the main way of making possessive phrases.
For example, the various forms of possessive phrases (for 'the handwriting of the queen') are:
- — the oldest construction: the possessed object(kṯāḇâ, 'handwriting') is in the construct state (kṯāḇaṯ); the possessor (malkâ, 'queen') is in the emphatic state (malkṯâ)
- — both words are in the emphatic state and the relative particle d[î]- is used to mark the relationship
- — both words are in the emphatic state, and the relative particle is used, but the possessed is given an anticipatory, pronominal ending (kṯāḇt[â]-āh, 'handwriting-her'; literally, 'her writing, that (of) the queen').
In Modern Aramaic, the last form is by far the most common. In Biblical Aramaic, the last form is virtually absent.
Verbs
The Aramaic verb has gradually evolved in time and place, varying between varieties of the language. Verb forms are marked for personGrammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
(first, second or third), numberIn linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
(singular or plural), genderIn linguistics, grammatical genders, sometimes also called noun classes, are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few which belong to several classes at once....
(masculine or feminine), tenseGrammatical tense is a temporal linguistic quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs.Tense is one of at least five qualities, along with mood, voice, aspect, and person, which verb forms may express....
(perfect or imperfect), moodGrammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive verb forms that are used to signal modality.It is distinct from grammatical tense or grammatical aspect, although these concepts are conflated to some degree in many languages, including English and most other modern Indo-European languages, insofar...
(indicative, imperative, jussive or infinitive) and voiceIn grammar, the voice of a verb describes the relationship between the action that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments . When the subject is the agent or actor of the verb, the verb is in the active voice...
(active, reflexive or passive). Aramaic also employs a system of conjugationIn linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb, noun or adjective from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
s, or verbal stems, to mark intensive and extensive developments in the lexical meaning of verbs.
Aspectual tense
Aramaic has two proper tensesGrammatical tense is a temporal linguistic quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs.Tense is one of at least five qualities, along with mood, voice, aspect, and person, which verb forms may express....
: perfectIn grammar, the perfective aspect is an aspect that exists in many languages. The term "perfective aspect" is generally used to refer to an action viewed as a whole, and it is equivalent to the aspectual component of past-perfective tenses variously called "aorist", "preterite", and "simple past"...
and imperfectThe imperfective aspect is a grammatical aspect. It refers to an action that is viewed from a particular viewpoint as ongoing, habitual, repeated, or generally containing internal structure....
. These were originally aspectualIn linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow in the described event or state...
, but developed into something more like a preteriteThe preterite is the grammatical tense expressing actions that took place in the past.-English:...
and futureIn grammar, the future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future .-Expressions of future tense:Languages can employ various...
. The perfect tense is unmarkedMarkedness is a linguistic concept that developed out of the Prague School. A marked form is a non-basic or less natural form. An unmarked form is a basic, default form. For example, lion is the unmarked choice in English — it could refer to a male or female lion. But lioness is marked because it...
, while the imperfect uses various preformativeA prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Particularly in the study of Semitic languages, a prefix is called a preformative, as they can alter the form of the words to which they are fixed.Examples of prefixes:...
s that vary according to person, number and gender. In both tenses the third-person singular masculine is the unmarked form from which others are derived by addition of afformativeIn grammar, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
s (and preformatives in the imperfect). In the chart below (on the root K-T-B, meaning 'to write'), the first form given is the usual form in Imperial Aramaic, while the second is Classical 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...
.
| Person & gender |
Perfect |
Imperfect |
| Singular |
Plural |
Singular |
Plural |
| 3rd m. |
kəṯaḇ ↔ kəṯaḇ |
kəṯaḇû ↔ kəṯaḇ(w)/kəṯabbûn |
yiḵtuḇ ↔ neḵtoḇ |
yiḵtəḇûn ↔ neḵtəḇûn |
| 3rd f. |
kiṯbaṯ ↔ keṯbaṯ |
kəṯaḇâ ↔ kəṯaḇ(y)/kəṯabbên |
tiḵtuḇ ↔ teḵtoḇ |
yiḵtəḇān ↔ neḵtəḇān |
| 2nd m. |
kəṯaḇt ↔ kəṯaḇt |
kəṯaḇtûn ↔ kəṯaḇton |
tiḵtuḇ ↔ teḵtoḇ |
tiḵtəḇûn ↔ teḵtəḇûn |
| 2nd f. |
kəṯaḇtî ↔ kəṯaḇt(y) |
kəṯaḇtēn ↔ kəṯaḇtên |
tiḵtuḇîn ↔ teḵtuḇîn |
tiḵtəḇān ↔ teḵtəḇān |
| 1st m./f. |
kiṯḇēṯ ↔ keṯḇeṯ |
kəṯaḇnâ ↔ kəṯaḇn |
eḵtuḇ ↔ eḵtoḇ |
niḵtuḇ ↔ neḵtoḇ |
Conjugations or verbal stems
Like other Semitic languages, Aramaic employs a number of conjugations, or verbal stems, to extend the lexical coverage of verbs. The basic conjugation of the verb is called the ground stem, or G-stem. Following the tradition of mediaeval Arabic grammarians, it is more often called the Pə‘al (also written Pe‘al), using the form of the triliteral root P-‘-L, meaning ‘to do’. This stem carries the basic lexical meaning of the verb.
By doubling of the second radical, or root letter, the D-stem or Pa‘‘el is formed. This is often an intensive development of the basic lexical meaning. For example, means ‘he killed’, whereas means ‘he slew’. The precise relationship in meaning between the two stems differs for every verb.
A preformative, which can be ha-, a- or ša-, creates the C-stem or variously the Hap̄‘el, Ap̄‘el or Šap̄‘el (also spelt Haph‘el, Aph‘el and Shaph‘el). This is often an extensive or causative development of the basic lexical meaning. For example, means ‘he went astray’, whereas means ‘he deceived’. The Šap̄‘el is the least common variant of the C-stem. Because this variant is standard in AkkadianAkkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
, it is possible that its use in Aramaic represents loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from one language and incorporated into another.-General:By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept, whereby it is the meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself.The word loanword is itself a calque of the German...
s from that language. The difference between the variants Hap̄‘el and Ap̄‘el appears to be the gradual dropping of the initial h sound in later Old Aramaic. This is noted by the respelling of the older heHe is the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician , Aramaic, Hebrew , Syriac and Arabic . Its sound value is a voiceless glottal fricative ....
preformative with aleph* 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...
.
These three conjugations are supplemented with three derived conjugations, produced by the preformative hiṯ- or eṯ-. The loss of the initial h sound occurs similarly to that in the form above. These three derived stems are the Gt-stem, Hiṯpə‘el or Eṯpə‘el (also written Hithpe‘el or Ethpe‘el), the Dt-stem, Hiṯpa‘‘al or Eṯpa‘‘al (also written Hithpa‘‘al or Ethpa‘‘al), and the Ct-stem, Hiṯhap̄‘al, Ettap̄‘al, Hištap̄‘al or Eštap̄‘al (also written Hithhaph‘al, Ettaph‘al, Hishtaph‘al or Eshtaph‘al). Their meaning is usually reflexiveIn grammar, a reflexive verb is a verb whose semantic agent and patient are the same. For example, the English verb to perjure is reflexive, since one can only perjure oneself...
, but later became passive. However, as with other conjugations, actual meaning differs from verb to verb.
Not all verbs utilise all of these conjugations, and, in some, the G-stem is not used. In the chart below (on the root K-T-B, meaning ‘to write’), the first form given is the usual form in Imperial Aramaic, while the second is Classical 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...
.
| Stem |
Perfect active |
Imperfect active |
Perfect passive |
Imperfect passive |
| Pə‘al (G-stem) |
kəṯaḇ ↔ kəṯaḇ |
yiḵtuḇ ↔ neḵtoḇ |
kəṯîḇ |
| Hiṯpə‘ēl/Eṯpə‘el (Gt-stem) |
hiṯkəṯēḇ ↔ eṯkəṯeḇ |
yiṯkəṯēḇ ↔ neṯkəṯeḇ |
|
|
| Pa‘‘ēl/Pa‘‘el (D-stem) |
kattēḇ ↔ katteḇ |
yəḵattēḇ ↔ nəkatteḇ |
kuttaḇ |
|
| Hiṯpa‘‘al/Eṯpa‘‘al (Dt-stem) |
hiṯkattaḇ ↔ eṯkattaḇ |
yiṯkattaḇ ↔ neṯkattaḇ |
|
|
| Hap̄‘ēl/Ap̄‘el (C-stem) |
haḵtēḇ ↔ aḵteḇ |
yəhaḵtēḇ ↔ naḵteḇ |
huḵtaḇ |
|
| Hiṯhap̄‘al/Ettap̄‘al (Ct-stem) |
hiṯhaḵtaḇ ↔ ettaḵtaḇ |
yiṯhaḵtaḇ ↔ nettaḵtaḇ |
|
|
Aramaic also has two proper tensesGrammatical tense is a temporal linguistic quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs.Tense is one of at least five qualities, along with mood, voice, aspect, and person, which verb forms may express....
: the perfect and the imperfect. In Imperial Aramaic, the participleIn linguistics, a participle is a derivative of a non-finite verb, which can be used in compound tenses or voices, or as a modifier...
began to be used for a historical presentIn linguistics and rhetoric, the historical present refers to the employment of the present tense when narrating past events...
. Perhaps under influence from other languages, Middle Aramaic developed a system of composite tenses (combinations of forms of the verb with pronouns or an auxiliary verbIn linguistics, an auxiliary is a verb functioning to give further semantic or syntactic information about the main or full verb following it...
), allowing for narrative that is more vivid. The syntax of Aramaic (the way sentences are put together) usually follows the order verb-subject-object (VSO). Imperial (Persian) Aramaic, however, tended to follow a S-O-V pattern (similar to Akkadian), which was the result of Persian syntactic influence.
Aramaic word processors
The World's first Aramaic language word processing softwareA word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....
was developed in 1986–1987 in KuwaitThe State of Kuwait is a sovereign Arab emirate bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south and Iraq to the north and west. The greatest distance from north to south is 200 km and from east to west 170 km . The name is a diminutive of an Arabic word meaning "fortress built near water." It has a...
by a young information technology professional named Sunil Sivanand, who is now Managing Director and Chief Technology Architect at AcetteAcette is an Information Technology System Integrator, Software Engineering and Consulting firm headquartered in Dubai Internet City. Acette provides technology strategy consulting services, enterprise application integration services, Information technology enabled services and Value-added...
. Sunil Sivanand did most of the character generation and programming work on a first generation, twin disk drive IBM Personal Computer. The project was sponsored by Daniel Benjamin, who was a patron of a group of individuals working worldwide to preserve and revive the Aramaic language.
See also
Background
- Afro-Asiatic languages
The Afroasiatic languages constitute a language family with about 375 living languages and more than 350 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Southwest Asia, as well as parts of the Sahel, West Africa and East Africa. Arabic is the most widespread Afroasiatic...
- Aram (biblical region)
Aram is the name of a region mentioned in the Bible located in central Syria, including where the city of Aleppo now stands.-History:...
- Aramaeans
The Aramaeans are a West Semitic semi-nomadic and pastoralist people who lived in upper Mesopotamia . Aramaeans never had a unified empire; they were divided into independent kingdoms all across the Near East...
- Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
Writing systems
- Arabic alphabet
The 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....
- Aramaic alphabet
The Aramaic alphabet is adapted from the Phoenician alphabet, and became distinctive from it by the eighth century BCE. The letters all represent consonants, some of which are matres lectionis, which also indicate long vowels....
- Hebrew alphabet
The 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...
- Mandaic alphabet
The 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...
- Phoenician alphabet
The 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...
- Syriac alphabet
The 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...
Historical forms
- Aramaic of Hatra
In 1912, W. Andrae published some inscriptions from the site of Hatra, which were studied by S. Ronzevalle and P. Jensen. The excavations undertaken by the Iraqi Department of Antiquities brought to light more than 100 new texts, the publication of which was undertaken by F. Safar in the journal...
- Aramaic of Jesus
Most scholars believe that the historical Jesus primarily spoke Aramaic, with some Hebrew and Greek, although there is some debate in academia as to what degree. The towns of Nazareth and Capernaum, where Jesus lived, were primarily Aramaic-speaking communities, though Greek was widely spoken in...
- Biblical Aramaic
Biblical 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...
- Mandaic language
The 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...
- Syriac language
Syriac 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...
Literature
- Book of Daniel
The Book of Daniel is a book in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic, it is set during the Babylonian Captivity, a period when Jews were deported and exiled to Babylon following the Siege of Jerusalem of 597 BC...
- Book of Ezra
The Book of Ezra is a book of the Bible in the Old Testament and Hebrew Tanakh. It is the record of events occurring at the close of the Babylonian captivity, especially The Return to Zion. At one time, it included the Book of Nehemiah, and the Jews regarded them as one volume...
- Ephrem the Syrian
Ephrem the Syrian was a Syriac deacon and a prolific Syriac-language hymnographer and theologian of the 4th century...
- Midrash
Midrash is a homiletic method of biblical exegesis. The term also refers to the whole compilation of homiletic teachings on the Bible....
- Peshitta
The Peshitta is the standard version of the Christian Bible in the Syriac language.The Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated from the Hebrew, probably in the second century...
- Talmud
The Talmud is a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, customs, and history. It is a central text of mainstream Judaism....
- Targum
A targum , referred to in critical works by the abbreviation ...
External links