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The Mandaic alphabet is based on the Aramaic alphabet
Aramaic alphabet

The Aramaic alphabet has been called an abjad--that is, a consonantal alphabet -- used for writing Aramaic language. It is adapted from the Phoenician alphabet, and became distinctive from it by the eighth century BCE....
, and is used for writing the Mandaic language
Mandaic language

The Mandaic language is the liturgical language of the Mandaeism religion. Classical Mandaic is used by a section of the Mandaean community in liturgical rites....
.

The Mandaic name for the script is Abagada or Abaga, after the first letters of the alphabet
Alphabet

An alphabet is a standardized set of letter basic written symbols each of which roughly represents a phoneme, a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past....
. Rather than the ancient Semitic names for the letters (alaph, beth, gimal), the letters are known as â, bâ, gâ and so on.

The alphabet consists of 24 letters: the 22 letters of the Aramaic alphabet with two additional letters at the end.






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The Mandaic alphabet is based on the Aramaic alphabet
Aramaic alphabet

The Aramaic alphabet has been called an abjad--that is, a consonantal alphabet -- used for writing Aramaic language. It is adapted from the Phoenician alphabet, and became distinctive from it by the eighth century BCE....
, and is used for writing the Mandaic language
Mandaic language

The Mandaic language is the liturgical language of the Mandaeism religion. Classical Mandaic is used by a section of the Mandaean community in liturgical rites....
.

Mandaic Alphabet
The Mandaic name for the script is Abagada or Abaga, after the first letters of the alphabet
Alphabet

An alphabet is a standardized set of letter basic written symbols each of which roughly represents a phoneme, a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past....
. Rather than the ancient Semitic names for the letters (alaph, beth, gimal), the letters are known as â, bâ, gâ and so on.

The alphabet consists of 24 letters: the 22 letters of the Aramaic alphabet with two additional letters at the end. As the number 24 is auspicious for Mandaean
Mandaeism

Mandaeism or Mandaeanism is a monotheistic religion with a strongly Dualism worldview. Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam , Abel, Seth, Enos , Noah, Shem, Aram, son of Shem and especially John the Baptist....
s (it is the number of hours from sunset to sunset), the additional letters are somewhat artificial. The 23rd letter is adu, the relative particle (cf. Arabic ta? marbu?a, Coptic
Coptic language

Coptic or Coptic Egyptian is the final stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic languages language spoken in Egypt until at least the seventeenth century....
 letter "ti", and English ampersand
Ampersand

An ampersand , also commonly called an " 'and' sign," is a logogram representing the grammatical conjunction "and". The symbol is a Typographic ligature of the letters in et, Latin for "and"....
). And the 24th is the first letter, a, repeated. Thus, Mandaeans say that the abagada has perfected the alpha and omega.

Unlike most other Semitic alphabets, the vowels are usually written out in full. The first and last letter, a (corresponding to alaph), is used to represent a range of open vowels. The sixth letter, wa, is used for close back vowels (u and o), and the tenth letter, ya is used for close front vowels (i and e). These last two can also serve as the consonants w/v and y. The eighth letter corresponds to the Semitic heth, and is called eh; it always is pronounced as a long i-vowel, but is rarely used as it is thought to be a sacred representation of the eye of God. A similar situation exists for the sixteenth letter, ayn.

All the letters in the Mandaic alphabet are considered by Mandaeans to have magic properties, and impart mysteries (raze). A hint at a few of these meanings is given alongside the respective letters.

Post-classical and modern Mandaic uses a lot of Persian
Persian language

name=Persian|nativename=|pronunciation=[f??r'si]|image=|caption=Farsi in Perso-Arabic script |states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain....
 words. Four additional letters are used in writing non-classical words. They are, in fact, simple modifications of the canonical letters, and are not considered to bring the sum of letters to 28. The letters gha, dha, fa and ja are produced by placing two horizontally-aligned dots under ga, da, pa and sha, respectively.

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