Aramaic languages

The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in the ancient region of Syria. For over three thousand years, It is a sub-group of the Semitic languages. Aramaic varieties served as a language of public life and administration of ancient kingdoms and empires and also as a language of divine worship and religious study. Several modern varieties, namely the Neo-Aramaic languages, are still spoken in the present-day.

The Aramaic languages belong to the Northwest group of the Semitic language family, which also includes the Canaanite languages such as Hebrew, Edomite, Moabite, and Phoenician, as well as Amorite and Ugaritic. Aramaic languages are written in the Aramaic alphabet, a descendant of the Phoenician alphabet, and the most prominent alphabet variant is the Syriac alphabet. The Aramaic alphabet also became a base for the creation and adaptation of specific writing systems in some other Semitic languages, such as the Hebrew alphabet and the Arabic alphabet.

The Aramaic languages are now considered endangered, since several varieties are used mainly by the older generations. Researchers are working to record and analyze all of the remaining varieties of Neo-Aramaic languages before they become extinct.

Early Aramaic inscriptions date from 10th century BC, placing it among the earliest languages to be written down. Aramaicist Holger Gzella notes, "The linguistic history of Aramaic prior to the appearance of the first textual sources in the ninth century BC remains unknown."

History

Historically and originally, Aramaic was the language of the Arameans, a Semitic-speaking people of the region between the northern Levant and the northern Tigris valley. By around 1000 BC, the Arameans had a string of kingdoms in what is now part of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the fringes of southern Mesopotamia and Anatolia. Aramaic rose to prominence under the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC), under whose influence Aramaic became a prestige language after being adopted as a lingua franca of the empire, and its use spread throughout Mesopotamia, the Levant and parts of Asia Minor. At its height, Aramaic, having gradually replaced earlier Semitic languages, was spoken in several variants all over historical territories of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Eastern Arabia, Bahrain, Sinai, parts of southeast and south central Turkey, and parts of northwest Iran.

According to the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 38b), the language spoken by the Bible's first was Aramaic.

Aramaic was the language of Jesus, who spoke the Galilean dialect during his public ministry, as well as the language of several sections of the Hebrew Bible, including parts of the books of Daniel and Ezra, and also the language of the Targum, the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible. It is also the language of the Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud and Zohar.

The scribes of the Neo-Assyrian bureaucracy had also used Aramaic, and this practice was subsequently inherited by the succeeding Neo-Babylonian Empire (605–539 BC), and later by the Achaemenid Empire (539–330 BC). Mediated by scribes that had been trained in the language, highly standardized ''written'' Aramaic (named by scholars as Imperial Aramaic) progressively also become the '' lingua franca'' of public life, trade and commerce throughout the Achaemenid territories. Wide use of ''written'' Aramaic subsequently led to the adoption of the Aramaic alphabet and (as logograms) some Aramaic vocabulary in the Pahlavi scripts, which were used by several Middle Iranian languages (including Parthian, Middle Persian, Sogdian, and Khwarazmian).

Some variants of Aramaic are also retained as sacred languages by certain religious communities. Most notable among them is Classical Syriac, the liturgical language of Syriac Christianity. It is used by several communities, including the Assyrian Church of the East, the Ancient Church of the East, the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Syriac Catholic Church, the Maronite Church, and also the Saint Thomas Christians (Native Christians) and Syrian Christians (K aya) of Kerala, India. One of Aramaic liturgical dialects was Mandaic, which besides becoming a vernacular (Neo-Mandaic) also remained the liturgical language of Mandaeism. Syriac was also the liturgical language of several now-extinct gnostic faiths, such as Manichaeism.
Neo-Aramaic languages are still spoken in the 21st century as a first language by many communities of Syriac Christians, Jews (in particular, the Jews of Kurdistan), and Mandaeans of the Near East, most numerously by Christian Syriacs (Syriac-speakers: ethnic Arameans, Assyrians and Chaldeans), and with numbers of fluent speakers ranging approximately from 1 million to 2 million, with the main languages among Assyrians being Assyrian Neo-Aramaic (590,000 speakers), Chaldean Neo-Aramaic (240,000 speakers) and Turoyo (100,000 speakers); in addition to Western Neo-Aramaic (21,700) which persists in only three villages in the Anti-Lebanon Mountains region in western Syria. They have retained use of the once dominant lingua franca despite subsequent language shifts experienced throughout the Middle East.

Name

The connection between Chaldean, Syriac, and Samaritan as "Aramaic" was first identified in 1679 by German theologian Johann Wilhelm Hilliger. In 1819–21 Ulrich Friedrich Kopp published his ''Bilder und Schriften der Vorzeit'' ("Images and Inscriptions of the Past"), in which he established the basis of the paleographical development of the Northwest Semitic scripts. Kopp criticised Jean-Jacques Barthélemy and other scholars who had characterized all the then-known inscriptions and coins as Phoenician, with "everything left to the Phoenicians and nothing to the Arameans, as if they could not have written at all". Kopp noted that some of the words on the Carpentras Stele corresponded to the Aramaic in the Book of Daniel, and in the Book of Ruth.

Josephus and Strabo (the latter citing Posidonius) both stated that the "Syrians" called themselves "Arameans". The Septuagint, the earliest extant full copy of the Hebrew Bible, a Greek translation, used the terms ''Syria'' and ''Syrian'' where the Masoretic Text, the earliest extant Hebrew copy of the Bible, uses the terms ''Aramean'' and ''Aramaic''; numerous later bibles followed the Septuagint's usage, including the King James Version. This connection between the names Syrian and Aramaic was made in 1835 by Étienne Marc Quatremère.

In historical sources, Aramaic language is designated by two distinctive groups of terms, first of them represented by endonymic (native) names, and the other one represented by various exonymic (foreign in origin) names. Native (endonymic) terms for Aramaic language were derived from the same word root as the name of its original speakers, the ancient Arameans. Endonymic forms were also adopted in some other languages, like ancient Hebrew. In the Torah (Hebrew Bible), "Aram" is used as a proper name of several people including descendants of Shem, Nahor, and Jacob. Ancient Aram, bordering northern Israel and what is now called Syria, is considered the linguistic center of Aramaic, the language of the Arameans who settled the area during the Bronze Age c. 3500 BC. The language is often mistakenly considered to have originated within Assyria (Iraq). In fact, Arameans carried their language and writing into Mesopotamia by voluntary migration, by forced exile of conquering armies, and by nomadic Chaldean invasions of Babylonia during the period from 1200 to 1000 BC.

Unlike in Hebrew, designations for Aramaic language in some other ancient languages were mostly exonymic. In ancient Greek, Aramaic language was most commonly known as the "Syrian language",Nöldeke, 1871, p. 115: "Die Griechen haben den Namen "Aramäer" nie eigentlich gekannt; ausser Posidonius (dem Strabo folgt) nennt ihn uns nur noch ein andrer Orientale, Josephus (Ant. 1, 6, 4). Dass Homer bei den 'Ερεμβοι oder in den Worten eiv 'Αρίμοις an sie dächte, ist sehr unwahrscheinlich. Die Griechen nannten das Volk "Syrer"". in relation to the native (non-Greek) inhabitants of the historical region of Syria. Since the name of Syria itself emerged as a variant of Assyria, the biblical Ashur, and Akkadian Ashuru, a complex set of semantic phenomena was created, becoming a subject of interest both among ancient writers and modern scholars.

The Koine Greek word (''Hebraïstí'') has been translated as "Aramaic" in some versions of the Christian New Testament, as Aramaic was at that time the language commonly spoken by the Jews. However, is consistently used in Koine Greek at this time to mean Hebrew and (''Syristi'') is used to mean Aramaic. In Biblical scholarship, the term "Chaldean" was for many years used as a synonym of Aramaic, due to its use in the book of Daniel and subsequent interpretation by Jerome.

Geographic distribution

During the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires, Arameans, the native speakers of Aramaic, began to settle in greater numbers, at first in Babylonia, and later in Assyria ( Upper Mesopotamia, modern-day northern Iraq, northeast Syria, northwest Iran, and southeastern Turkey (what was Armenia at the time). The influx eventually resulted in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC) adopting an Akkadian-influenced Imperial Aramaic as the '' lingua franca'' of its empire. This policy was continued by the short-lived Neo-Babylonian Empire and Medes, and all three empires became operationally bilingual in written sources, with Aramaic used alongside Akkadian. The Achaemenid Empire (539–323 BC) continued this tradition, and the extensive influence of these empires led to Aramaic gradually becoming the lingua franca of most of western Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, Anatolia, the Caucasus, and Egypt.

Beginning with the rise of the Rashidun Caliphate in the late 7th century, Arabic gradually replaced Aramaic as the lingua franca of the Near East. However, Aramaic remains a spoken, literary, and liturgical language for local Christians and also some Jews. Aramaic also continues to be spoken by the Assyrians of Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and northwest Iran, with diaspora communities in Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and southern Russia. The Mandaeans also continue to use Mandaic Aramaic as a liturgical language, although most now speak Arabic as their first language. There are still also a small number of first-language speakers of Western Aramaic varieties in isolated villages in western Syria.

Being in contact with other regional languages, some Aramaic dialects were often engaged in mutual exchange of influences, particularly with Arabic, Iranian, and Kurdish.

The turbulence of the last two centuries (particularly the Assyrian genocide) has seen speakers of first-language and literary Aramaic dispersed throughout the world. However, there are a number of sizable Assyrian towns in northern Iraq such as Alqosh, Bakhdida, Bartella, Tesqopa, and Tel Keppe, and numerous small villages, where Aramaic is still the main spoken language, and many large cities in this region also have Assyrian Aramaic-speaking communities, particularly Mosul, Erbil, Kirkuk, Dohuk, and al-Hasakah. In Modern Israel, the only native Aramaic speaking population are the Jews of Kurdistan, although the language is dying out. However, Aramaic is also experiencing a revival among Maronites in Israel in Jish.

Aramaic languages and dialects

Aramaic is often spoken of as a single language, but is in reality a group of related languages. Some Aramaic languages differ more from each other than the Romance languages do among themselves. 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, not unlike the situation with modern varieties of Arabic. Some Aramaic languages are known under different names; for example, Syriac is particularly used to describe the Eastern Aramaic variety used in Christian ethnic communities in Iraq, southeastern Turkey, northeastern Syria, and northwestern Iran, and Saint Thomas Christians in India. Most dialects can be described as either "Eastern" or "Western", the dividing line being roughly the Euphrates, 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 alphabet. In time, Aramaic developed its distinctive "square" style. The ancient Israelites and other peoples of Canaan adopted this alphabet for writing their own languages. Thus, it is better known as the Hebrew alphabet. This is the writing system used in Biblical Aramaic 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 alphabet. A highly modified form of the Aramaic alphabet, the Mandaic alphabet, is used by the Mandaeans.

In addition to these writing systems, certain derivatives of the Aramaic alphabet were used in ancient times by particular groups: the Nabataean alphabet_(first,_second_or_third),_ �[י_''d[î''._As_the_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:
#_כתבת_מלכתא_kṯāḇaṯ_malkṯâ_–_the_oldest_construction,_also_known_as_סמיכות_səmîḵûṯ_:_the_possessed_object_(כתבה_kṯābâ,_"handwriting")_is_in_the_construct_state_(כתבת_kṯāḇaṯ);_the_possessor_(מלכה_malkâ,_"queen")_is_in_the_emphatic_state_(מלכתא_malkṯâ)
#_כתבתא_דמלכתא_kṯāḇtâ_d(î)-malkṯâ_–_both_words_are_in_the_emphatic_state_and_the_relative_particle_-_�[י_''d[î''_is_used_to_mark_the_relationship
#_כתבתה_דמלכתא_kṯāḇtāh_d(î)-malkṯâ_–_both_words_are_in_the_emphatic_state,_and_the_relative_particle_is_used,_but_the_possessed_is_given_an_anticipatory,_pronominal_ending_(כתבתה_kṯāḇtā-h,_"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_grammatical_person">person_

A_person_(_:_people)_is_a_being_that_has_certain_capacities_or_attributes_such_as_reason,__morality,_consciousness_or_self-consciousness,_and_being_a_part_of_a_culturally_established_form_of_social_relations_such_as_kinship,__ownership_of_propert_...