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Syriac alphabet. Aramaic (Jewish Babylonian Aramaic: ארמית, romanized: ˀərāmiṯ; Classical Syriac: ܐܪܡܐܝܬ, romanized: arāmāˀiṯ [a]) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, southeastern Anatolia, Eastern Arabia [3] [4] and the Sinai Peninsula, where it has been continually written ...
This particular and distinct dialect of Jewish Neo-Aramaic was spoken in the villages of Bijil, Barzan and Shahe. It was known as Bijili until recently. The last native speaker of Bijil Neo-Aramaic, Mrs. Rahel Avraham, died in Jerusalem in 1998. [10] The remaining second-language speakers are all related and over 70 years of age, and most from ...
Numbers of fluent speakers range from approximately 300,000 to 575,000, with the main languages being Assyrian Neo-Aramaic (40,000 plus speakers), [14] [15] Chaldean Neo-Aramaic (220,000 speakers) [16] and Surayt/Turoyo (250,000 speakers), [17] together with a number of smaller closely related languages with no more than 5,000 to 10,000 speakers between them.
The largest of subgroups of speakers are Assyrian Neo-Aramaic with approximately 500,000 speakers, Chaldean Neo-Aramaic with approximately 240,000 speakers, Turoyo (Surayt) with approximately 100,000 speakers and a few thousand speakers of other Neo-Aramaic languages (i.e. Modern Judeo-Aramaic varieties and Bohtan Neo-Aramaic, among others ...
A Judeo-Aramaic inscription from Mtskheta, Georgia, dating to the 4th-6th century CE. The conquest of the Middle East by Alexander the Great in the years from 331 BCE overturned centuries of Mesopotamian dominance and led to the ascendancy of Greek, which became the dominant language throughout the Seleucid Empire, but significant pockets of Aramaic-speaking resistance continued.
The last native speakers of the language in Lebanon were last recorded in the late 19th century with Arabic having become the dominant language of Lebanon at this point. [ 18 ] [ 19 ] One prominent contribution to Syriac literature was a press from Italy that was installed in the Qadisha valley for producing religious texts in Classical Syriac ...
The old Aramaic period (850 to 612 BC) saw the production and dispersal of inscriptions due to the rise of the Arameans as a major force in Ancient Near East.Their language was adopted as an international language of diplomacy, particularly during the late stages of the Neo-Assyrian Empire as well as the spread of Aramaic speakers from Egypt to Mesopotamia. [12]
[22] [23] These influences might indicate an older historical connection between Western Neo-Aramaic and Eastern Aramaic speakers. [24] Other strong linguistic influences on Western Neo-Aramaic include Akkadian during the Neo-Babylonian period, e. g. the names of the months: āšbaṭ (Akk. šabāṭu, "February"), ōḏar (Akk.