Western Aramaic languages

Western Aramaic
Geographic
distribution		Levant (western & southern Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Transjordan), Sinai
Linguistic classificationAfro-Asiatic
Subdivisions
Language codes
Glottologwest2815

Western Aramaic is a group of Aramaic dialects[4][5] once spoken widely throughout the ancient Levant, predominantly in the south, and Sinai, including ancient Damascus, Nabatea, Judea, across the Palestine Region, Transjordan, Samaria as well as Lebanon and the basins of the Orontes as far as Aleppo in the north. The group was divided into several regional variants, spoken mainly by the Nabataeans, Palmyrenes, Mizrahi Jews, Melkites of Jewish[6] and pagan descent, Samaritans, Galileans and Maronites. All of the Western Aramaic dialects are considered extinct today, except for the modern variety Western Neo-Aramaic, which is still spoken by the Arameans (Syriacs) in the towns of Maaloula and Jubb'adin in Damascus, Syria.[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]

  1. ^ Tempus, Aspekt und Modalität im Reichsaramäischen (in German). Harrassowitz. p. 47. While the East Aramaic Palmyrene language seamlessly supplanted Imperial Aramaic as the language of Palmyra, likely in the second century BCE.…
  2. ^ Aramaic Inscriptions and Documents of the Roman Period. OUP Oxford. p. 43. …Palmyrene was a continuation of Official Aramaic and a close reflection of the spoken language of the Palmyrene region, with eastern Aramaic features….
  3. ^ Hellenistic and Roman Greece as a Sociolinguistic Area. John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 271. …Palmyrene Aramaic has preserved many old Aramaic features; on the other hand, it also shows isoglosses with the eastern dialects…
  4. ^ Pereira, Rodrigues (17 July 2018). Studies in Aramaic Poetry (c. 100 B.C.E.-c. 600 C.E.). BRILL. p. 7. ISBN 9789004358645. a number of elements which Syriac has in common with the Western Aramaic dialects. In a later study, Boyarin describes two phonetic changes which are apparently shared by Syriac and the Palestinian dialects. With the caution which is compulsory in such cases of parallel development, he ventures the hypothesis of the existence of certain isoglosses of Syriac and Palestinian Aramaic. According to Boyarin, besides those common features of Aramaic dialects which were inherited from earlier times, others may be supposed to rest upon innovations which spread through the dialects by diffusion. The main direction of this diffusion may have been either westward or eastward. This does not mean, of course, that Syriac should now be assigned to the group of the Western dialects. It may just demonstrate that in the course of the evolution of the Aramaic dialects it removed itself from Western Aramaic to a lesser extent than the other Eastern dialects.
  5. ^ Greenblatt, Jared (7 December 2010). The Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Amadya. BRILL. p. 2. ISBN 9789004182578. , these dialects are the remnants of the western dialects of the Late Aramaic period
  6. ^ Arman Akopian (11 December 2017). "Other branches of Syriac Christianity: Melkites and Maronites". Introduction to Aramean and Syriac Studies. Gorgias Press. p. 573. ISBN 9781463238933. The main center of Aramaic-speaking Melkites was Palestine. During the 5th-6th centuries, they were engaged in literary, mainly translation work in the local Western Aramaic dialect, known as "Palestinian Christian Aramaic", using a script closely resembling the cursive Estrangela of Osrhoene. Palestinian Melkites were mostly Jewish converts to Christianity, who had a long tradition of using Palestinian Aramaic dialects as literary languages. Closely associated with the Palestinian Melkites were the Melkites of Transjordan, who also used Palestinian Christian Aramaic. Another community of Aramaic-speaking Melkites existed in the vicinity of Antioch and parts of Syria. These Melkites used Classical Syriac as a written language, the common literary language of the overwhelming majority of Christian Arameans.
  7. ^ Rafik Schami (25 July 2011). Märchen aus Malula (in German). Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Company KG. p. 151. ISBN 9783446239005. Ich kenne das Dorf nicht, doch gehört habe ich davon. Was ist mit Malula?‹ fragte der festgehaltene Derwisch. >Das letzte Dorf der Aramäer< lachte einer der…
  8. ^ Yaron Matras; Jeanette Sakel (2007). Grammatical Borrowing in Cross-Linguistic Perspective. De Gruyter. p. 185. doi:10.1515/9783110199192. ISBN 9783110199192. The fact that nearly all Arabic loans in Ma'lula originate from the period before the change from the rural dialect to the city dialect of Damascus shows that the contact between the Aramaeans and the Arabs was intimate…
  9. ^ Dr. Emna Labidi (2022). Untersuchungen zum Spracherwerb zweisprachiger Kinder im Aramäerdorf Dschubbadin (Syrien) (in German). LIT. p. 133. ISBN 9783643152619. Aramäer von Ǧubbˁadīn
  10. ^ Prof. Dr. Werner Arnold; P. Behnstedt (1993). Arabisch-aramäische Sprachbeziehungen im Qalamūn (Syrien) (in German). Harassowitz. p. 42. ISBN 9783447033268. Die arabischen Dialekte der Aramäer
  11. ^ Prof. Dr. Werner Arnold; P. Behnstedt (1993). Arabisch-aramäische Sprachbeziehungen im Qalamūn (Syrien) (in German). Harassowitz. p. 5. ISBN 9783447033268. Die Kontakte zwischen den drei Aramäer-dörfern sind nicht besonders stark.
  12. ^ Prof. Dr. Werner Arnold (2006). Lehrbuch des Neuwestaramäischen (in German). Harrassowitz. p. 133. ISBN 9783447053136. Aramäern in Ma'lūla
  13. ^ Prof. Dr. Werner Arnold (2006). Lehrbuch des Neuwestaramäischen (in German). Harrassowitz. p. 15. ISBN 9783447053136. Viele Aramäer arbeiten heute in Damaskus, Beirut oder in den Golfstaaten und verbringen nur die Sommermonate im Dorf.
  14. ^ Beyer 1986, p. 46, 55.


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