Talk:Aramaic alphabet

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On 13 August 2022, it was proposed that this article be Aramaic script. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

Someone wrote this, "Aramaic is also considered to be the most likely source of the Brahmi script, ancestor of the Brahmi family of scripts, which includes Devanagari". But how can it be true? Brahmi script is found in Indus valley. Fully mature Indus valley civilization (Harappa, Mohenjo daro) is 3500 BC old . Aramaic script is only 800 BC old. So definitely Brahmi script is older than Aramaic and probably source of Aramaic script. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 43.248.152.55 (talk) 08:13, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That a script is found in a region where an ancient civilization happens to have existed does not automatically mean it originates from that civilization. For comparison: the fact that the Arabic script is used in Egypt doesn't mean that it goes back the ancient Pharaos. As for the Brahmi script, the minority hypothesis of a connection to the Indus script faces many challenges: see Brahmi_script#Indigenous_origin_hypothesis. Drabkikker (talk) 21:45, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, there are no accepted archaeological reports of Brahmi script in IVC contexts (don't confuse "Indus valley" with "Indus Valley Civilization contexts"). The earliest dateable examples of Brahmi are 4th or 5th century BCE and they were nowhere near the Indus valley. Tarchon (talk) 00:00, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why is there more Syriac script than Aramaic script in this article? Syriac script is based on Aramaic script BUT this article is about the Aramaic script. Why is the first picture of this article a picture of the Syriac alphabet? Shouldn't the first picture be a picture of one of the first forms of the Aramaic alphabet? Maybe, for example, Imperial Aramaic? ܐܵܬܘܿܪܵܝܵܐ 19:27, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Where happened with all the letter images?

User:Vassili_Nikolaev 03-nov-2003

Sorry, it's my IE5.5 somehow does not show png pictures anymore. It works fine in Netscape.

User:Vassili_Nikolaev 03-nov-2003

You knowledgable folks may want to vet changes made by User 134.76.165.76 Wetman 16:45, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hy. My name is Andrei and I would, please, like to know how do you write my name in aramaic.Thank you.

I would guess Aleph(?)-Nun-Daleth-Rsh-Yodh, but I am no expert on semitic languages, it seems probable it would be written the same (with the equivalent letters/sounds) in Hebrew or Arabic, so you might be better off, asking at that talk page, and then using the Aramaic alphabet instead. Please note that Semitic languages generally don't really use real vowels.

I was wondering if anyone could tell me how to spell my daughters name in aramaic. Her name is ZOE.

Blue Skies Frank

Hmmm, Zayin-Waw-Yodh, maybe? =S Also, check out

Arabic language

.

To start with, the name is

Aramaic, most names are in the emphatic state, so it would translate as חיתא (ħayθâ), or in Syriac ܚܝܬܐ. However, the obvious choice would be the biblical חוה (ħawwâ, or Eve. Gareth Hughes

16:22, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It split into several forms, including Hebrew, Syriac, and Mandaic. No one seems to have wanted to encode the original, since it can be treated as a font variation of one of the descendants. - Mustafaa 12:29, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There is an old (1999) draft for separately encoding Aramaic and there is still a block reserved in the roadmap to the SMP [1] but AFAIK no one is pushing this in the moment. --Pjacobi 13:22, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

An

For consistency with

What is the source for the letter-names we use here? -- Evertype·✆ 12:17, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, they aren't sourced. I know that both Gareth and I can simply rattle them off from memory (much like someone would do their ABC's, and how do you source that? :-) ), but it would be a good idea to get a source to back them with. Let me fiddle with things. אמר Steve Caruso 15:39, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

They are a sample of Imperial Aramaic names, some of which, unfortunately, are reconstructed. I shall try to recover the source that they can be referenced correctly. I think the names have been changed a little over time by editors, usually to adapt them to Classical/Modern Hebrew spelling. It looks like these have been mostly reverted. Rosenthal, the source of the letter shapes, uses the Masoretic spelling of the letter names; this is not surprising as he is dealing with Masoretic texts. I think the information given in the article is rather slim, so the best answer may be to expand on the history of Aramaic script to demonstrate the diversity of language. — Gareth Hughes 16:25, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am working on encoding Imperial Aramaic in the UCS and I guess I will have to follow Rosenthal and Driver, who agree at least. -- Evertype·✆ 08:49, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If the "Aramaic alphabet ... developed out of the Phoenician alphabet", any later alphabet that can be traced back to the Aramaic one, can be traced further back to the Phoenician. It is therefore not "the Aramaic alphabet [that] is historically significant since virtually all modern Indian and Middle Eastern writing systems use a script that can be traced back to it", it is the Phoenician. -- Futhark|Talk 17:13, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, simply replacing 'Aramaic' with 'Phoenician' at the beginning of the second paragraph does not make any sense. Either we have to preface it with the information linking the two scripts, or move the entire paragraph to a point after Phoenician is mentioned. — Gareth Hughes 17:23, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I was being as minimally editorially invasive as I could manage, not knowing if there was anyone who had a strong sense of overriding responsibility for the article. I felt that increasing the historiographic precision on that one point made enough sense to be worth the effort without redisposing the article, and look forward to seeing where it will be taken. -- Futhark|Talk 17:39, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have wanted to rewrite this article for a long time, but it's a difficult task. The main problem is that there isn't really any one Aramaic alphabet, but many related forms: this article tends to concentrate on Imperial Aramaic script. Phoenician is clearly the source of Aramaic script, which, in turn, is the source of Hebrew square script. However, the amount of borrowing from South Arabian scripts for Arabic is unclear, and Aramaic's influence of the Brahmi family of scripts is tough. Syriac, Mandaean, Pahlavi, Uyghur and Mongolian, though, are clearly derived from Aramaic scripts. — Gareth Hughes 21:31, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unless evidence is provided to show the Brahmi Script originating from the Aramaic Script, i am removing the line from the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.181.206.125 (talk) 01:03, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

how can i write my name.."giorgos" (ie in english language meaning george) in aramaic ?

I noted that Gareth Hughes 23:00, 31 January 2008 (UTC) had removed all links in the Infobox WS that describe the Parent system all the way back to the Egyptian hieroglyphs, for the Arameic script and other scripts. I don't understand the reason for that. It surely cannot be controversial that the Aramaic, Phoenician, Greek, and Proto-Canaanite (and others) scripts all emanate from the Egyptian hieroglyphs. It would be interesting to see the argument, as those relations between scripts are manifested throughout Wikipedia as well as elsewhere, since years.[reply]

It really has nothing to do with arguing that those systems aren't derivative of Egyptian hieroglyphs, rather, it is more useful in an encyclopedia to have the top parent in the infobox be a parent language that still shares some similarities to the script being discussed in the article. In this case, by clicking Proto-Canaanite, they are immediately taken to a page on that script, which has its own infobox, with its own parent systems, including Egyptian hieroglyphs as the ultimate source. Brando130 (talk) 17:50, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please talk about major changes first. Please provide supporting evidence. Please don't respond by putting your edits back in. — Gareth Hughes (talk) 18:46, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Selecting a "top parent in the infobox be a parent language that still shares some similarities to the script being discussed" is if anything arbitrary at its best; the Latin letters A and M still share more than "some similarities" with their precursors all the way back to the hieroglyphs. Going all the way to the, as far as I can tell, accepted root also is also a more consistent, encyclopedic approach. It does then also show the Wikipedia user to which script family or subfamily a particular script belongs, directly! Stopping at an arbitrarily chosen point like "Proto-Canaanite", in an overview like the Infobox, is a bad idea if the oldest known ancestor is a mere two steps away.

Since the oldest scripts probably are less than 10,000 years old and often lasted for a long time (let us say a thousand years on average) it would not be necessarily be burdensome to the layout either. Can we really expect more than ten hierarchal levels anywhere in this context? Probably not. The only dilemma I can think of are the weakly supported relations between scripts, and how to best indicate that. For some Brahmi scripts this has been noted with linked numbers, even if it should not be necessary here.

Please, differentiate between the script symbols per se and the language they represent. They don't necessarily go hand in hand even if, of course, intimately tied. Both phonetic and semantic shifts are common between and within in most European languages, despite that a[n intended] sound may be represented by one symbol or group of symbols. Even if the symbol M was pronounced differently by the early Egyptians it remains the same symbol. The Chinese script family accommodates dozens of extant languages, too, and like the hieroglyph derivatives also has one history tree with a branching pattern full of additions and deletions of its component symbols. The Basque language uses the Latin script apparently without consideration of its linguistic origin.

My point is that the script tree will differ from the language tree and trying to link them, in Wikipedia's layout, will do no good. Ideally, I think these infoboxes should have their script precursors indicated for all scripts in Wikipedia, as far as possible. Looking forward to hear you arguments. Cheers! - Throttleryn (talk) 13:55, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Since all of these languages and their alphabets have seperate articles, I don't necessarily see how language and script are being inappropriately tied in the article. Some of the confusion simply may be in how I phrased the sentence "top parent in the infobox be a parent language that still shares some similarities to the script being discussed" - and I should have stated that the top parent be a parent /script/ that still shares some similarities, a statement I disagree is 'arbitrary at best' - since these systems do have traceable derivatives, its not just you and I looking at the characters and saying "Oh that one looks more like Phoenician aleph than Greek alpha." Those similarities should also speak to the function of a script, the most important similarity being that the system is still primarily alphabetic. Thus once you go to the article that appears at the top of the infobox, the parent for alphabets, currently the Proto-Canaanite article, you can then further read on and find out all of the same information you are insisting on anyway, mainly that most scholars find alphabetic writing in Sinai/Canaan to be somehow connected to hieroglyphs. At any rate, if hieroglyphs do end up as the top parent of any one particular alphabet, they would logically need to be on top of just about every alphabet out there, a change that might not find consensus all around Wikipedia. Brando130 (talk) 17:07, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The process going from a

acrophonic writing did not commence with the Proto-Canaanite as you imply by saying it was "primarily alphabetic". Unless I misunderstood it, that is how Champollion

finally deciphered the hieroglyphs, by accepting that they were a mixture of logographic and acrophonic/phonetic alphabet symbols. The function you refer to may then be predated by more than fifteen centuries, by the Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Yes, I do think the Egyptian hieroglyphs should be "on top of just about every alphabet out there", as long as it is the precursor to all other scripts in the group and there is an 'acceptable' degree of evidence for it. Why would anyone from Rabat, Reykjavik, Ulan Bator, or Yangon object to that? If it is the precursor to all other scripts in its group, so be it. - Throttleryn (talk) 06:49, 5 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

May I note that the Georgian alphabet is not an offspring of the Aramaic alphabet, but rather a free - although surely inspired - invention of its inventor, as is the case with the Armenian alphabet?

• Parent systems

Proto-Canaanite alphabet

→ Phoenician alphabet

→ {{{name}}}

{{{name}}} appears!

--

talk) 11:57, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

]

I believe that this script should be classified as "High" importance, rather than "Top". While it is an important middle-ground between Phoenecian and many modern scripts, I do not believe it is so central to an understanding of the subject of writing systems as a whole as Phonecian, Arabic, Greek, Brahmi, etc. Vanisaac (talk) 07:20, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I assume Aramaic was usually written right-to-left, like Phoenician and Hebrew? If so, this should be stated in the article. AxelBoldt (talk) 12:39, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What happened to the "Aramaic script" column? It is now renamed to "Hebrew script". Now there are two different columns saying Hebrew. @Achayan: I am no expert but my guess is that this edit was a misstake? Not sure though, therefore I'm asking here first. Shmayo (talk) 16:43, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This script is called Aramaic even in the Hebrew alphabet article. Shmayo (talk) 16:46, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

hello, i am not able to display some of the characters on this page. you can see an example here : http://i1222.photobucket.com/albums/dd496/frabjousday123/Untitled-1_3.jpg
this happens with both firefox and with chrome, so i don't think it is a browser issue. i have already checked the browser configuration and the possibility to download missing fonts automatically is enabled. does anyone have an idea how i can see these missing characters ? 76.168.103.217 (talk) 17:01, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Imperial Aramaic and Phoenician text displays OK on my Windows 11 system using the Segoe UI History font (seguihis.ttf). That font comes with Windows 11 (and I've read Windows 10 but can't verify that). You might find seguihis.ttf elsewhere too if you search for it. I doubt Chrome can "automatically" download it. DRMcCreedy (talk) 23:11, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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Isn't the name of the article incorrect? The Aramaic writing system is an abjad and not an alphabet, right? Fantumphool (talk) 08:07, 4 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Where does your association between Brahmi and North Semitic scripts come from? Because in the Brahmi script article at: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmi_script the Aramaic semkath is 𑀱, Sādhē is 𑀘 and Shin is 𑀰, citing Bühler 1898, p. 82-83 ^[1] and Salomon 1998, p. 25^[2] as source. Princ3jah (talk) 09:10, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Princ3jah (talk) 09:10, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Why /alap/ and not /alaf/, when final /t/ and /d/ are 'th' and 'dh' in Dālath and Yodh? Andreas Schuele in "Introduction to Biblical Aramaic" (2012: 10) states that the spirantisation after vowels applied to all of begadkefat, just as in Masoretic Hebrew.--79.100.149.219 (talk) 22:17, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind, fixed that, since I saw that this had been introduced by OR in 2014.--79.100.149.219 (talk) 22:25, 28 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I see that the letter names given originally were basically the standard Masoretic Hebrew versions of the names, which are often used conventionally to refer to the genetically corresponding letters in abjads. The current forms appear to be the product of interplay between the modifications introduced by two users in 2006, here and here, and their edit summaries suggest that they didn't take the supposedly Aramaic forms of names from any source, but arrived at them through their own original research, whose accuracy I see no reason to be confident in. I think the names ought to be sourced properly or replaced with something sourced.--79.100.149.219 (talk) 22:34, 28 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Six years ago a User has posted this message:

hello, i am not able to display some of the characters on this page. you can see an example here : http://i1222.photobucket.com/albums/dd496/frabjousday123/Untitled-1_3.jpg

this happens with both firefox and with chrome, so i don't think it is a browser issue. i have already checked the browser configuration and the possibility to download missing fonts automatically is enabled. does anyone have an idea how i can see these missing characters ?

Since then, seemingly nothing has happened. This issue remains unsolved. And my question is ‐ why?--2003:CF:3F07:9F7E:AC10:AE30:96C9:7999 (talk) 21:27, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Change title to Aramaic script it isnt an alphabet AleksiB 1945 (talk) 10:28, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Can you add image to the top to show the script? 102.44.243.243 (talk) 12:11, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]