Learn Aramaic

In the beggining of the second century A. D. the famous Hadrian's wall was built in Northern England in Roman Britannia  to protect Roman territory from the barbarian Pictish tribes of the north.  Eight thousand soldiers from all the over the Empire served there patrolling  the wall. Some of them- it seems - were from Syria and spoke Aramaic. Palmyrian Aramaic to be precise.  This reveals a tombstone of a man named Barates of Palmyra-Syria mourning his late 30-year old  local wife. There is an inscription in Latin and a phrase in Aramaic at the end. Aramaic on Hadrian's wall tombstone.  The Latin part of the inscription reads: TO THE SPIRITS OF THE DEPARTED [AND TO] REGINA, HIS FREEDWOMAN AND WIFE BARATES OF PALMYRA [ERECTED THIS] [SHE] A CATUVELLAUNIAN [BY TRIBE], AGED 30 The Aramaic part reads RGYN' BT HRY BR'T' HBL REGINA, THE FREEDWOMAN OF BARATES, ALAS This part is written in a local variant of the Palmyrene alphabet. Palmyrene was a d...

Modern words such as place names transliterated in the   Imperial Aramaic script is a great way to learn and remember easily the Aramaic alphabet. Today's word is 'America' or Amreeka rewritten as AMRYQH in Aramaic letters. This how to write it in the Imperial Aramaic script. Cultural note Assyrian Americans ( ܣܘܪܝܐ‌ ܕܐܵܡܵܝܪܝܼܟܵܐ)  Suraye be Amrika Literally Assyrians in America .  There are about a hundred thousand Assyrians/Chaldeans in the US. First recorded Assyrian presence in America dates back to the 19th century of an Assyrian working at a hotel in Philadelphia.The first wave of Assyrian immigrants to the US were men from the middle east working as translators. The second and biggest wave came after the persecution and genocide of the Assyrian people by the Neo-Turk regime in Kemal's Turkey. The third wave was after the war in Iraq and Syria.

In a race against time, a team of elite scholars work together to record the final remnants of a rich Linguistic Tradition.  Prof. Geoffrey Khan interviews a Christian Aramaic speaker in Georgia.  LONDON — Geoffrey Khan had almost given up. A linguist at the University of Cambridge, he was in Tbilisi, Georgia, to find the last speakers of a rare dialect of Aramaic. The first of his three leads, an old man in his 80s or 90s, had a stroke the previous month, and could no longer talk. The second, an elderly woman of nervous disposition, lived by herself with four howling rottweilers who made conversation impossible. The next day he visited the third address, a tall Soviet-style apartment block with dark corridors. A tiny old woman answered the door, and as she served him tea at the kitchen table, her hand started shaking. “She was exhausted just pouring. I didn’t know if she would survive the interview,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Can I ask you a few questions about your language? ...

'raq -to flee sleq- to go forth qtal- to kill npal- to fall shma' - to hear ktab - to write 'bar- to cross a river emar-to say ezal- to go Practice to say emar to write ktal to kill qtal

The tale of Aramaic, a language that once ruled the Middle East and now faces extinction. If a Middle Eastern man from 2,500 years ago found himself on his home territory in 2015, he would be shocked by the modern innovations, and not just electricity, airplanes, and iPhones. Arabic as an official language in over two dozen countries would also seem as counterintuitive to him as if people had suddenly started keeping aardvarks as pets. In our time-traveler’s era, after all, Arabic was an also-ran tongue spoken by obscure nomads. The probability that he even spoke it would be low. There were countless other languages in the Middle East in his time that he’d be more likely to know. His idea of a “proper” language would have been Aramaic, which ruled what he knew as the world and served, between 600 and 200 B.C.E., as the lingua franca from Greece and Egypt, across Mesopotamia and Persia, all the way through to India. Yet today the language of Jesus Christ is hardly spoken anywher...

It is time for most children in this region to head off to summer camp, and the Arabic-speaking Christians largely concentrated in Israel’s north are no exception. But while Israeli Jewish children will be doing largely recreational activities and Palestinian kids in Gaza will be training for violence at the hands of Hamas, the Christians will be reconnecting to their ancient Aramean roots. The Israeli Christian Aramaic Summer Camp began last Thursday under the auspices of the Israeli Aramaic Christian Association (ICAA) in the Galilee town of Kfar Baram. Prior to the start of the camp, the ICAA published the following Hebrew-language press release: "…[From] July 30 - August 3 will be held the first Christian Aramean children’s camp following the historic recognition by the State of Israel and the Jewish people of the Arabic-speaking Christians in the Land as the descendants of the Aramean nation.

Having looted and pillaged ancient heritage sites across Iraq and Syria, Islamic State is now believed to be selling stolen artefacts on social media sites. Facebook has now taken down pages thought to be selling artefacts such as coins, statues and manuscripts written in both Hebrew and Aramaic. It is thought that the items have all come from Syria. Reuters Islamic State militants have desecrated numerous churches, including this one in Maaloula, Syria. Washington DC-based journalist Zaid Benjamin was the first to highlight the issue, posting screenshots of the pages to Twitter on June 4. A privacy spokesman for Facebook told Fox News: "We may not always be able to identify artefacts as stolen, but insofar as we can when someone reports content to us, we will remove this content." ISIS militants have taken millions of pounds worth of artefacts from ancient buildings, including churches, across Iraq and Syria since the group began its uprising. A senior Iraq...