Learn Aramaic

This the initial letter k as in kashta ( ܟܫܛܐ ) archer in its alternative form in Classical Syriac the Estrangelo verdion.The usual form of the letter is ( ܩ ‎ ) as in  ܩܫܬܐ ‎. Related post the Syriac Estrangelo script

Syrian archers were deployed by Rome all over the Empire as auxiliary troops as far in some cases as Britain .They were excellent and very effective archers who used the composite bow superior to an ordinary wooden bow as fas as range and strength is concerned. Syrian auxiliary archer Archer in classical Syriac is ܟܫܛܐ Kashta  kaʃtˤɑʔ (IPA) archer Kashte kaʃtˤeʔ archers from the root ܟ-ܫ-ܛ ‎  ( k-š-ṭ ) relating to arrows read also Aramaic in Britain

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...