Language Studies

Aramaic Thoughts

Aramaic/Syriac Basics for English Readers - Part 2

Another distinctive of many, but not all, Semitic languages is that the written form of the language originally used no vowels. The primary exception to this rule is Akkadian, which was the language of Babylon and Assyria. Akkadian was written in cuneiform, which uses combinations of wedge-shaped characters. In some ways, it looks a bit like the written languages of China and Japan. The cuneiform signs used in written Akkadian mostly indicate syllables; hence the vowel is “included” in the sign. The primary difficulty in learning Akkadian is that there about 250 signs that were in common use and another 500 or so that occur often enough that they need to be learned.

Another Semitic language, Ugaritic, which originated along the northeast coast of the Mediterranean, also used cuneiform. But the Ugaritic cuneiform is alphabetic; hence there are only about twenty-two signs in Ugaritic.

Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac and other Semitic languages are written in an alphabetic script. But all the letters of the alphabets are consonants. That sounds more complicated than it is. T my b pssbl fr y t rd ths sntnc vn thgh th vwls r lft t. That is in part because you know the language, but there are a number of ambiguous words. Is “t,” for example, “it” or “to” or “at” or “too”? In Semitic languages many of these ambiguities are eliminated by the nature of the language. In Semitic languages consonant clusters do not occur, while they are quite common in English (the “ghth” in “eighth” for example) or in German (the “tzsch” in the name “Delitzsch”). In Semitic languages, there is a regular alternation between consonants and vowels. This significantly reduces the possibility for ambiguities.

In the ancient period, these languages were read and written by native speakers of the language. Thus it was not necessary for the vowels to be written, because the people knew what they were. As the knowledge of the language decreased, or as the language was introduced to non-native speakers, it became necessary to introduce a system to indicate the vowels. The first step in this system was to begin to uses a few of the consonants to indicate vowels. Thus in Hebrew, for example, the vav was used to indicate o/u vowels, the yod was used to indicate e/i vowels, and the he was used to indicate a vowels. Eventually in Hebrew the Masoretic scribes developed a full vowel system that involved placing marks under or above and to the left of the consonants they followed.

This brings us to a brief digression. Hebrew, Syriac, and other Semitic languages are written right to left, rather than left to right as in English. Thus a vowel to the left of a consonant is pronounced after that consonant.

Next week we will meet the Syriac alphabet and begin talking about Syriac word formation.

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