Thanks for involving Mandaic. It's very rare and unusual to be mentioned. I am so glad and I appreciate your work 🙏. I'm starting to learn it. It's my mother tongue actually.
Those two and a half hours were certainly worth it, thank you. I personally have only studied my native language of Faroese, so while it's quite different and far away, I still find this subject of Semitic languages interesting. The difference between East and West Syriac is quite interesting. It kinda reminds me of how the various Romance languages developed with West being the five vowel system of languages like Spanish and East the 7 vowel system of languages like Italian. It's obviously unrelated and a parallel evolution but it's still quite interesting to see similarities like these develop in unrelated languages. Thanks for the video, and keep up the good work. Looking forward to the next one.
Nabatean might've lacked Begadkefat, also, Nabatean changes ā > ō possibly next to nasals only. Also the vowels might've been more conservative if one believes that Quranic malakūt is a loan from Nabatean. So possibly: danō qabrā
First, i want to thank you for explaining the history and the old phonology of my mother language. Your explanation was nearly perfect, so well done. Second, I just wanted to mention that in some NENA (north-eastern neo-aramaic) dialacts the (š) sound is still used instead of (th) sound and some of the dialacts like my dialact (which is baz dialact) we use (y) or (h) sounds. For example... in syriac betha or beta means house. some people in tyari region call it besha, in baz dialact we call it bayya. in syriac, thillan or tillan means (we came)... the tyari people say shillan and we say hillan. There are other dialacts that use (s) sound instead of (š) sound. So betha becomes besa.
Wonderful lecture Ancient Semitic, I must admit I found my love from your videos! I learnt a lot from this video, and for sure need a lot more to learn. My question to you, is the Babylonian Talmud written in the Aramaic language in the Hebrew alphabet? Thanks so much!
Wasn't the convention of reading the tetragrammaton in Aramaic to say the word marea(?) or the name shmaya(?). I don't remember exactly how the word is but I remember these meanings. Also really assume to hear such a variety of Aramaic samples but all still somewhat relatable for those who have studied some Aramaic.
As always very informative video! I know you like to take your time making these videos but now my only hope is that I will still be around when you upload a video regarding ethio-eritrean languages. From my rough estimate, it will take about 50-70 years 😅
I am already working on a Ge'ez video. The plan for the next videos is: Video #8: Arabic Video #9: Old North Arabian Video #10: Old South Arabian Video #11: Ethio-Semitic Give me just a few months.
In Egyptian Papyri we have Arabs with Greek and Egyptian names so I wouldn't be surprised to see the same in Nabataea. Receipts had the person's ethnicity written, check out Michael MacDonald's article The Arabs
Very informative and interesting video, can't wait for the one about Arabic since as a native Arabic speaker hearing some of your pronunciations of Akkadian and Aramaic made me really notice some neat things about the modern Arabic dialects like the Iraqis اكو and ماكو that sound Akkadian or the Egyptians pronouncing ذ as a ز like in Aramaic sometimes or some Algerian regions pronouncing the ك as something closer to "تش" sound of ق instead of غ، or most of the middle east saying ميه for water instead of ماء, also in some places there's the addition of "di" like in your example from this episode "ãbd al malik" it becomes "ãbd di lmalik" and so on... I used to think these are just dialects that resulted from people not pronouncing old Arabic properly or mixing it with things like Berber languages or Coptic... but now I think the reason some things are pronounced the way they are... might go back to ancient semitic
Eventually, proto-Semitic TH merged into T in Aramaic, as we see in modern Aramaic "tla" for "three" (and not "sla"). From where do you find clues as to the beginning of BGD-KPT?
It is possible that a phonemic contrast of t/th simply turned into an allophonic contrast. So originally they were separate phonemes: th in thalāth and t in taHōt. And later they were in complementary distribution, thus təlāth and təHōth, no matter if they represent Proto-Semitic t or th. Same applies to d and dh. This process can be dated to when th and dh (spelled as s and z) dissappear from writing (or earlier because of possible conservatism in writing). The allophonic post-vocalic spirantization possibly spread from t and d to other non-emphatic stops, i.e. b g k p. In the case of g and k this did not happen before the loss of phonemic gh and kh because it would have lead to a merger (and possibly a merger of b into w). I don't know if the loss of phonemic gh and kh can be dated in Aramaic. Only in Hebrew there are dates based on the representation of those phonemes in Hebrew names written in Greek in the Septuagint. Once phonemic gh and kh were lost, the slots in the consonant inventory were free and could be filled by post-vocalic spirantized g and k.
@@AncientSemitic Thank you for the explanation! I imagine different. I think of Spanish where B, D, and G following a vowel becoming spirantized. Aramaic did the same, but added P, T, K. V and F were bilabial. Ghimel and Khaf were pronounced like Gamma and Khi in modern Greek. So 'ע was never like Ghimel and 'ח was like Khaf, in ancient times. In this system, hard and soft BGD-KPT could interchange naturally. Benjamin Cantor in his commentary to the Secunda from 2017, on pages 53-57 claims that 'ח and 'ע were still distinguished in formal reading up to Josephus' time. Only later, in Late Antiquity, did V and F became labial-dental, and Ghimel and Khaf became like غ and ج. Then BGD-FPT became artificial, and the Tiberian system marked it. (And it drives Israelis crazy today!) I think the BGD-KPT system could go way, way back, but it only became an issue in Late Antiquity.
I am very interested in knowing the phonological system of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic. I always thought that the long open vowels (like the kamatz) was turned into an "o" vowel e.g. Eloha, Bar-Nosha and etc. Would you say that is probable?
It would be interesting to look at some JPA sources like the Jerusalem Talmud and see if the spelling gives you an idea about that. Maybe you find a Waw in place of an original Qametz. The vowel system that we see in the Targum Onqelos may reflect Babylonian Aramaic rather than Palestinian.
From some shallow research, I have understood that in Eastern Syriac, ܦ is pronounced as an ‘f’ sound at the beginning of a word or in other positions such as if it is preceded by a vowel and followed by a vowel or a voiced consonant. ܦ is pronounced as a ‘w’ sound when it appears in between two vowels. I don't know if this is correct though...
The late Franz Rosenthal states in ''A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic''2006Harrasowitz Verlag, section128 page 52 ''In the imperfect (and INFiNITIVE) of the p''al , vowel,ess '' yod'' is replaced by germination /nazilization in among others the root YD6 ''to know'' thus producing for instance the noun ''Manda6'' knowledge. Could this citation in Hara dialect be a another case in point?
Aramaic did emerge in Syria right? I'm having an arguement with someone over this and there doesn't seem to be consensus, at least from what I can surmise.
It's simply older. It is generally considered the original vocalization of the Targum Onkelos (see "An Introduction to the Aramaic of Targum Onkelos" by Thomas O. Lambdin and John Huehnergard). It also did not really merge patah and segol, as even the Tiberian vocalization of Targum Onkelos does not use Segol (apart from Hebrew proper names). Also, the absence of Dagesh is a purely orthographic convention. Readers of the Targum probably knew when to geminate a letter and when to use soft bgdkpt.
Hard to tell. There are a couple I've never read before I started making this video. I think if I had to choose one right now to read more texts, I'd choose Palmyrene.
The Nabateans were not Arabized, the Idumeans were. Whether the Nabataeans thought themselves to be Arabs, however, we do not know for sure, but they did speak Arabic, Nabataean Aramaic has Arabic influences, their names are Arabic, and so are their deities (aside from Isis, Atargatis, Ba'al Shamin and the Idumean Qos.) They would seem to have moved into the area around Petra in the wake of the demise of another Arab group, Qedar, in the fourth century BC (described as Arab by contemporary and scholarly sources but wrote in Aramaic like the Nabateans since it was the lingua franca). Their nomadic roots are clear from the account of Diodorus Siculus (c.80- 20 bc) whose chief source was the historian Hieronymus of Cardia, a high-ranking official in the court of Antigonus, one of the generals of Alexander the Great (d. 323): "They live in the open air, claiming as native land a wilderness that has neither rivers nor abundant springs from which it is possible for a hostile army to obtain water. It is their custom neither to plant grain, set out any fruit-bearing tree, use wine, nor construct any house; and if anyone is found acting contrary to this, death is his penalty because they believe that those who possess these things are, in order to retain the use of them, easily compelled by the powerful to do their bidding. Some of them raise camels, others sheep, pasturing them in the desert … They are exceptionally fond of freedom; and whenever a strong force of enemies comes near, they take refuge in the desert, using this as a fortress; for it lacks water and cannot be crossed by others. But to them alone, since they have prepared subterranean reservoirs lined with stucco, it furnishes safety."
Why are the languages of Targum Onkelos and Targum Yonatan so different? Onkelos seems very polished and Yonatan seems closer to real speach. (I live 20 min. from R. Yonatan Ben Uzziel).
I wonder if you ever looked at Targum Neofiti. They discovered it in recently modern times and lost its circulation among religious Jewish communities.
Be careful with claims of Palmyrene monotheism. It often comes from a modern viewpoint that wants to see monotheism as the eventual end point of all religious systems. To consider that anyone walking through Palmyra would emerge with the sense of an impending monotheism cannot be the conclusion when the evidence is analyzed in its proper context. On the contrary, the diversity and vibrancy of polytheistic beliefs is evident. Even when we hear of the "One God" it still is in a polytheistic context, I'd recommend Jallad's article on the One God in a Safaitic inscription
![Thrice Greatest Hermes [Vol. 1] - G.R.S. Mead](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RKZcWw8poY0/mqdefault.jpg)
Thanks for involving Mandaic. It's very rare and unusual to be mentioned. I am so glad and I appreciate your work 🙏. I'm starting to learn it. It's my mother tongue actually.
Those two and a half hours were certainly worth it, thank you. I personally have only studied my native language of Faroese, so while it's quite different and far away, I still find this subject of Semitic languages interesting.
The difference between East and West Syriac is quite interesting. It kinda reminds me of how the various Romance languages developed with West being the five vowel system of languages like Spanish and East the 7 vowel system of languages like Italian. It's obviously unrelated and a parallel evolution but it's still quite interesting to see similarities like these develop in unrelated languages.
Thanks for the video, and keep up the good work. Looking forward to the next one.
How timely! My first course on Imperial Aramaic began yesterday, but we didn't get far yet - we only went through the language history.
Great! Have fun in your class.
@@AncientSemitic
Thanks, I most certainly will!
Congratulations and good luck!👍
Thanks for bringing another great video!
Wanted this lecture since started learn semitology
Nabatean might've lacked Begadkefat, also, Nabatean changes ā > ō possibly next to nasals only. Also the vowels might've been more conservative if one believes that Quranic malakūt is a loan from Nabatean. So possibly: danō qabrā
Hahaha😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Wonderful channel.Regarding the problem of ''shaNpir'' rather than the expected ''shapir'' in the Hatra inscription,
First, i want to thank you for explaining the history and the old phonology of my mother language. Your explanation was nearly perfect, so well done.
Second, I just wanted to mention that in some NENA (north-eastern neo-aramaic) dialacts the (š) sound is still used instead of (th) sound and some of the dialacts like my dialact (which is baz dialact) we use (y) or (h) sounds.
For example...
in syriac betha or beta means house. some people in tyari region call it besha, in baz dialact we call it bayya.
in syriac, thillan or tillan means (we came)... the tyari people say shillan and we say hillan.
There are other dialacts that use (s) sound instead of (š) sound. So betha becomes besa.
Wonderful lecture Ancient Semitic, I must admit I found my love from your videos! I learnt a lot from this video, and for sure need a lot more to learn. My question to you, is the Babylonian Talmud written in the Aramaic language in the Hebrew alphabet?
Thanks so much!
Yes. The Babylonian Talmud is written in Aramaic. The dialect is also called Jewish Babylonian Aramaic.
Wasn't the convention of reading the tetragrammaton in Aramaic to say the word marea(?) or the name shmaya(?). I don't remember exactly how the word is but I remember these meanings.
Also really assume to hear such a variety of Aramaic samples but all still somewhat relatable for those who have studied some Aramaic.
As always very informative video! I know you like to take your time making these videos but now my only hope is that I will still be around when you upload a video regarding ethio-eritrean languages. From my rough estimate, it will take about 50-70 years 😅
I am already working on a Ge'ez video. The plan for the next videos is:
Video #8: Arabic
Video #9: Old North Arabian
Video #10: Old South Arabian
Video #11: Ethio-Semitic
Give me just a few months.
@@AncientSemitic im waiting for this
Please make video about Tamil
In Egyptian Papyri we have Arabs with Greek and Egyptian names so I wouldn't be surprised to see the same in Nabataea. Receipts had the person's ethnicity written, check out Michael MacDonald's article The Arabs
Very informative and interesting video, can't wait for the one about Arabic since as a native Arabic speaker hearing some of your pronunciations of Akkadian and Aramaic made me really notice some neat things about the modern Arabic dialects like the Iraqis اكو and ماكو that sound Akkadian or the Egyptians pronouncing ذ as a ز like in Aramaic sometimes or some Algerian regions pronouncing the ك as something closer to "تش" sound of ق instead of غ، or most of the middle east saying ميه for water instead of ماء, also in some places there's the addition of "di" like in your example from this episode "ãbd al malik" it becomes "ãbd di lmalik" and so on... I used to think these are just dialects that resulted from people not pronouncing old Arabic properly or mixing it with things like Berber languages or Coptic... but now I think the reason some things are pronounced the way they are... might go back to ancient semitic
Eventually, proto-Semitic TH merged into T in Aramaic, as we see in modern Aramaic "tla" for "three" (and not "sla").
From where do you find clues as to the beginning of BGD-KPT?
It is possible that a phonemic contrast of t/th simply turned into an allophonic contrast. So originally they were separate phonemes: th in thalāth and t in taHōt. And later they were in complementary distribution, thus təlāth and təHōth, no matter if they represent Proto-Semitic t or th. Same applies to d and dh.
This process can be dated to when th and dh (spelled as s and z) dissappear from writing (or earlier because of possible conservatism in writing).
The allophonic post-vocalic spirantization possibly spread from t and d to other non-emphatic stops, i.e. b g k p. In the case of g and k this did not happen before the loss of phonemic gh and kh because it would have lead to a merger (and possibly a merger of b into w). I don't know if the loss of phonemic gh and kh can be dated in Aramaic. Only in Hebrew there are dates based on the representation of those phonemes in Hebrew names written in Greek in the Septuagint.
Once phonemic gh and kh were lost, the slots in the consonant inventory were free and could be filled by post-vocalic spirantized g and k.
@@AncientSemitic
Thank you for the explanation!
I imagine different.
I think of Spanish where B, D, and G following a vowel becoming spirantized. Aramaic did the same, but added P, T, K. V and F were bilabial. Ghimel and Khaf were pronounced like Gamma and Khi in modern Greek. So 'ע was never like Ghimel and 'ח was like Khaf, in ancient times. In this system, hard and soft BGD-KPT could interchange naturally.
Benjamin Cantor in his commentary to the Secunda from 2017, on pages 53-57 claims that 'ח and 'ע were still distinguished in formal reading up to Josephus' time.
Only later, in Late Antiquity, did V and F became labial-dental, and Ghimel and Khaf became like غ and ج. Then BGD-FPT became artificial, and the Tiberian system marked it. (And it drives Israelis crazy today!)
I think the BGD-KPT system could go way, way back, but it only became an issue in Late Antiquity.
I am very interested in knowing the phonological system of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic. I always thought that the long open vowels (like the kamatz) was turned into an "o" vowel e.g. Eloha, Bar-Nosha and etc. Would you say that is probable?
It would be interesting to look at some JPA sources like the Jerusalem Talmud and see if the spelling gives you an idea about that. Maybe you find a Waw in place of an original Qametz.
The vowel system that we see in the Targum Onqelos may reflect Babylonian Aramaic rather than Palestinian.
From some shallow research, I have understood that in Eastern Syriac, ܦ is pronounced as an ‘f’ sound at the beginning of a word or in other positions such as if it is preceded by a vowel and followed by a vowel or a voiced consonant. ܦ is pronounced as a ‘w’ sound when it appears in between two vowels. I don't know if this is correct though...
I think rather than ḍ sounding like ʿ to the Aramaic ear, I think ḍ merged first with ġ, which then merged with ʿ, in a two stage merger.
Do you have any advice for sources on the vocalization/pronunciation of Imperial/Official Aramaic?
You could check Gzella. (2011). Imperial Aramaic. In The Semitic Languages (Vol. 36, pp. 574-586). DE GRUYTER.
And the references there.
The late Franz Rosenthal states in ''A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic''2006Harrasowitz Verlag, section128 page 52 ''In the imperfect (and INFiNITIVE) of the p''al , vowel,ess '' yod'' is replaced by germination /nazilization in among others the root YD6 ''to know'' thus producing for instance the noun ''Manda6'' knowledge. Could this citation in Hara dialect be a another case in point?
Interesting. Seems like a similar case.
Muchly helpful. Many many thanks.
Aramaic did emerge in Syria right? I'm having an arguement with someone over this and there doesn't seem to be consensus, at least from what I can surmise.
I don't think there's a consensus. All you can tell is where the oldest inscriptions were found.
Babylonian vocalization does not show gemination, nor BGD-KPT, and merges Segol into Patah. So why do you think it is more conservative?
It's simply older. It is generally considered the original vocalization of the Targum Onkelos (see "An Introduction to the Aramaic of Targum Onkelos" by Thomas O. Lambdin and John Huehnergard).
It also did not really merge patah and segol, as even the Tiberian vocalization of Targum Onkelos does not use Segol (apart from Hebrew proper names).
Also, the absence of Dagesh is a purely orthographic convention. Readers of the Targum probably knew when to geminate a letter and when to use soft bgdkpt.
What is your favorite dialect of Aramaic?
Hard to tell. There are a couple I've never read before I started making this video. I think if I had to choose one right now to read more texts, I'd choose Palmyrene.
@@AncientSemitic why I want to know
What do you think about Jesus' Aramaic? Do you think we can reconstruct/revive Jesus' Aramaic?
I’m in that process, it’s been seven years and painstaking.
I think what you trascribed "Alexi" is simply the nabatean rendering of the greek name Αλέξιος
The Nabateans were not Arabized, the Idumeans were. Whether the Nabataeans thought themselves to be Arabs, however, we do not know for sure, but they did speak Arabic, Nabataean Aramaic has Arabic influences, their names are Arabic, and so are their deities (aside from Isis, Atargatis, Ba'al Shamin and the Idumean Qos.) They would seem to have moved into the area around Petra in the wake of the demise of another Arab group, Qedar, in the fourth century BC (described as Arab by contemporary and scholarly sources but wrote in Aramaic like the Nabateans since it was the lingua franca). Their nomadic roots are clear from the account of Diodorus Siculus (c.80- 20 bc) whose chief source was the historian Hieronymus of Cardia, a high-ranking official in the court of Antigonus, one of the generals of Alexander the Great (d. 323):
"They live in the open air, claiming as native land a wilderness that has neither rivers nor abundant springs from which it is possible for a hostile army to obtain water. It is their custom neither to plant grain, set out any fruit-bearing tree, use wine, nor construct any house; and if anyone is found acting contrary to this, death is his penalty because they believe that those who possess these things are, in order to retain the use of them, easily compelled by the powerful to do their bidding. Some of them raise camels, others sheep, pasturing them in the desert … They are exceptionally fond of freedom; and whenever a strong force of enemies comes near, they take refuge in the desert, using this as a fortress; for it lacks water and cannot be crossed by others. But to them alone, since they have prepared subterranean reservoirs lined with stucco, it furnishes safety."
Why are the languages of Targum Onkelos and Targum Yonatan so different? Onkelos seems very polished and Yonatan seems closer to real speach. (I live 20 min. from R. Yonatan Ben Uzziel).
I wonder if you ever looked at Targum Neofiti. They discovered it in recently modern times and lost its circulation among religious Jewish communities.
@@stevenv6463
I have not heard of it. Thanks for the tip!
Have you studied ab western neo aramaic
Aramaic ❤❤❤
What’s languages you know?
1:48:54 isn't the term "Jacobite" considered derogatory?
Not any more than "nestorian"
What about the jewish babylonian aramaic?
The passage from Targum Onkelos is mostly Jewish Babylonian Aramaic (mixed with Jewish Palestinian Aramaic).
Be careful with claims of Palmyrene monotheism. It often comes from a modern viewpoint that wants to see monotheism as the eventual end point of all religious systems. To consider that anyone walking through Palmyra would emerge with the sense of an impending monotheism cannot be the conclusion when the evidence is analyzed in its proper context. On the contrary, the diversity and vibrancy of polytheistic beliefs is evident. Even when we hear of the "One God" it still is in a polytheistic context, I'd recommend Jallad's article on the One God in a Safaitic inscription
@@mmss3199 "Its inch deep thinking to say rock inscriptions show literacy"
Can you elaborate?
Why don't you make a video about Arabic?
Who said I don't?
@@AncientSemitic Alfredo told me
🕊️ AlleluYah 🕊️
first