Aramaic language

ܐܪܡܝܐ |familycolor=yellow

Sounds

Each dialect of Aramaic has its own distinctive pronunciation, and it would not be possible here to go into all these properties. Aramaic has a phonological palette of 25 to 40 distinct phonemes. In general, older dialects tended to have a richer phonology than more modern ones. In particular, some modern Jewish Aramaic pronunciations lack the series of 'emphatic' consonants. Other dialects have borrowed from the inventories of surrounding languages, particularly Arabic, Azeri, Kurdish, Persian and Turkish.

Related Topics:
Arabic - Azeri - Kurdish - Persian - Turkish

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Vowels

As with most Semitic languages, Aramaic can be thought of as having three basic sets of vowels:

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• Open a-vowels
• Close front i-vowels
• Close back u-vowels

These vowel groups are relatively stable, but the exact articulation of any individual is most dependent on its consonantal setting.

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The cardinal open vowel is an open near-front unrounded vowel ('short' a, like the first vowel in the English 'batter', IPA: {{IPA|/a/}}). It usually has a back counterpart ('long' a, like the a in 'father', IPA: {{IPA|/ɑ/}}, or even tending to the vowel in 'caught', IPA: {{IPA|/ɔ/}}), and a front counterpart ('short' e, like the vowel in 'head', IPA: {{IPA|/ɛ/}}). There is much correspondence between these vowels between dialects. There is some evidence that Middle Babylonian dialects did not distinguish between the short a and short e. In West Syriac dialects, and possibly Middle Galilean, the long a became the o sound. The open e and back a are often indicated in writing by the use of the letters 'alaph' (a glottal stop) or 'he' (like the English h).

Related Topics:
IPA - Glottal stop

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The cardinal close front vowel is the 'long' i (like the vowel in 'need', IPA: {{IPA|/i/}}). It has a slightly more open counterpart, the 'long' e, as in the final vowel of 'café' (IPA: {{IPA|/e/}}). Both of these have shorter counterparts, which tend to be pronounced slightly more open. Thus, the short close e corresponds with the open e in some dialects. The close front vowels usually use the consonant y as a mater lectionis.

Related Topics:
IPA - Mater lectionis

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The cardinal close back vowel is the 'long' u (like the vowel in 'school', IPA: {{IPA|/u/}}). It has a more open counterpart, the 'long' o, like the vowel in 'low' (IPA: {{IPA|/o/}}). There are shorter, and thus more open, counterparts to each of these, with the short close o sometimes corresponding with the long open a. The close back vowels often use the consonant w to indicate their quality.

Related Topics:
IPA

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Two basic diphthongs exist: an open vowel followed by y (ay), and an open vowel followed by w (aw). These were originally full diphthongs, but many dialects have converted them to e and o respectively.

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The so-called 'emphatic' consonants (see the next section) cause all vowels to become mid-centralised.

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Consonants

The various alphabets used for writing Aramaic languages have twenty-two letters (all of which are consonants). Some of these letters, though, can stand for two or three different sounds (usually a plosive and a fricative at the same point of articulation). Aramaic classically uses a series of lightly contrasted plosives and fricatives:

Related Topics:
Plosive - Fricative

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• Labial set: p/f and b/v,
• Dental set: t/θ and d/ð,
• Velar set: k/x and g/ɣ.

Each member of a certain pair is written with the same letter of the alphabet in most writing systems (that is, p and f are written with the same letter), and are near allophones.

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A distinguishing feature of Aramaic phonology (and that of Semitic languages in general) is the presence of 'emphatic' consonants. These are consonants that are pronounced with the root of the tongue retracted, with varying degrees of pharyngealization and velarisation. Using their alphabetic names, these emphatics are:

Related Topics:
Pharyngealization - Velarisation

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• 'Heth', a voiceless pharyngeal fricative, IPA: /ħ/ (like the sound made breathing on glass),
• 'Teth', a pharyngealized t, IPA: /{{IPA|tˁ}}/,
• 'Ayn', a pharyngealized glottal stop (sometimes considered to be a voiced pharyngeal fricative), IPA: /{{IPA|ʕ}}/ or /{{IPA|ʔˁ}},
• 'Sadhe', a pharyngealized s, IPA: /{{IPA|sˁ}}/,
• 'Qoph', an uvular k (a voiceless uvular plosive), IPA: /q/.{{listen|filename=Aramaic_emphatics.ogg|title=The emphatic consonants of Aramaic|description=|format=Ogg}}

Ancient Aramaic may have had a larger series of emphatics. Not all dialects of Aramaic give these consonants their historic values.

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Overlapping with the set of emphatics are the 'guttural' consonants. They include 'heth' and 'ayn' from the emphatic set, and add 'alaph' (a glottal stop) and 'he' (as the English 'h').

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Aramaic classically has a set of four sibilants (Ancient Aramaic may have had six):

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• /s/ (as in English 'sea'),
• /z/ (as in English 'zero'),
• /{{IPA|ʃ}}/ (as in English 'ship'),
• /{{IPA|sˁ}}/ (the emphatic 'sadhe' listed above).

In addition to these sets, Aramaic has the nasal consonants m and n, and the approximants r (usually an alveolar trill), l, y and w.

Related Topics:
Nasal consonant - Approximants - Alveolar trill

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Historical sound changes

Six broad features of sound change can be seen as dialect differentials:

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• Vowel change — This occurs almost too frequently to document fully, but is a major distinctive feature of different dialects.
• Plosive/fricative pair reduction — Originally, Aramaic, like Tiberian Hebrew, had fricatives as conditioned allophones for each plosive. In the wake of vowel changes, the distinction eventually became phonemic; still later, it was often lost in certain dialects. For example, Turoyo has mostly lost /p/, using /f/ instead; other dialects (for instance, standard Assyrian Neo-Aramaic) have lost /θ/ and /ð/ and replaced them with /t/ and /d/. In most dialects of Modern Syriac, /f/ and /v/ become /w/ after a vowel.
• Loss of emphatics — Some dialects have replaced emphatic consonants with non-emphatic counterparts, while those spoken in the Caucasus often have glottalized rather than pharyngealized emphatics.
• Guttural assimilation — This is the main feature of Samaritan pronunciation, also found in Samaritan Hebrew: all the gutturals are reduced to a simple glottal stop. Some Modern Aramaic dialects do not pronounce h in all words (the third person masculine pronoun 'hu' becomes 'ow').
• Proto-Semitic */θ/ */ð/ are reflected in Aramaic as */t/, */d/, whereas they become sibilants in Hebrew (the number three in Hebrew is 'shalosh', but 'tlath' in Aramaic). Dental/sibilant shifts are still happening in the modern dialects.
• New phonetic inventory — Modern dialects have borrowed sounds from the surrounding, dominant languages. The usual inventory is /{{IPA|ʒ}}/ (as the first consonant in 'azure'), /{{IPA|ʤ}}/ (as in 'jam') and /{{IPA|ʧ}}/ (as in 'church'). The Syriac alphabet has been adapted for writing these new sounds.