Aramaic Alphabet - Serta Course Contents

Overview

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Welcome to this Course on the Aramaic Alphabet in the Serta script. Completing this Course is optional, but it provides a good foundation for later Courses and other studies. We recommend this course to you if you are interested in Aramaic, and if you want to be able to read manuscripts of the Aramaic Old and New Testaments, as well as expanding the range of resources open to you while studying Aramaic.

This Course covers the Serta Alphabet, which is a variant of the Ashuri and Estrangela scripts that you should already know. It makes it much easier to learn Serta if you already know the Ashuri and Estrangela scripts, and if you view Serta as a historical development of the shape of the earlier letter forms changing over time, just as some of the letters in English have changed their shape over the years.

NOTE: This Course will teach you how to both read and write the Serta script. This is important because other approaches may teach you to read the Alphabet (only) but you still might not be able to actually write. Really, you need to learn how to both read and write!

Stage 1 - Learn the Letters

For Stage 1, please go through each of the Lessons below, one by one, in the order listed. These lessons will explain how the Serta letters differ from the original Ashuri and later Estrangela letters. These lessons are really an extension of both the Hebrew/Aramaic Ashuri Alphabet Course and the Aramaic Estrangela Alphabet Course. Remember that each Lesson generally has an Interactive Lesson, plus a video to watch, plus an exercise of writing out the letter on a Practice Sheet. It is essential that you do this!

Stage 2 - Learn the Vowels

For Stage 2, please go through the Lesson below. This lesson will show you the vowels in Serta and will compare them to the vowels in the Ashuri and Estrangela scripts. Now that you know the letters of the Aramaic Alphabet, this next stage teaches you the vowels. The vowels are important because they tell you how to pronounce the word.

Stage 3 - Extra Reading Practice in Serta

You should now know how to read and write words in Serta, based on the previous Ashuri and Estrangela Alphabet Courses which you have already completed. Next, we would like you to gain some additional reading practice in reading two passages from the Holy Bible, in Aramaic, in the Serta script.

Stage 4 - Write Out A Biblical Passage

To complete Stage 4, please write out a Bible passage of your choice in the Serta script, copying it from an Aramaic Bible, and send it to Ewan. You will learn a lot from this exercise, so please do not skip it! The video below shows you what a typical handwriting sample (in Ashuri) looks like.