Aramaic Alphabet - Swadaya Course Contents

Overview

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Welcome to this Course on the Aramaic Alphabet in the Swadaya 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 Swadaya Alphabet, which is a variant of the earlier Ashuri, Estrangela and Serta scripts that you should already know. It makes it much easier to learn Swadaya if you already know the Ashuri, Estrangela and Serta scripts, and if you view Swadaya 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 Swadaya 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 Swadaya letters differ from the original Ashuri and later Estrangela and Serta letters. These lessons are really an extension of both the Hebrew/Aramaic Ashuri Alphabet Course, the Aramaic Estrangela Alphabet Course and the Aramaic Serta 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 - Extra Reading Practice in Swadaya

You should now know how to read and write words in Swadaya, based on the previous Ashuri, Estrangela and Serta 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 Swadaya script.

Stage 3 - Write Out A Biblical Passage

To complete Stage 3, please write out a Bible passage of your choice in the Swadaya 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.