Swadaya Letter Alap
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Now that you have learned the letters of the Aramaic Alphabet in the Ashuri, Estrangela and Serta scripts, it is now time for you to progress to the Swadaya script, sometimes also called the Eastern, Madnachaya or Modern script. The Aramaic Alphabet is exactly the same in all of these scripts, but in Swadaya the letters are written slightly differently.
These lessons on Swadaya build on the previous lessons on the Ashuri, Estrangela and Serta scripts. Therefore, it is important that you don't jump straight into these lessons on Swadaya, but first work your way carefully through all the previous lessons. Unlike other categories of lessons where you can potentially pick and choose which videos to watch, you will progress better if you work your way systematically through all these lessons on the Aramaic Alphabet.
To summarize, the Swadaya script is used in some editions of the Peshitta Old and New Testaments. Learning it will increase the resources that are available to you when studying Aramaic.
In this lesson, we show you how the letter Alap differs between the Ashuri, Estrangela, Serta and Swadaya scripts, and we show you how to write Alap in the Swadaya script. Enjoy!
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| Ewan MacLeod | Hi Jon, It's generally accepted that the "o" sound is western, whereas the `"a' sound is Eastern. Thus, "Peshitto" is western and "Peshitta" is eastern. |
| Ewan MacLeod | Feel free to leave comments or questions about this lesson on the Letter Alap in the Swadaya script! |
| Jon Williams | Hello Ewan :) I wanted to ask I hear two different pronunciations of the "A" letter in Aramaic. Alep, Aleph, and Oleph. Which one is western and which one is eastern? Dr. Lamsa says "Aleph, Beth, Gamal" even though he was Assyrian and spoke Eastern Aramaic from what I understand. Can you please clarify this for us? Many thanks! |