Aramaic Alphabet - Estrangela Course Contents

Overview

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Welcome to this Course on the Aramaic Alphabet in the Estrangela 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 Estrangela Alphabet, which is a variant of the Ashuri script that you should already know. It makes it much easier to learn Estrangela if you already know Ashuri, and if you view Estrangela 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 Estrangela 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 Estrangela letters differ from the original Ashuri letters, and are really an extension of Hebrew/Aramaic Ashuri 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 Estrangela and will compare them to the vowels in the Ashuri script. 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 - Learn To Read Entire Words

You should now know, and be able to recognise, each of the letters individually. Next, you need to get to the stage where you can read entire words. The Lessons below will help you to do this. At first, the process will be very slow because you will need to spell out the words letter by letter, but you will soon speed up with some practice! Again, go through these lessons one by one, in the order listed.

Stage 4 - Write Out A Biblical Passage

To complete Stage 4, please write out a Bible passage of your choice in the Estrangela 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.