Dialects of Aramaic

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In previous lessons, we have seen just how long a history Aramaic has. In all that time, although Aramaic has remained a consistent, coherent language, it has also developed a number of dialects.

In this lesson, therefore, we first look at what is meant by a 'dialect' of a language. For comparison, we give examples of other well-known languages with dialects.

Then we examine the main dialects of Aramaic that are useful for a study of the Holy Scriptures.

This is an important lesson, because it helps you to understand that although dialects of Aramaic do exist, Aramaic is nevertheless a single language. On this website, we aim to help you understand the similarities between the various Aramaic dialects - rather than the traditional approach, which is to separate the dialects and treat them as separate languages.

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