Portal:Oriental Orthodoxy/Selected article/4
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Aramaic is a group of Semitic languages with a 3,000-year history. It has been the language of administration of empires and the language of divine worship. It is the original language of large sections of the biblical books of Daniel and Ezra, and is the main language of the Talmud. Aramaic was the native language of Jesus (see Aramaic of Jesus). Modern Aramaic is spoken today as a first language by numerous, scattered communities, most significantly by Assyrians, Syriacs, and Chaldeans. The language is considered to be endangered.
Aramaic belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language family. Within that diverse family, it belongs to the Semitic subfamily. Aramaic is a part of the Northwest Semitic group of languages, which also includes the Canaanite languages (such as Hebrew). It is also related to Arabic, being part of the more diverse Central Semitic languages; one possible source for the Arabic alphabet is Nabataean Aramaic script.
Christian missionaries brought the language into Persia, India and even China. From the seventh century AD onwards, Aramaic was replaced as the lingua franca of the Middle East by Arabic. However, Aramaic remains a literary and liturgical language among Jews, Mandaeans and some Christians, and is still spoken by small isolated communities throughout its original area of influence. The turbulence of the last two centuries has seen speakers of first-language and literary Aramaic dispersed throughout the world.
