Chapter 1: The Alphabet

Like the vast majority of Semitic Languages, Galilean Aramaic employs a consonantal "abjad" alphabet, which is to say an alphabet that only represented individual consonants, a small subset of which playing a double role of both consonants and vowels.

Ultimately tracing its way back to Phoenician, the distinctly Aramaic forms took shape during the tenure of Imperial Aramaic as the official language of the Persian Empire where it went from a script that was primarily chiseled into stone or written on pottery with a brush to a script that was written with a reed pen on parchment or papyrus. Where originally written without spaces, a system of several final forms were adopted to indicate the end of words that commonly ended with them.

Further developments took place under the Hasmonean and Herodian periods, arriving at a somewhat standardized form that was quite popular among the Dead Sea Scrolls and contemporary to the time of Jesus of Nazareth and early Christianity (this Herodian form is what we are using in this volume). From there it evolved side-by-side with Hebrew for the rest of Galilean's time as a spoken and written language until the dialect was completely supplanted by Arabic over the course of the 600s CE.

"Form" indicates the base form for each letter in Herodian hand, where "Final" indicates how the letter looks when written at the end of a word.

Exercise. Transliterate the following into English letters using the "Transliteration" column above.

Exercise. Transliterate the following into Aramaic letters.

'mr rby hwy l' mn `l ḥd 'ty br `bd hw' lyt mh 't hd' kl 'nh b`y 'zl ḥmy 'yt kn qwm tny 'yn yhb šm` npq hdn 'ylyyn

Pronunciation #

The letters in Galilean share many similarities to their counterparts in other Aramaic languages, but with a few well-known exceptions. We will go into the nuances and issues of reconstruction in the chapter on Vocalization, but for now this basic system should suffice.

Basic Consonants #

The letters z, l, m, n, s, r and š (="sh") are pronounced pretty much like they are in English. It is believed that r was tapped or flapped once (which is in contrast to how r is "growled" in Modern Hebrew like it is in French).

More Foreign Sounds #

The letters ḥ, ṭ, `, ç, q, and ś, on the otherhand, are sounds and concepts foreign to the English tongue.

ḥ ⟶ "ch" in Bach or loch. It is like the sound one makes when clearing their throat.

ṭ ⟶ a hard, emphatic "t" sound, similar to a "t" made with a bit more force.

` ⟶ an "uh" at the back of the throat, similar to the sound that precedes vomiting.^[1]

ç ⟶ is generally described as the ts in "pots," but this is mostly through european convention. Originally, it was likely more like a hard, hissed, plosive or ejective "s."

q ⟶ a hard "k" in the very back of the throat.

ś ⟶ likely originally an "s" sound caused by touching the tip of the tongue to the palate, similar to ll in Welsh. Starting in and around the 1st century it began to merge with s to the point that in some dialects (such as Syriac) they became indistinguishable, and were written with s instead. In Galilean, it is still a bit of a mystery, but due to the excessively phonetic (rather than classical) nature of Galilean spelling, it was likely preserved in some manner, because there we find the distinction intact.

The Bəḡaḏkəfaṯ #

The letters b, g, d, k, p, and t (also known as the bəḡaḏkəfaṯ) each have two sounds depending on where they fall in relation to a vowel. When pronounced qəše ("hard") they are as in English, where when they are pronounced rafe ("soft") they take on aspirated qualities.

b ⟶ ḇ or v (like vet, but made with both lips)

g ⟶ ḡ (like a voiced ḥ, a gh sound)

d ⟶ ḏ (like the)

k ⟶ ḵ (like ḥ, but lighter)

p ⟶ f (like father, but made with both lips)

t ⟶ ṯ (like three)

The rule of thumb is that rafe is employed when one of the bəḡaḏkəfaṯ falls after a vowel where qəše is employed everywhere else.

Vowels #

In texts that were purely consonants the letters ', h, w, and y (often called the matres lectionis or "mothers of reading") represent both consonants and vowels.

' ⟶ could represent a, ə or sometimes e.

h ⟶ usually represents a consonantal h but at the end of a word could represent a or e.

w ⟶ could either represent a w or the vowels o or u.

y ⟶ could either represent a y or the vowels i or e.