Aramaic

Aramaic is a Northwest Semitic language that originated among the Arameans and became widely used across the ancient Near East. Its varied forms served as vernaculars, administrative languages, and languages of religious literature.

Arameans: An ancient Northwest Semitic people associated with the region of Aram in the Levant and upper Mesopotamia. Aramaic takes its name from the people among whom it first developed.
Northwest Semitic languages: A branch of Semitic languages that includes Aramaic, Hebrew, and Phoenician. Aramaic belongs to this family alongside several closely related ancient languages.
Biblical Aramaic: The portions of the Hebrew Bible written in Aramaic, especially in Ezra and Daniel. These passages show Aramaic's place in Jewish scripture.
Akkadian: An extinct East Semitic language of ancient Mesopotamia, written chiefly in cuneiform. Akkadian preceded Aramaic as a major regional language but belongs to a different Semitic branch.
Aram-Damascus: An Aramean kingdom centered on Damascus that flourished in the first millennium BCE. Its inscriptions provide some of the earliest evidence for Aramaic.
Semitic languages: A branch of the Afroasiatic language family that includes Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Akkadian. The broader family explains Aramaic's shared vocabulary and grammatical patterns.
Targum: An Aramaic translation or interpretive rendering of a Hebrew biblical text. Targums made scripture accessible and added interpretive explanation in Aramaic.
Phoenician language: A Northwest Semitic language spoken by the ancient Phoenicians and written in a consonantal alphabet. Phoenician was a close regional relative, not another name for Aramaic.
Old Aramaic: The early form of Aramaic attested in inscriptions from the first millennium BCE. It preserves the language's earliest written stages.
Aramaic alphabet: A consonant-based script used to write Aramaic and adapted for several other languages. Its script became a foundation for writing traditions across western Asia.

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