Christian Aramaic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Aramaic language is of historical importance to Christians, Jews and Mandaeans. The use of the language among Christians can be divided into four distinct areas:

• the Aramaic of Jesus — Jesus most probably spoke a western Jewish variety of Aramaic as his mother tongue.
• Christian Palestinian Aramaic — a variety of western Aramaic that developed from pagan varieties in the Jordan Valley region.
• Syriac — a variety of eastern Aramaic spoken in northern Mesopotamia that became the literary and liturgical language of Syriac Christianity.
• modern vernacular Christian Aramaic — a number of Neo-Aramaic languages developed from older colloquial Aramaic varieties and became influenced by Syriac. Still spoken to this day, Western Neo-Aramaic is the only western variety to survive, whereas Christians speak a number of varieties of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic.