Biblical Aramaic grammar for readers
Short notes for reading the Aramaic of Daniel and Ezra. Every example comes from a text in this course.
Start reading Biblical Aramaic
No account needed. Your first line takes about three minutes.
Hebrew's close cousin
Biblical Aramaic uses the same letters as Hebrew and runs from right to left, and many of its words are related. But it is a separate language. Aramaic was a shared language of the ancient Near East, and parts of Daniel and Ezra were written in it.
If you know some Hebrew, keep it in mind as a helpful guide. Don't trust it completely.
מְנֵא מְנֵא תְּקֵל וּפַרְסִין
MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN
The most famous Aramaic words in the Bible.
“The” goes on the end
This is the first big difference from Hebrew. Where Hebrew puts “the” on the front of a word, Aramaic adds -ā to the end, usually written with the letter א.
| מַלְכָּא | ending -ā | the king |
| חֶלְמָא | ending -ā | the dream |
| מַלְכוּתָא | ending -ā | the kingdom |
| כְתָבָא | ending -ā | the writing |
קֳדָם־ מַלְכָּא
before the king
מַלְכָּא is “the king”. Without the ending, “king” would be מֶלֶךְ.
דִּי: “of”, “who”, “that”
This small word does many jobs. It joins two nouns as “of”, and it introduces a description as “who”, “which” or “that”. When you can't work out how a sentence hangs together, look for דִּי. In Hebrew, the job would usually be done by other words.
כְתָבָא דִּי רְשִׁים
the writing that was inscribed
Here it means “that”.
דִּי דָנִיֵּאל חַד־ מִנְּהוֹן
of whom Daniel was one
Here it starts a description.
Masculine plurals end in -īn, or -ayyā with “the”
Hebrew's masculine plurals usually end in -im. Aramaic's end in -īn. With “the” added, the ending becomes -ayyā. The tens, like “sixty”, also end in -īn. Feminine plurals usually end in -ān, though a few feminine words, like “years”, still use -īn.
| שְׁנִין | ending -īn | years |
| אָמְרִין | ending -īn | saying (of several people) |
| חַכִּימַיָּא | ending -ayyā | the wise men |
| עַמְמַיָּא | ending -ayyā | the peoples |
שְׁנִין שִׁתִּין וְתַרְתֵּין
sixty-two years
“Years” and “sixty” both have the -īn ending.
“Your” and “his” are endings
As in Hebrew, “my”, “your” and “his” are endings on the noun, and they can also go on prepositions. On verbs, the same kind of ending means “me”, “you” or “him”.
פְּרִיסַת מַלְכוּתָךְ
your kingdom is divided
-ָךְ on “kingdom” means “your”.
וּפִשְׁרֵהּ
and its interpretation
-ֵהּ means “his” or “its”.
Stories love the “-ing” form
Aramaic often tells past events using a participle, the form that means “saying” or “seeing”, where English would use a simple past. So don't be surprised to find “the king seeing” in the middle of a story. It often simply means “the king saw”.
וּמַלְכָּא חָזֵה
The king saw
Literally “and the king (was) seeing”.
עֲנוֹ וְאָמְרִין
They answered
A past verb followed by a participle: “they answered and (were) saying”.
Words that differ from Hebrew
Some of the commonest words differ from their Hebrew equivalents. “This” is דְּנָה, where Hebrew has זֶה. “Not” is לָא, where Hebrew has לֹא. “Son” is בַּר, where Hebrew has בֵּן. Learning a few of these will stop your Hebrew from misleading you.
דְּנָה חֶלְמָא
This is the dream
דְּנָה, “this”, and also no word for “is”.
וּמַלְכָּא לָא־ לֶהֱוֵא נָזִק
and that the king should suffer no loss
לָא, “not”.
Words with no vowels
You'll often meet a word printed with no vowels at all, sometimes several on one page. The written tradition (what is written) and the reading tradition (what is read aloud) disagree about it, so some editors, including the text used here, leave the consonants bare. It is not a misprint.
נפקו אֶצְבְּעָן
the fingers ... came out
The first word has no vowels.
Practise on real texts
These notes make most sense once you have seen the forms in context. Urling brings each one up as you meet it in a text.
Start reading Biblical Aramaic
No account needed. Your first line takes about three minutes.
Notes written by Claude and checked against Strack (1897) and Kautzsch (1884), Grammatik des Biblisch-Aramäischen. Not yet reviewed by an Aramaic teacher.