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The ancient Aramaic alphabet was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian tribes throughout the Fertile Crescent. It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects underwent linguistic Aramaization during a language shift for governing purposes — a precursor to Arabization centuries later — including among the Assyrians and Babylonians who permanently replaced their Akkadian language and its cuneiform script with Aramaic and its script, and among Jews, who adopted the Aramaic language as their vernacular and started using the Aramaic alphabet even for writing Hebrew, displacing the former Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.
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References
- ↑ Aaron Butts (2014). Greek Loanwords in Syriac.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 Aaron Butts (2016). Latin Words in Classical Syriac.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon Project". Hebrew Union College.
- ↑ Stephen A. Kaufman (1974). The Akkadian influences on Aramaic (PDF).
- 1 2 "The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary". University of Pennsylvania. Archived from the original on 2013-06-26. Retrieved 2018-01-15.
- ↑ Heinrich Zimmern (1915). Akkadische Fremdwörter als Beweis für babylonischen Kultureinfluss.
- ↑ Stephen A. Kaufman (1974). The Akkadian influences on Aramaic (PDF).
- ↑ Claudia Ciancaglini (2008). Iranian Loanwords in Syriac. ISBN 9783895006241.