Hebrew: The Language of the Israelites Hebrew was the language spoken by the ancient Israelites, and what most of the Bible (and almost all of the Old Testament) are written in. It’s part of the Semitic family of languages, which also includes Aramaic (see below) and Arabic.
Aramaic belongs to the Northwest group of the Semitic language family, which includes the mutually intelligible Canaanite languages such as Hebrew, Edomite, Moabite, Ekronite, Sutean, and Phoenician, as well as Amorite and Ugaritic. [20][21] Aramaic varieties are written in the Aramaic alphabet, a descendant of the Phoenician alphabet.
Aramaic language, Semitic language of the Northern Central, or Northwestern, group that was originally spoken by the ancient Middle Eastern people known as Aramaeans. It was most closely related to Hebrew, Syriac, and Phoenician and was written in a script derived from the Phoenician alphabet. Aramaic is thought to have first appeared among the Aramaeans about the late 11th century bce. By the ...
The Aramaic language constitutes the eastern branch of the Northwest Semitic language family. Its closest relatives are the Canaanite dialects in the western branch of the family, such as Hebrew, Phoenician, and Moabite. Its place of origin is the expansive region known in antiquity as Aram, which extends from southwestern Syria all the way to Upper Mesopotamia in southern Turkey and northern ...
Biblical Aramaic To stress the main characteristics of Official and Ancient Aramaic as they manifested themselves through the history of the language and in the countries in which they were current, a comparative study of some aspects of Aramaic, Hebrew, and Arabic is necessary. PHONEMICS AND PHONETICS OF ARAMAIC