Aramaic was at a certain time a lingua franca in the Middle East, and therefore, it superseded the Old Hebrew alphabet that was more closely related to the Phoenician alphabet. There are several "flavors" of Aramaic scripts, square Estrangela, the ancestor of the Modern Hebrew alphabet, Nestorian "Assyrian" or the Chaldean script and Maronite or the Jacobite script. The Aramaic alphabet is probably also the ancestor of the Indic alphabets and is without reasonable doubt the source of the Old Turkic alphabet and the Arabic alphabet.
| Letter | Normal format |
Final connected |
Final non-connected |
Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alap | "A" | |||
| Beth | "B" | |||
| Gamal | Hard "G" | |||
| Daleth | "D" | |||
| Heh | "H" | |||
| Waw | "W" or "O" or "U", depending on word | |||
| Zain | "Z" | |||
| Kheth | "Kh", no English equivalent (as in Scottish loch) | |||
| Teth | Hard "T" | |||
| Yodh | "Y" or "E", depending on word | |||
| Kap | "K", sometimes "Kh" | |||
| Lamadh | "L" | |||
| Meem | "M" | |||
| Noon | "N" | |||
| Simkath | "S" | |||
| Ain | Similar to "Ahh", no English equivalent | |||
| Payin | "P" | |||
| Tsade | "Ts" | |||
| Qoph | "Q" | |||
| Resh | "R" | |||
| Sheen | "Sh" | |||
| Taw | "T" | |||
| Lamadh & Alap combined at end of word | ||||
| Taw & Alap combined at end of word |
Jewish sources often write Aramaic using the standard Hebrew alphabet.
See also Alphabet, Aramaic language.\n
