Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Alexey Liavdansky <aliavdansky AT yahoo.com>]

<b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
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" I think it was Tadmor. The idea is, that the use of Aramaic in imperial
administration spread after the Assyrian conquest of Damascus and other
Aramean kingdoms in the late 8th century. Deportations of Arameans 
would
have also contributed. My question is, at what stage did Aramaic 
replace
Akkadian as the common spoken language in southern Mesopotamia? It 
seems to
have done so by the 5th or 4th centuries, even though chronicles and 
other
offical inscriptions were still being written in Akkadian even as late 
as
the Roman Period."
 
Yigal,
 
H.Tadmor "On the Role of Aramaic in the Assyrian Empire" // ??? writes that 
the western periphery of Assyria was bilingual "at the very least from the 
mid 9th century". Only 120 years later Aramaic became the second language of 
the empire, alongside Akkadian. One of the interesting points in his article 
that there are numerous Assyrian reliefs (Tiglath-pileser III time) 
portraying a scribe with a parchment scroll, presumably using alphabetic 
script, alongside with a scribe writing on a tablet (=cuneiform); these 
pictures are corroborated by the pair of terms occuring together in some 
cuneiform documents - tupsharru Asshuraya and tupsharru Aramaya, i.e. 
Assyrian scribe and Aramaic scribe.
The question is when the SECOND language becomes SPOKEN. Sometimes the 
non-literary documents (receipts, contracts, letters) are considered as 
evidence of spoken language. The best evidence would be graffity (something 
like outbursts of youthful creativity in a university WC). We know some 
aramaic graffity, but the problem with them, as far as I know , they are all 
from temples, a kind of private votive inscriptions. But anyhow we have quite 
a number of non-literary Aramaic documents form Mesopotamia (debt-notes from 
Asshur, annotations on Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform tablets, a latter 
from Babylonia to Asshur) - all beginning with 7th cent. B.C. It stands to 
reason Aramaic was DOUBTLESS the SECOND (if not on a par with Accadian) 
language already in Neo-Assyrian Empire. We can say also it was PROBABLY one 
of the SPOKEN languages in Assyria at that time. One of the objections: the 
Aramaic writing is alphabetic which is much easier to learn and use so it 
might gain currency among
 scribes and be restricted at first to this class of professionals. 
 
Alexey Lyavdansky
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

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From: Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Aramaic in Babylonia
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 Peter, hope you didn't mix up my line about the language of cartoon captions 
etc with the statement above it, which it meant to corrrect. 
 
  Liz, the latest posting by Alexey provides the details about the Neo 
-Assyrian reliefs that I had mentioned earlier.
 
  Cheers,
 
  Uri


Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org> wrote:
On 06/07/2005 00:48, Uri Hurwitz wrote:

>"Lisbeth S. Fried" 
wrote:
>
>".... It is my
>understanding of modern Arabic that spoken Arabic
>differs mightily from the written. When two who
>speak the same spoken Arabic dialect write letters
>they still must use the written form, since
>according to my informants, you cannot write the
>spoken form. ...
>
>...
> Also, captions in cartoons etc can be written in the colloquial language.
>
> 
>
In fact the "cannot" in "you cannot write the spoken form" is not a 
linguistic or orthographical issue but a social convention. There may 
have been social conventions in the ancient Near East as well, of course.

-- 
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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Yigal:

To get the peripheral subject out of the way first: as for the dating of Da=
niel, there are the internal claims and the external &#8220;conclusions&#82=
21; of the scholars. Seeing as the scholars&#8217; conclusion is based sole=
ly on philosophical presuppositions which I reject, there are no historical=
 sources to back them up, I prefer to go with the historical claims interna=
l to the book.

I wonder how much difference there was between spoken Northwest Semitic and=
 spoken Akkadian during the neo-Babylonian period. How much had they varied?

In looking at an European example, about 1200 years ago, about the beginnin=
g of the Viking period, a common language was spoken from the Alps to Scand=
inavia, including England. There were slight regional variations, but in ge=
neral those were on the level of accents rather than true language differen=
ces. In the intervening time, German had the great consonantal shift, Engla=
nd was invaded by French speaking Vikings changing their language and even =
within Scandinavia there can be humorous (or not so humorous) misunderstand=
ings as the languages have changed so much.

A more modern example is Arabic: from what I have been told, it is still ba=
sically the same language from Iraq in the east to the western Sahara, but =
that there are regional accents that can be discerned.

Thus my question, was there a discernible difference between spoken Akkadia=
n and Aramaic during the neo-Babylonian period? I recognize we may never ha=
ve an answer to this question.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
>=20
> Hi Karl,
>=20
> As you know, most scholars would date the composition of Daniel to a much
> later period, by which most people would have forgotten that Akkadian had
> even existed. So the fact that Daniel uses Aramaic is not really proof of
> anything.
>=20
> As far as "spoken" Akkadian and Aramaic - we have very little evidence of
> "spoken" languages as is, but I think that it's reasonable to assume that
> any written language reflects the spoken language of at least some group =
at
> some time. At least in their written form (and I don't mean that one used
> cuneaform and the other used the 22 letter aleph-bet), Akkadian and Arama=
ic
> are very different, one being Eastern Semitic, the other Northwestern
> Semitic.
>=20
> Yigal


--=20
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