What These Lessons Will Teach

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The next 22 lessons will introduce you to each of the letters in the Aramaic Alphabet. You will learn the following things about them:

There is a separate web page for each letter in the Aramaic Alphabet. This allows you to learn the letters slowly but steadily, and not be overwhelmed by learning too much too quickly. You can take things at your own pace. If you are learning the Aramaic Alphabet in a classroom setting, you can learn the Aramaic letters a few at a time, perhaps learning a few each week.

Each page has a grid to allow you to practice writing the Aramaic letters. You can copy this grid and print it out. It is very important that you do this; it will help impress the letters on your mind and will make you feel more comfortable with them. At the end of each lesson, there are some practice exercises to help you learn the Aramaic letters. Don’t ignore these. Practice in reading and writing is the only way to learn the Aramaic Alphabet!

In separate lessons about the Aramaic vowels, you will be introduced to the nikud (dots and dashes) that help you know how to pronounce the Aramaic properly. You will also learn a little about the history of the vowel points and about the Aramaic language itself.

Once you have learned the Aramaic Alphabet and the nikud, you will be able to read the Aramaic in the Hebrew Bible. You won’t understand what you are reading at this stage, but that’s what the rest of the web site is about! One of the aims of this web site is to show you things in the Hebrew Bible and other Holy Writings of Judaism that you completely miss in an English translation. Even when you have only learned the Aramaic Alphabet, you will already be able to appreciate many wonderful things in Scripture. As you progress, more and more will become clear and you will soon see how beautiful the Hebrew Bible really is.

Even after you have learned the Aramaic Alphabet, at first you will only be able to read Aramaic slowly, letter by letter and word by word. It will take years before you can read Aramaic at the same speed as you read English (you’ve been reading English for decades, remember!) but the more practice you get, the faster you will become. There are many exercises in this course to help you become faster and more confident in reading Aramaic.

Before we discuss each letter of the Aramaic Alphabet, the next lesson explains how to write the Aramaic letters.

Home  |  Learning Aramaic  |  Aramaic Alphabet  |  What These Lessons Will Teach