Samaritan Hebrew ( ࠏࠨࠁࠬࠓࠪࠉࠕ ʿÎbrit ) is a reading tradition used liturgically by the Samaritans for reading the Ancient Hebrew language of the Samaritan Pentateuch , in contrast to Tiberian Hebrew among the Jewish people.
16-483: For the Samaritans, Ancient Hebrew ceased to be a spoken everyday language and was succeeded by Samaritan Aramaic , which itself ceased to be a spoken language some time between the 10th and 12th centuries and was succeeded by Arabic (or more specifically Samaritan Palestinian Arabic ). The phonology of Samaritan Hebrew is very similar to that of Samaritan Arabic , and is used by the Samaritans in prayer. Today,
32-428: A patach rather than a segol, due to the influence of guttural consonants ( ה , ע , א , ח ) in the final syllable. Classical Arabic still preserves forms similar to the reconstructed Ancient Hebrew forms, although significantly simplified. Examples include ʼarḍ "earth", kalb "dog", ʻayn "eye", ṣidq "sincerity". Some modern dialects insert an epenthetic vowel between
48-511: A copy of the text in Damascus , and this manuscript, now known as Codex B, was deposited in a Parisian library. Between 1957 and 1977 Ze'ev Ben-Haim published in five volumes his monumental Hebrew work on the Hebrew and Aramaic traditions of the Samaritans. Ben-Haim, whose views prevail today, proved that modern Samaritan Hebrew is not very different from Second Temple Samaritan, which itself
64-433: Is a- or e-, and causes gemination of the following consonant, unless it is a guttural ; it is written with a he , but as usual, the h is silent. Thus, for example: énnar / ánnar = "the youth"; ellêm = "the meat"; a'émor = "the donkey". Regular plural suffixes are Dual is sometimes -ayem (Judean Hebrew: a′yim), šenatayem "two years", usually -êm like the plural yédêm "hands" (Judean Hebrew yadhayim .) Samaritans have
80-430: Is no longer stressed, e.g. /dabbirti/ דברתי but דברתמה /dabbertimma/ . /u/ and /o/ only contrast in open post-tonic syllables, e.g. ידו /jedu/ 'his hand' ידיו /jedo/ 'his hands', where /o/ stems from a contracted diphthong. In other environments, /o/ appears in closed syllables and /u/ in open syllables, e.g. דור /dor/ דורות /durot/ . Stress generally differs from other traditions, being found usually on
96-642: Is sometimes pronounced as [ʔ] , though not in Pentateuch reading, as a result of influence from Samaritan Arabic. /q/ may also be pronounced as [χ] , but this occurs only rarely and in fluent reading. Phonemic length is contrastive, e.g. /rɒb/ רב 'great' vs. /rɒːb/ רחב 'wide'. Long vowels are usually the result of the elision of guttural consonants. /i/ and /e/ are both realized as [ə] in closed post-tonic syllables, e.g. /bit/ בית 'house' /abbət/ הבית 'the house' /ɡer/ גר /aɡɡər/ הגר. In other cases, stressed /i/ shifts to /e/ when that syllable
112-604: The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, which evolved into the Samaritan alphabet. In modern times, a cursive variant of the Samaritan alphabet is used in personal affects. Consonants Vowels Samaritan Hebrew shows the following consonantal differences from Biblical Hebrew: The original phonemes */b ɡ d k p t/ do not have spirantized allophones, though at least some did originally in Samaritan Hebrew (evidenced in
128-585: The final unstressed vowel is typically (but not always) segol . These words evolved from older Semitic words that ended in a complex coda ; indeed, when a suffix (other than an absolute plural) is added to a segolate, the original form (or something similar) reappears (cf. kéleḇ "dog" vs. kalbī "my dog"). Examples: The ancient forms like *CawC (such as šawr "bull") almost universally evolved to non-segolate CôC ( שׁוֹר šôr), though there are exceptions, such as מָוֶת mā́weṯ "death". Some segolate words' final syllable ends with
144-788: The language of the Samaritan Pentateuch . Samaritan Aramaic ceased to be a spoken language some time between the 10th and the 12th centuries, with Samaritans switching to Palestinian Arabic as their vernacular. In form, Samaritan Aramaic resembles the Aramaic of the Targumim , and is written in the Samaritan alphabet . Important works written in it include the translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch, legal, exegetical and liturgical texts. Exodus XX.1-6: Notice
160-649: The later square Hebrew alphabet , which is in fact a variation of the Aramaic alphabet that Jews began using in the Babylonian captivity following the exile of the Kingdom of Judah in the 6th century BCE. During the 3rd century BCE, Jews began to use this stylized "square" form of the script used by the Achaemenid Empire for Imperial Aramaic , its chancellery script while the Samaritans continued to use
176-653: The penultimate and sometimes on the ultimate. Who, which: éšar. When suffixes are added, ê and ô in the last syllable may become î and û: bôr (Judean bohr) "pit" > búrôt "pits". Note also af "anger" > éppa "her anger". Segolates behave more or less as in other Hebrew varieties: beţen "stomach" > báţnek "your stomach", ke′seph "silver" > ke′sefánu (Judean Hebrew kaspe′nu ) "our silver", dérek > dirkakimma "your (m. pl.) road" but áreş (in Judean Hebrew: ' e'rets ) "earth" > árşak (Judean Hebrew ' arts-ekha ) "your earth". The definite article
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#1732765224644192-464: The preposition "in" ב- /av/ or /b/ ). */p/ has shifted to /f/ (except occasionally */pː/ > /bː/ ). */w/ has shifted to /b/ everywhere except in the conjunction ו- 'and' where it is pronounced as /w/ . */ɬ/ has merged with /ʃ/ , unlike in all other contemporary Hebrew traditions in which it is pronounced /s/ . The laryngeals /ʔ ħ h ʕ/ have become /ʔ/ or null everywhere, except before /a ɒ/ where */ħ ʕ/ sometimes become /ʕ/ . /q/
208-574: The similarities with Judeo-Aramaic as found in Targum Onqelos to this same passage (some expressions below are paraphrased, not literally translated): This Semitic languages -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Segolate Segolates are words in the Hebrew language whose end is of the form CVCVC, where the penultimate vowel receives syllable stress . Such words are called "segolates" because
224-653: The spoken vernacular among Samaritans is evenly split between Modern Israeli Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic , depending on whether they reside in Holon (Israel) or in Shechem (i.e. Nablus , in Palestine ). The Samaritan language first became known in detail to the Western world with the publication of a manuscript of the Samaritan Pentateuch in 1631 by Jean Morin . In 1616 the traveler Pietro della Valle had purchased
240-565: The tradition of either spelling out loud with the Samaritan letters "Yohth, Ie', Baa, Ie' " or saying "Shema" meaning "( The Divine ) Name" in Aramaic, similar to Judean Hebrew "Ha-Shem" . "in, using", pronounced: "as, like", pronounced: "to" pronounced: "and" pronounced: Other prepositions: Samaritan Aramaic Samaritan Aramaic was the dialect of Aramaic used by the Samaritans in their sacred and scholarly literature. This should not be confused with Samaritan Hebrew ,
256-517: Was a language shared with the other residents of the region before it was supplanted by Aramaic. Samaritan Hebrew is written in the Samaritan alphabet , a direct descendant of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet , which in turn is a variant of the earlier Proto-Sinaitic script . The Samaritan alphabet is close to the script that appears on many Ancient Hebrew coins and inscriptions. By contrast, all other varieties of Hebrew, as written by Jews , employ
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