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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by S.K. (talk | contribs) at 22:12, 16 August 2022 (→Requested move 27 July 2022: Reply). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Former featured articleAramaic is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on April 18, 2005.
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December 4, 2004Featured article candidateNot promoted
February 26, 2005Peer reviewReviewed
February 28, 2005Featured article candidatePromoted
August 3, 2009Featured article reviewDemoted
Current status: Former featured article

Contradiction

the Aramaic variety by which Eastern Christianity was diffused, whether or not those communities once spoke it or another form of Aramaic as their vernacular, but have since shifted to another language as their primary community language.

Modern Aramaic is spoken today as a first language by many scattered, predominantly small, and largely isolated communities of differing Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups of the Middle East[5]—most numerously by the Assyrians in the form of Assyrian Neo-Aramaic—that have all retained use of the once dominant lingua franca despite subsequent language shifts experienced throughout the Middle East.

Ehh, what the eyyff? The first paragraph, without any citations raises an unqualified skeptical attack on whether aramaic was spoken by Eastern Christians.

Then the next paragraph says that Assyrians have always retained it despite language shifts. Ok so whats the deal here? And why do we have such a ridiculous attack on the idea that Eastern Christians haven't always spoken aramaic? How can they have adopted a new language when Arabic is made more dominant? In fact the truth is that Aramaic is disapperaing, afterall its "endangered" as the intro suggests. Gabr-el 21:15, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am wondering if

this whole section ( Aramaic word processors) really belongs here? Some of the corporate links includedin it are pretty (opinion) marginal too. Carptrash (talk) 04:57, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

1955

In 1955, Richard Frye questioned the classification of Imperial Aramaic as an 'official language'.

Really? As recently as in 1955? Why, this was practically yesterday, and we all know there has been no good scholarship since the Russian Revolution (I mean the Russian Revolution of 1905, of course). It is a much more urgent necessity for the reader of this article to know what the mainstream academic position on the status of Aramaic was in 1842.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 00:48, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

... noting that no surviving edict expressly and unambiguously accorded that status to any particular language.

That's a good point. It would have been highly untypical for an Ancient Near Eastern state not to leave an official legally binding document proclaiming the status of a language as official. For example, we all know there are countless surviving clay tablets from the Third Dynasty of Ur proclaiming explicitly: "Sumerian is the official language of the Third Dynasty of Ur".--91.148.159.4 (talk) 00:55, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

ISO codes

Does anyone have any idea what are the exact ISO codes for the Jewish kinds of Aramaic - Daniel & Ezra, Babylonian Talmud, Jerusalem Talmud, Targumim, Zohar?

The language of Daniel & Ezra is probably arc. The Babylonian Talmud is probably tmr. But what about the Jerusalem Talmud, the Targumim and the Zohar?

Neither the current list in the article nor Ethnologue make it clear.

Thanks in advance for any help. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 20:23, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Jewish Palestinian Aramaic [jpa]; Samaritan Aramaic [sam]; Jewish Babylonian Aramaic (ca. 200-1200 CE) [tmr]; Official Aramaic (700-300 BCE) [arc]. The language of Daniel and Ezra is probably [arc]. The Jerusalem Talmud is [jpa]; the Babylonian Talmud is [tmr]. (Taivo (talk) 21:12, 11 April 2010 (UTC))[reply]
Thanks. It makes sense.
Any idea where would the language of the Zohar be categorized? --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 07:36, 12 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It depends on whether the language is more Palestinian or Babylonian. (Taivo (talk) 09:03, 12 April 2010 (UTC))[reply]
That's the problem - i don't know. I only know the Biblical Aramaic well and much less the Aramaic of the Talmuds. The Aramaic of the Zohar seemed to me quite different from that of both Talmuds, but i'm not an expert. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 09:18, 12 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The language of the Zohar is "unique" in that it is rather synthetic, drawing from several dialects in a way that a number of scholars have questioned whether or not it is a constructed dialect (as opposed to a natural one). As such, I'm not sure it would really fit under any of the ISO codes neatly. אמר Steve Caruso 02:00, 13 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
According to Gershom Shalom, who is probably the most respected scholar of the Kabbalah (though somewhat outdated), the Aramaic of the Zohar is an entirely artificial language that attempts to imitate the style of Talmudic Aramaic, but was in fact written by the 13th century Jewish mystic Moshe de Leon. Leon lived in Spain before the Expulsion, and his Aramaic is heavily influenced by Medieval Spanish and - one presumes - the Ladino dialect of the time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.65.120.93 (talk) 11:02, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

BCE/BC AD/ACE

Our calendar starts at Jesus' birth. If you want to lie to people and say we date it from a 'common era', then just conclude that; 'common era' is another way of dating from Jesus' birth, so call it what it is. Otherwise you will confuse a lot of people who then discover "Oh, that was when Jesus was born? Why does academia want to hide this fact from us?" I don't know, why do you want to hide the truth from people about Jesus' time on earth? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.231.195.182 (talk) 07:28, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Aramaic studies as a field tends to use BCE/CE. As such, it is that convention we use here and it is against Wikipedia guidelines to change it. It has as much to do with Jesus and Christianity as it has to do with the Talmud and Judaism, Darius I and Zoroastrianism, or King Ashoka and Buddhism (all of which are prominent Aramaic-language related entities). :-) So in short, don't mess with it. אמר Steve Caruso 13:07, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Just in case some readers might not be familiar with the BCE/CE convention, I've wikilinked the first occurrence of "BCE" in the article's lede. Regarding the more general issue of using BCE/CE vs. BC/AD, you might want to see Common Era#Opposition, but please remember that any editing needs to respect WP:NPOV and other core Wikipedia policies. Richwales (talk) 03:30, 6 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

History, periodization

For the division of the history of Aramaic into periods, the article follows Beyer, but a lot more publications follow that of Fitzmyer; these include Creason's article in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages (2004), Kaufman's articles in the Anchor Bible Dictionary (1992) and in Hetzron's Semitic Languages volume (1997), and the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (http://cal1.cn.huc.edu/). I can't find a recent major reference book that follows Beyer. Should it be changed?Linguistatlunch (talk) 14:25, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The "Hebrew" Gospel of Matthew

There is an Asia Minor tradition starting in the early second century (Papias-Irenaeus-Origen) apparently picked up by Jerome that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in "Hebrew" (Aramaic). Jerome even claimed to have found the "original", but had to backtrack, since the work he found had nothing to do with the canonical Gospel. Thus there was perhaps some Aramaic work in Jerome's hands, which might be noted, but it is highly misleading to include Matthew in a mere list containing works such as Daniel and Ezra.

Even when the Catholic Encyclopedia article was written, the question of the original language of Matthew was debated, but no modern scholar of any repute makes any claim today of an Aramaic origin for the book.

The first link that came up in Google: http://www.bible.ca/jw-YHWH-hebrew-matthew.htm cites noted scholars from the first half of the 20th c. disputing the claim. To modern scholarship, the whole discussion is a mere footnote. --Janko (talk) 14:34, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Number of speakers

The page says ~500,000 speakers, but Semitic languages says 2.2 million. Neither seem to have citations. Are the figures perhaps using different definitions? roguekheldar (talk) 04:52, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds: Vowels

This section should be introduced with a statement of which Aramaic language is being described. There can't be one description that is valid for most Aramaic varieties, so it's reasonable to choose one to form the core of this section. Syriac is one natural choice, since it's so well documented and studied. However, the chart as it stands isn't correct for Syriac, and most of the content of the following paragraphs are simply basic general phonetics, not specific to Aramaic.

Furthermore, the statement that "As with most Semitic languages, Aramaic can be thought of as having three basic sets of vowels" is problematic. It's true that proto-Semitic had three vowels, each long and short. To whatever extent that's true of any particular Aramaic language, it's true either because it descended from Semitic, or because the roughly triangular shape of the vowel space is a consequence of the structure of human mouths and auditory perception -- in other words, many languages around the world have a triangular-shaped vowel inventory. Looking at Syriac, it isn't particularly true. Most /e/ vowels have no special relationship with /i/ or /a/, and the long low back and perhaps rounded vowel /ā/ (zqapa) ([ɑ:], [ɒ:], or maybe even [ɔ:]) is quite separate from /a/ in all varieties of Syriac. I'll consider substituting this with a more up-to-date and accurate (and referenced) description.Linguistatlunch (talk) 23:05, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hebrew

did Aramic is the same language such as Hebrew ? , becouse it it the same 22 alphabetic letters. פארוק (talk) 21:35, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

They have the same basis, which is the Phoenician alphabet. 75.14.223.204 (talk) 17:47, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
also Assyrian . פארוק (talk) 05:37, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

in Israel

in israel only the Jews of Kurdistan are speaking Aramaic every day. the orthodocs jews pray in Aramaic and study the holy books in this language. פארוק (talk) 10:46, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Not true, many Christian Maronites, and other 'Arab'(some fight this label) Christians within israel speak Aramaic see this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JiyQVt4_TU

ISO Codes

It doesn't matter whether or not ISO codes are supported by Ethnologue or not. Ethnologue is not the authority or determinant for ISO authority. The ISO codes are administered by a separate organization within SIL and there are many, many codes for extinct languages that are not, and may never be, incorporated into Ethnologue. That doesn't diminish their ISO authority at all or make them somehow "poor stepchildren". --Taivo (talk) 09:24, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Aramaic/ Hebrew

Is Aramaic and Hebrew different versions of the same language? In many countries of the world, apart from English-speaking ones (South Africa excepted), people can speak 2 or more languages, and move between them effortlessly, examples are China, Slavic countries, Holland, Belgian, etc. Is/was this the case with Aramaic and Hebrew speakers? And also, how closely related is Hebrew and Aramaic? 86.178.174.199 (talk) 22:58, 27 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How did Jesus and Pilate communicate, assuming the Biblical account to be true? In the Bible and in film versions, it always seemed that they talk to each other directly without an interpreter. 86.178.174.199 (talk) 22:54, 28 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hebrew was a dialect of Canaanite. Aramaic was a separate branch of Semitic, though similar. Greek was quite widespread, with Greek inscriptions in the sanctus sanctorum of more than one temple, so perhaps they both spoke Greek, but if they didn't it wouldn't make much sense for the Bible to mention translators, since they wouldn't add anything to the narrative. — kwami (talk) 04:48, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]


Are there any bilingual or multilingual speakers of Semitic languages who can tell us how close or distant these languages are? Are they related like Spanish and Italian, are they mutually intelligible? 2A00:23C5:C10B:A300:3993:1B49:C617:944C (talk) 05:00, 15 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

misidentified

Aramaic is not a northwestern Semitic language. Dr. Cornelia Wunsch tells me that in the 21st century, the language spoken in Nebuchadnetsar's time and later is being called the Neo-Babylonian dialect of Akkadian. Akkadian is not a northwestern Semitic language, they broke off from it about 2000 BCE. Reach Wunsch and Pearce's book Documents of Judean Exiles and West Semites in Babylonia in the Collection of David Sofer and update your article, but for now, you can change the description of Aramaic. 71.163.117.143 (talk) 12:37, 5 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

also see the following article https://www.academia.edu/4723117/Aspects_of_Aramaic_and_Babylonian_Linguistic_Interaction_in_First_Millennium_BC_Iraq 71.163.117.143 (talk) 12:40, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It seems we're confusing two languages here: Akkadian (an east Semitic language) and Aramaic (a Northwest Semitic language). In Babylonian times, both languages were spoken alongside each other: (the Neo-Babylonian variety of) Akkadian as the official language of the empire, Aramaic as an inofficial lingua franca widely used in everyday life, brought along with the peoples who migrated or were deported there. Drabkikker (talk) 13:42, 15 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Israelite Christian Aramaic

I see that someone has created a neologism for this page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_language#Israelite_Christian_Aramaic

"Israelite Christian Aramaic" is not a term used anywhere outside of Wikipedia. A simple Google search reveals that the only occurrences of this phrase are on this page and other pages that link to it. The universally accepted scholarly term for this dialect, in Israel as well as among non-Israeli scholars, is "Christian Palestinian Aramaic" or CPA.

I presume that the editor in question took it upon herself/himself to make this change due to the contemporary political connotations of the word "Palestinian," but in doing so s/he has actually created misinformation and reduced the utility of this page.Chuck Haberl (talk) 17:46, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Aramaic in Israel

I'm sorry, something went wrong while commenting on my edit. I deleted your addition because the two articles you cite (apart from containing many errors) are about Syriac, which is an Eastern Aramaic language, not Western (which is what the section is about). So I'm going to delete it once more. Drabkikker (talk) 07:54, 30 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Drabkikker: The Jerusalem Post doesn't specify what branch of Aramaic the article is about. Haaretz names it both "Western dialect of Aramaic" and "Syriac," for some reason. Here's other sources saying the language in question is Western Modern Aramaic: Al-Monitor, La Stampa. --Triggerhippie4 (talk) 10:08, 30 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
True, the JPost article doesn't use the word "Syriac", but it follows from "The campaigners are all residents of the village of Jish and belong to the Maronite Church", seeing that the Maronite Church is known to use Syriac as its liturgical language, not Western Aramaic. As for the Haaretz article (I'm happy to see you left it out in your new edit), it mixes up two different West-East distinctions: that within the Aramaic language as a whole (the Western branch of which includes the Galilean dialect Jesus allegedly spoke, and the the Eastern branch of which includes Syriac), and that within Syriac itself. Also, the examples quoted in the article are unmistakably Syriac, not Western Aramaic. Drabkikker (talk) 11:57, 30 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
EDIT: The other two articles you cite make the same mistake of confusing Western/Eastern Aramaic with Western/Eastern Syriac. The latter is a subbranch of the former: see, for example, this image. Drabkikker (talk) 12:09, 30 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I just want to thank everyone contributing to this fascinating article . F. L. (talk) 17:08, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"something which it has never been"

This was nonsense. Languages can only be related because of common ancestry, so if it "has never been" a single language then it can't be a "group of related languages. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:19, 3 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

References to Jesus speaking Aramaic are spurious and should be removed

As we now know that Jesus is a fictional character created in Rome by Emperor Titus he could not have spoken anything let alone in Aramaic. The Christian Bible is written in Greek, not Hebrew or Aramaic. So, references to Jesus speaking Aramaic are spurious and should be removed — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.111.152.46 (talk) 13:49, 21 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I personally consider Jesus a shadowy figure at best, and (at least) agnosticism on the question of the historicity of this figure an entirely reasonable and even warranted position (I find myself convinced by Richard Carrier's argument that the evidence typically adduced isn't compelling, at the very least, which he stresses is not even controversial in the relevant fields of expertise) – the relevant articles on RationalWiki go deeper into the definitional problems that make this issue additionally thorny and intricate (and debates about it frustrating – beware of straw-man arguments and other logical fallacies). However, I do not think that Titus Flavius had anything to do with it: Price and Carrier, no doubt the current Jesus mythicists with the most solid scholarly credentials, denounce Atwill's hypothesis along with mainstream scholar Ehrman.
Regardless of the historicity issue, Aramaic phrases are actually present in the New Testament, at least one of which is actually attributed to Jesus. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:35, 26 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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maps

A map or two would be useful for those of us who don't have time to look at this subject more than superficially. Thanks. Vince Calegon (talk) 13:19, 26 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 17 August 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved (non-admin closure) ~SS49~ {talk} 03:36, 24 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Aramaic language → Aramaic – Like Latin, Arabic, Sanskrit. The language is the primary topic and the base name redirects here. Srnec (talk) 02:52, 17 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

lang|aro

I've commented out a word in the infobox which was assigned lang|aro which is the language code for the Araona language of Bolivia and which I'm pretty sure is not what was meant! I'm not in a position to know what was intended though. Le Deluge (talk) 23:32, 13 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Transcription Confusion

What do vowels with circumflexes signify in the transcriptions/romanisations shown in the Grammar section? I can't find any explanation for how the language is romanised, nor does Aramaic have an IPA page that could shed light on it. I'm somewhat assuming it's a convention carried from Hebrew romanisation, but I can't find any explanation there either. In studying the originals, it seems like a circumflex is used to show the omission a mater lectionis, except for in "אכתב eḵtûḇ"... But I'm speculating. 174.16.34.146 (talk) 00:48, 31 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Right, so having dug a bit through Hebrew Alphabet#Transliterations and transcriptions and Romanization of Hebrew and neither of them have anything to say on the matter. The only resource I've managed to find that uses circumflexes is this which does state that they're used how I had assumed. What transcription scheme is this a part of, and why isn't it used universally? Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Hebrew) doesn't use it, and it isn't used by anything else discussing transcriptions... 174.16.34.146 (talk) 03:17, 31 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Found Talk:Romanization of Hebrew#Source for transliteration which points to "SBL Transcription", and lo and behold the linked article (in French) has it all. Still not quite sure which variant of the system is being used here, I'm assuming one of the variants, given the usage of underlining for spirantisation. I don't want to make any edits due to that uncertainty, but it's definitely worth putting down somewhere. 174.16.34.146 (talk) 04:25, 31 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It might be a Syriac alphabet system, not Hebrew. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Geshem Bracha (talk • contribs) 12:41, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Display of Aramaic in the article. Font missing?

The article displays Aramaic within it, but in my browser, it's just boxes, with no lettering. It would seem it requires a special font that may not be included in all browsers or OSes.

Should some mention of official sites for these fonts be made? (for MacOS, Windows, Linux, etc.)

Where does one get the missing font, officially? (See my follow-up comment.)

Thank you! Misty MH (talk) 14:32, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I found this, Google distributing fonts, ones that can work with Chrome, I presume: https://www.google.com/get/noto/ HOWEVER, after installing everything by searching for the word Aramaic, and restarting, it still did not display all fonts here in this article or in another article. :( Misty MH (talk) 14:51, 24 November 2020 (UTC) Misty MH (talk) 15:08, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Update: Still not working after installing fonts mentioned just above. Misty MH (talk) 15:08, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Humm, that's odd. Is it all the characters that aren't showing? The first sentence of the article uses characters from several scripts: Latin (e.g. »Aramaic«), Old Aramaic/Phoenician (e.g. »𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀«), Imperial Aramaic (e.g. »𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀«), square script/Hebrew (e.g. »אַרָמָיָא«), and Syriac (e.g. »ܐܪܡܝܐ«). Do some of these display, or are they all just boxes? And which OS and which version of it do you use? Is it the same if you try with another browser? —Pinnerup (talk) 16:33, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Lead Section

This article was tagged as having a lead section that was too long. As suggested, I have moved some material from it into the body of the article. I believe the section is inclusive of all essential details but would be good for someone to verify. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JNEA8638 (talk • contribs) 22:45, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Rewrite vowel section

The current vowels section is written very confusingly, and doesn't seem to be accurate (for example, lots of instances, perhaps most, of [ɛ] in aramaic go back to [i]; lots of instances of [u] are also short even in syriac times, and go back to short vowels). Aramaic can't really be thought of as having three classes of vowels, and neither can tiberian hebrew for that matter - both essentially have a qualitative 7-vowel system. It would be helpful if anyone could wholly rewrite the section. ΟυώρντΑρτ (talk) 13:22, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 27 July 2022

Aramaic → Aramaic languages – ISO sees Aramaic as a language family or group assigning the ISO 639-5 code arc to it as can be seen in the infobox. The individual language behind the ISO 639-3 code arc is since May 2007 named Imperial Aramaic. According to WP:NCLANG "Language families and groups of languages are pluralized". S.K. (talk) 02:09, 27 July 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 04:15, 3 August 2022 (UTC)— Relisting. —usernamekiran (talk) 13:33, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose. Compare Arabic and Varieties of Arabic, or Chinese language (singular) and Varieties of Chinese. There was Aramaic (singular) and over time dialects diverged into languages. We have Neo-Aramaic languages for the modern language family. Srnec (talk) 03:01, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The one language that you see as the root language IMHO is described in Imperial Aramaic. But the article we’re talking about is about all of those (ancient and modern) languages together. S.K. (talk) 14:50, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    There was Aramaic before Imperial Aramaic.
    When I click on ISO 639-5, I am told that it is "highly incomplete".
    Our current approach is matched by the Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage.
    In short, I don't see a need to complicate the title, especially when we have the Chinese precedent. Srnec (talk) 22:03, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    That ISO 639-5 is incomplete might well be, but the case we’re talking about is handled there. And it says: it’s not a single language.
    And regarding Chinese language, I think it’s a bad example: From a linguistic perspective it’s a language family as can be seen in the first sentence already: "Chinese is a group of languages that form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages family" and later "Due to their lack of mutual intelligibility, however, they are classified as separate languages in a family by linguists, who note that the languages are as divergent as the Romance languages." Only that "The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be variants of a single language." S.K. (talk) 04:42, 30 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The reason that we don't open this article that way is because we have a different name and a separate article for the still spoken languages: Neo-Aramaic languages. Chinese today is as important as at any point in the past, but the same is not true of Aramaic, which was a major language in the past and a minor one today. Thus, the emphases of the articles differ. Srnec (talk) 17:48, 30 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Could I just interject in the conversation between the two of you? Why is there so much emphasis on what goes on in other articles? Ok, consistency might be a minor consideration, but overwhelmingly...WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS/WP:OTHERCONTENT. Surely the issue is primarily about whether the WP:RS refer to this as a language or a group of languages. Why is there no discussion about that? DeCausa (talk) 20:40, 30 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @DeCausa: Because, as you yourself pointed out below, there is no objective test of what is a dialect and what is a language, from which it follows that there is no objective test of what is a single language (i.e., family of dialects) and what is a language family (i.e., a family of languages). "Aramaic language" is incontestably more common than the plural phrase, but that doesn't really settle anything, since the nom is arguing that this article isn't about the singular Aramaic language. The GEDSH article I cited just moves from talking about The Aramaic language... to the Aramaic languages without explanation. I agree with Ajax below that we do not have to resolve this in the title. Moreover, the NCLANG guideline seems to agree with this reasoning when it says that X languages is preferred over X language family because it leaves the actual nature of the grouping ... an open question, which saves us from nit-picking about the article title. Srnec (talk) 02:59, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Maybe there’s no final clear test for what is a language and what is not. But in these cases we follow scholarly consensus. And as you pointed out even in "your" reference Aramaic is seen as a group of languages: "Aramaic itself consists of a great number of language forms (and indeed languages), spoken and written in many different scripts over a period of 3000 years. […] Among the Aramaic languages Syriac is by far the best documented language." S.K. (talk) 11:37, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, tentatively. What we should be looking at is how it is/they are treated by the RS, rather than other WP articles/lists. ISO is one thing to look at but is not determinant by any means. Having looked at Google books, I have the impression it is treated as a group rather than a single language, e.g.: [1], [2], [3], [4]. However, this is not an area of expertise for me and would welcome evidence from someone with better knowledge of the scholarly literature - happy to change my !vote if warranted. DeCausa (talk) 06:55, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as unnecessarily precise. The current title "unambiguously define[s] the topical scope of the article" and does not preclude Aramaic being a language family. Its advantage is that the arguments above don't need to be settled here. —  AjaxSmack  00:13, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Bingo. Srnec (talk) 02:59, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    If you continue reading it says "Exceptions to the precision criterion may sometimes result from the application of some other naming criteria. Most of these exceptions are described in specific Wikipedia guidelines". And we do have NCLANG which is clear about using the plural for language families. And this whole discussion shows the precision is needed: Is someone talking about the whole group of languages or only about one language like e.g. Imperial Aramaic. S.K. (talk) 06:48, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per AjaxSmack. It's clear enough as is, and it's no more a language family than English is - the subdivisions are about as different as Australian English is to Indian English and the like to my knowledge, they're mutually intelligible. SnowFire (talk) 21:57, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    At the moment we have one international standard and five reliable sources seeing Aramaic as a group of languages. We have articles in Wikipedia describing subsets of the languages and language varieties described in this article as independent languages (each with their own sources). Therefore I'm interested in the reliable sources that support the view you describe.
    Aramaic language used to describe the Official or Imperial Aramaic in ISO 639-3 before 2007. So Aramaic should be a DAB page of the form
    Aramaic might refer to
    with the other meanings at Aramaic (disambiguation) included.
    This would help getting a clear picture, if a link is to the whole group of languages or just one variant/language existing at a particular point in time or spoken by a particular group. S.K. (talk) 16:20, 3 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Just found one more source: Glottolog
    Reference for the classification given is: Huehnergard, John; Rubin, Aaron D. (2011). "Phyla and Waves: Models of Classification of the Semitic Languages". In Weninger, Stefan (ed.). The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 259–278.
    S.K. (talk) 17:17, 3 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. While I think the underlying point is sound, I don't think it necessitates that we change the title of the article. When groups of closely related languages are frequently referred to by a shared name, there's precedent for us just using the bare name to refer to the group – consider Arabic or Nahuatl, for instance. In my view, it'd be more helpful to discuss the language-vs-group status of Aramaic in the article body, while leaving the title as is. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 19:37, 3 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    So we’re in agreement that up to now all reliable sources provided are seeing Aramaic as a group of languages/language family. We’re only discussing if the title should be Aramaic or Aramaic languages.
    But then I don’t see, why we should follow the very few exception precedents when NCLANG says different and we have plenty precedence for following NCLANG in Category:Language families.
    • Chinese is a precedent of "A language is a language family with one army and one flag" (not applicable here).
    • "Nahuatl … is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages": Not applicable here.
    • Arabic is described in its article and in Classification of Arabic languages more as a language with varieties than a language family. Assuming this is scholary consensus, the example would not be applicable as well.
    In summary I’m not convinced by the arguments for keeping the title as Aramaic. S.K. (talk) 17:50, 4 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Simple "Aramaic" and "Aramaic language" (singular) are vastly more common than the plural. See, e.g., Aramaic: A History of the First World Language, described by its publisher as "the first complete history of Aramaic from its origins to the present day." I don't agree with the suggestion above that Imperial Aramaic be described as a member of the Aramaic languages. I would prefer to say that it is a stage (and perhaps written register) in the history of Aramaic. Do Old English, Middle English and Modern English constitute a language family? Srnec (talk) 21:01, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I‘m surprised that given you‘re statements that it’s so hard to come up with WP:RS that support your point. Glottolog is based on scholary sources by a renowned research institution and used for the majority of Wikipedia language articles as reference. I‘d expected better arguments than „I don’t agree“. S.K. (talk) 08:28, 13 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    From the volume just cited: "we can speak about Aramaic as one entity". Srnec (talk) 17:00, 14 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for the quote, but it always helps reading on (bold from me):

    The overarching concept of Aramaic, strictly a historical-linguistic abstraction, is made more concrete by various terms for the various Aramaic languages (or dialects, where we are mainly dealing with regional vernaculars without a written tradition; the neutral term variety includes both categories). […] Or scholars use the same terms to refer to different historical periods, as with "Old Aramaic" or "Imperial Aramaic." Others still are just misleading, such as "Modern Syriac" for the modern spoken languages, which do not directly descend from Syriac. When discussing what a certain word or phrase is "in Aramaic" then, we always have to specify which period, region, or culture is meant unlike Classical Latin, for instance.

    — Gzella, Holger. Aramaic. A History of the First World Language. p. 4. ISBN 9780802877482.
    BTW, on the previous page there’s a footnote referencing the article "Phyla and Waves" given above as reference from Glottolog.
    How more clear do we need a reference? S.K. (talk) 05:53, 15 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    It's ironic that Gzella should speak of "Classical Latin", which differs from Latin in that the latter may also refer to Medieval Latin, Renaissance Latin, or New Latin. Should Latin be a dab page linking to all these articles and the article currently at Latin moved to Latin languages? I think that would do a disservice to readers (see my reply below). ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 22:12, 15 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    It’s ironic, that you use (as was done already multiple times in this discussion) an WP:OTHERCONTENT argument, when there’s a WP:RS cited on the concrete point of the discussion that in it’s last sentence explicitly states (translated from English to Wikipedian): "Aramaic is a word that needs disambiguation".
    But to take up that point anyway: Latin is described in its article as one language with different historical varieties, while Aramaic is described by all WP:RS presented up to now and also by Gzella as a language family:

    For the most part, Aramaic is thus studied as a crucial but subservient element in several well-established, mainly philological and historical disciplines and social sciences. Even in the academic world, only few people see any inherent value that transcends the disciplinary boundaries in this language family.

    — Gzella, Aramaic. p. 5
    So the other case is again not applicable/comparable to the point we’re discussing here. S.K. (talk) 02:36, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Gzella says that when discussing a particular 'Aramaic' word or phrase it should always be specified which variety of Aramaic we're talking about. But that is actually also true for discussing a particular 'Arabic' word or phrase, and to an extent even for discussing a certain 'Latin' word or phrase. What Gzella doesn't say is that when discussing, e.g., more general traits of Aramaic, or languages in general, one always needs to speak of 'Foo Aramaic' or 'Bar Aramaic', and never simply of 'Aramaic'.
    But yes, Aramaic might be different from Arabic and Latin. It's certainly true that Arabic and Latin are not normally called language families. But what you seem to be missing the whole time here is that Gzella and other sources do commonly call that language family 'Aramaic'. It's simply a common name. It doesn't matter for our purposes that it refers both to a language and a language family: we can explain that in our article. What you would need to show to make your point is that scholars more often use "Aramaic languages" then "Aramaic" to refer to the phenomenon. But they don't. They say 'Aramaic', then carefully specify that it may refer to multiple languages, only to go on and use 'Aramaic', satisfied that the ambiguity has been clarified. This is simply conventional use of words, and we should follow that. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 20:36, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    What you seem to be missing is we’re not talking about language usage in general where from a pragmatic or efficiency point of view one can and does use a simplified form such as 'Aramaic' to refer to the language family or one of its varieties. Inside the article 'Aramaic languages' for example it’s absolutely acceptable to do so.
    But we’re discussing the title of the article which sets/establishes the context you’re talking about: Is the article about the language family as a whole or is the article about one of the language varieties for which the common name 'Aramaic' is used as well? And for setting this context/deciding the title WP:NCLANG#Languages families is very clear: "Language families and groups of languages are pluralized".
    So no, not I have to establish why the title should be 'Aramaic languages' but it is up to those arguing for a different title to justify why this convention shouldn’t be followed. And all attempts like referring OTHERCONTENT failed to convince.
    With it being established that Aramaic is referring both to the language family as well as individual varieties of it, even the argument from AjaxSmack about WP:PRECISION fails because the statement "Usually, titles should unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but should be no more precise than that" already fails the precondition of "titles should unambiguously define the topical scope of the article" if Aramaic would be the title. S.K. (talk) 22:12, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per AjaxSmack, and per the fact that 'Aramaic' is very commonly used to refer to any of its variants. It would help though if the lead would sooner and more clearly specify that it's also a language family. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 10:17, 11 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    But if we have one word that has multiple meanings, we’ve a concept for that: WP:DAB. S.K. (talk) 18:05, 13 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure, but the other topics (Imperial Aramaic, Eastern Aramaic, Syriac, Mandaic, Neo-Aramaic, etc.) are already naturally disambiguated from Aramaic. Only if there would be a need to have two separate articles Aramaic (language) and Aramaic (language family) would we need a dab page. Again, it's like Arabic: the term may in principle refer to any of its variants, but anyone who would want to specify that would speak of Egyptian Arabic, etc. Would it make sense to turn Arabic into a dab page and move that article to Arabic languages? Wouldn't that create a wrong impression that there is no one language commonly called 'Arabic'? Now I'm not familiar enough with Aramaic to be sure whether the situation is entirely comparable here, but it would seem to be so to me? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 07:26, 14 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    If you look at the quote above in everyday language it’s often unclear what exactly is meant with "Aramaic“. So while there would be distinct names, often the usage is not that sharp. A DAB page would force the users to be precise: are they meaning the language family or are they meaning one of the varieties? S.K. (talk) 09:49, 15 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Do you mean that it would force editors to be more precise? Because that would indeed be a significant advantage, but it would also contravene the generally acknowledged principle that readers come first. Readers looking for Aramaic may be better served by a broad-concept article that clearly explains in the lead that Aramaic is a language with many varieties, linking to all of them. See Wikipedia:Broad-concept article: A disambiguation page should not be created just because it is difficult to write an article on a topic that is broad, vague, abstract, or highly conceptual. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 22:12, 15 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The aramaic language is one language with variuous dialects

The Aramaic language is one language with various dialects. Syriac is the best development of Aramaic. However the dialects of Aramaic are at the end one language.

Same with Arabic. Arabic is another language with various dialects. However it is one and the same language at the end. 89.205.139.73 (talk) 10:04, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Without any WP:reliable sources this is at the moment just an opinion. Would be good if you could back up your view with appropriate references. Thanks. S.K. (talk) 14:46, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Famously, there is no objective test of what is a dialect and what is a language. It’s a continuum. DeCausa (talk) 17:37, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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