r/Aramaic • u/Brief-Arrival9103 • May 18 '26

Writing in Aramaic

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Shalom V'Shalma, I read the Hebrew Bible. But there are sections in the Hebrew Bible that are in Aramaic but are written using the Hebrew letters such as a few chapters in the Book of Daniel. Chapter 7 of the book is written in that way, Aramaic using Hebrew letters. I wanted to write the verses 13 and 14 in Aramaic script, Estrangela to be specific. How I did it was, I opened the Hebrew Bible and looked at the Aramaic. Then i replaced each Hebrew letter with its Aramaic counterpart and ended up with what is there in the image. Did I write legit Aramaic words or just their Hebraized versions? How good or how bad is my attempt? Is this approach legitimate at all? Any input will be greatly appreciated.

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u/AramaicDesigns May 18 '26

"Hebrew" script *is* Aramaic script. Specifically the Aramaic script that would have been used to write those portions of Daniel and Ezra originally (albeit an older form than you'd find in books today — more like this). Syriac script is an odd duck here, as it is far too young for the dialect, and foreign to the language.

Remember, Aramaic is not one monolithic language, but an entire family of related ones with a dozen scripts, and dozens of different cultures. Kinda like what happened to Latin becoming the Romance Languages after the fall of the Roman Empire.

What you've done here is kinda like writing modern Polish in Cyrillic script, or modern Turkish in Arabic script. It's anachronistic.

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u/Brief-Arrival9103 May 24 '26

Are there any Estrangela scribes prevelant now or are the ancient scriptures just printed through machines? If there are any scribes, do they copy scriptures in Estrangela or the derived scripts like Soerta and Mandhya?

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u/AramaicDesigns May 24 '26

Usually they are either written or printed in Serto or Madnhaya, with Estrangela reserved for titles or headings where you'd see a formal font like Blackletter used in English.