O.T and N.T. Aramaic

[Paul Younan]

No matter how old an inscription in Aramaic that they find on an excavation, I still can read it very easily. Some people make way too much out of variances in time and place. The language is still the same language.

Just to have a *little* fun with that, how would you Akhi -- off the cuff -- translate the following?

YHB )LY(ZR )DM (L QRYBWY WMN YD HW) PRY$ BNHRH DNGYD LNYS XLMYYH WTMN (L GYPYH )YNHR DXMH

(No peeking at a dictionary [I *will* be able to tell if you did :-) ] and this makes use of phraseology common to a single classical dialect.)

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Shlama Akhi Steven,

At a disadvantage, "Off the cuff", without reference to time and place (and, especially context) I would have read this phrase as:

"Gave Eliezar the man to his relatives, and at hand became separated in the river that streches/is elevated to "the point of dreams""?, and there upon the bank was revealed his anguish/warmth ?....." (not sure of these words without further context - the phrase "d'ngyd l'nys khlmayyeh" could very well also be an idiom meaning "to expound on the interpretation of dreams" - again, without context, it is hard to tell - and an unfair tactic to have employed by you!)

Now, for a little fun of my own, let's see how much better you do with an old English phrase (no peeking at dictionaries, not that I would be able to tell, but that I trust you!" (I'm not testing you in old English, merely pointing out how much more the English language has changed in a much shorter span of time.)

Here is the phrase:

he aerist scop aelda barnum

Can you make anything out of that .... "off the cuff?" Even one word ? And how much older is the text you gave me, than the one above? Well, probably at least 1,500 years. And I would wager that I read more than you did, off the cuff.

+Shamasha

Notes: I never claimed Aramaic is monolithic, that's silly and goes against everything I've ever said here ... only relatively so compared to other languages like English. I said I can read it very easily, even in your latin characters above. Understanding a text takes more than just picking a phrase out of context, from an unnamed source.

Also, the point about "men yad", or "set sail" being a localised idiom is important - not to the reading of the text, but to the interpretation. Local idioms exist in modern Aramaic, even from village to village within the same family of dialects. Having local idioms does not a new language make.

Finally, just throwing out consonants without reference to time and place puts me at the disadvantage of not knowing, for instance, whether or not the daleth or lamedh which preceeds a word can be understood as a proclitic. Or, how to properly decipher possession/gender/number suffixes. While I do appreciate your challenge, no one really can translate something like that, with 100% accuracy.

Inscriptions/manuscripts are found in a certain location and dated, then they are translated based in large part on those pesky little nuances. One can hardly base decisions of etymology on such scant information.