The Age of the Peshitta

[SteveCaruso]

Slight differences in dialect shouldn't make someone get all up in arms. I'm sure an Assyrian could understand a Galilean means when he says "d'b'smaya" instead of "d'b'shmaya". It's a very minute, albeit noticeable, difference in dialect.

The Shin/Sin difference is actually a holdover from an earlier form of Aramaic, where there were significantly more phonemes. It's etymological in nature, only occurring in certain words that in Old Aramaic that had Sin as one of their radicals, so it's not a simple substitution. A good example would be the word "Israel." In dialects that lost Sin it's spelled with a semkath/samek, where in dialects that preserve Sin it's spelled with Shin. In Tiberian vocalization, there would be a dot placed on the left arm of the Shin to indicate this; in Palestinian vocalization a small samek was written there, or a dot was placed in the right crook instead. There is no way to mark this in Classical Syriac notation, as that dialect didn't distinguish between Shin and Sin and had no need, and as a result simply substituted Semkath for Shin in all cases.

If we're looking for more marked differences between Galilean and Classical Syriac (as an example) that are used very often in speech, pronouns and /)it]/ compounds are probably much better examples. They'd certainly be intelligible with some confusion, but be very distinctly different (which was even recorded as the case in the New Testament). The Judean Aramaic speaking Rabbim in Jerusalem saw Galilean Aramaic just as hardline English professors see "Ebonics" (and some even had similar contempt) because of this.

Caruso,
Due to your inner deceitful nature, I always demand examples even if I know about it. You strain out gnats but swallow a camel.

I cannot help but feel that the only examples you're looking for are ways to be nasty to me. "Inner deceitful nature?" Those are not edifying words. What is feeding this vitriol? <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/huh.gif" alt="" title="Huh" /><!-- s -->