Samaritan Hebrew () is a reading tradition used liturgically by the
Samaritans
Samaritans (; ; he, שומרונים, translit=Šōmrōnīm, lit=; ar, السامريون, translit=as-Sāmiriyyūn) are an ethnoreligious group who originate from the ancient Israelites. They are native to the Levant and adhere to Samarit ...
for reading the
Ancient Hebrew language of the
Samaritan Pentateuch
The Samaritan Torah (Samaritan Hebrew: , ''Tōrāʾ''), also called the Samaritan Pentateuch, is a text of the Torah written in the Samaritan script and used as sacred scripture by the Samaritans. It dates back to one of the ancient versions ...
, in contrast to
Tiberian Hebrew
Tiberian Hebrew is the canonical pronunciation of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) committed to writing by Masoretic scholars living in the Jewish community of Tiberias in ancient Galilee under the Abbasid Caliphate. They wrote in the form of Tiberia ...
among the Jews.
For the Samaritans, Ancient Hebrew ceased to be a spoken everyday language and was succeeded by
Samaritan Aramaic
Samaritan Aramaic, or Samaritan, was the dialect of Aramaic used by the Samaritans in their sacred and scholarly literature. This should not be confused with the Samaritan Hebrew language of the Scriptures. Samaritan Aramaic ceased to be a ...
, which itself ceased to be a spoken language some time between the 10th and 12th centuries and was succeeded by
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
(or more specifically
Samaritan Palestinian Arabic).
The
phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
of Samaritan Hebrew is very similar to that of
Samaritan Arabic, and is used by the Samaritans in prayer. Today, 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
Shechem ( ), also spelled Sichem ( ; he, שְׁכֶם, ''Šəḵem''; ; grc, Συχέμ, Sykhém; Samaritan Hebrew: , ), was a Canaanite and Israelite city mentioned in the Amarna Letters, later appearing in the Hebrew Bible as the first c ...
(i.e.
Nablus, in Palestine's
Area A).
History and discovery
The Samaritan language first became known in detail to the Western world with the publication of a manuscript of the
Samaritan Pentateuch
The Samaritan Torah (Samaritan Hebrew: , ''Tōrāʾ''), also called the Samaritan Pentateuch, is a text of the Torah written in the Samaritan script and used as sacred scripture by the Samaritans. It dates back to one of the ancient versions ...
in 1631 by
Jean Morin. In 1616 the traveler
Pietro della Valle had purchased a copy of the text in
Damascus, and this manuscript, now known as Codex B, was deposited in a
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...
ian 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 was a language shared with the other residents of the region before it was supplanted by Aramaic.
Orthography
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
Phoenician alphabet
The Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet (more specifically, an abjad) known in modern times from the Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. The name comes from the Phoenician civilization.
The Phoenician a ...
.
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
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...
, employ the later
square Hebrew alphabet
The Hebrew alphabet ( he, אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish ...
, which is in fact a variation of the
Aramaic alphabet
The ancient Aramaic alphabet was adapted by Arameans from the Phoenician alphabet and became a distinct script by the 8th century BC. It was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian tribes throughout the Fer ...
that
Jews
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...
began using in the
Babylonian captivity
The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile is the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon, the capital city of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, following their def ...
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
The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Based in Western Asia, it was contemporarily the largest em ...
for
Imperial Aramaic, its chancellery script
while the Samaritans continued to use 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.
Samaritan Hebrew letter pronunciation
Consonants
Vowels
Phonology
Consonants
Samaritan Hebrew shows the following consonantal differences from Biblical Hebrew: The original phonemes do not have spirantized allophones, though at least some did originally in Samaritan Hebrew (evidenced in the preposition "in" ב- or ). has shifted to (except occasionally > ). has shifted to everywhere except in the conjunction ו- 'and' where it is pronounced as . has merged with , unlike in all other contemporary Hebrew traditions in which it is pronounced . The laryngeals have become or null everywhere, except before where sometimes become . is sometimes pronounced as , though not in Pentateuch reading, as a result of influence from Samaritan Arabic.
may also be pronounced as , but this occurs only rarely and in fluent reading.
Vowels
Phonemic length is contrastive, e.g. רב 'great' vs. רחב 'wide'.
[ (while Ben-Hayyim notates four degrees of vowel length, he concedes that only his "fourth degree" has phonemic value)] Long vowels are usually the result of the elision of guttural consonants.
and are both realized as in closed post-tonic syllables, e.g. בית 'house' הבית 'the house' גר הגר.
In other cases, stressed shifts to when that syllable is no longer stressed, e.g. דברתי but דברתמה .
and only contrast in open post-tonic syllables, e.g. ידו 'his hand' ידיו 'his hands', where stems from a contracted diphthong.
In other environments, appears in closed syllables and in open syllables, e.g. דור דורות .
Stress
Stress generally differs from other traditions, being found usually on the penultimate and sometimes on the ultimate.
Grammar
Pronouns
Personal
Demonstrative
Relative
Who, which: éšar.
Interrogative
* Who? = mi.
*What? = ma.
Noun
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".
Article
The
definite article
An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech.
In English, both "the" and "a(n)" ...
is a- or e-, and causes
gemination
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...
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".
Number
Regular plural suffixes are
* masc: -êm (Judean Hebrew -im)
** eyyamêm "the days"
* fem: -ôt (Judean Hebrew: -oth.)
** elamôt "dreams"
Dual is sometimes -ayem (Judean Hebrew: a′yim), šenatayem "two years", usually -êm like the plural yédêm "hands" (Judean Hebrew ''yadhayim''.)
Tradition of Divine name
Samaritans have 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" .
Verbs
Particles
Prepositions
"in, using", pronounced:
* b- before a vowel (or, therefore, a former guttural): b-érbi = "with a sword"; b-íštu "with his wife".
* ba- before a
bilabial consonant: bá-bêt (Judean Hebrew: ba-ba′yith) "in a house", ba-mádbar "in a wilderness"
* ev- before other consonant: ev-lila "in a night", ev-dévar "with the thing".
* ba-/be- before the
definite article
An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech.
In English, both "the" and "a(n)" ...
("the"): barrášet (Judean Hebrew: Bere'·shith') "in the beginning"; béyyôm "in the day".
"as, like", pronounced:
* ka without the article: ka-demútu "in his likeness"
* ke with the article: ké-yyôm "like the day".
"to" pronounced:
* l- before a vowel: l-ávi "to my father", l-évad "to the slave"
* el-, al- before a consonant: al-béni "to the children (of)"
* le- before l: le-léket "to go"
* l- before the article: lammúad "at the appointed time"; la-şé'on "to the flock"
"and" pronounced:
* w- before consonants: wal-Šárra "and to Sarah"
* u- before vowels: u-yeššeg "and he caught up".
Other prepositions:
* al: towards
* elfáni: before
* bêd-u: for him
* elqérôt: against
* balêd-i: except me
Conjunctions
* u: or
* em: if, when
* avel: but
Adverbs
* la: not
* kâ: also
* afu: also
* ín-ak: you are not
* ífa (ípa): where?
* méti: when
* fâ: here
* šémma: there
* mittét: under
References
Bibliography
*J. Rosenberg, ''Lehrbuch der samaritanischen Sprache und Literatur'', A. Hartleben's Verlag: Wien, Pest, Leipzig.
*
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External links
*
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{{Authority control
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
Canaanite languages
Language and mysticism
Samaritan culture and history