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 version ...

, 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 Tiberian ...

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 languages, 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 ...

(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 Modern Hebrew ( he, עברית חדשה, ''ʿivrít ḥadašá ', , '' lit.'' "Modern Hebrew" or "New Hebrew"), also known as Israeli Hebrew or Israeli, and generally referred to by speakers simply as Hebrew ( ), is the standard form of the He ...

and

Palestinian Arabic Palestinian Arabic is a dialect continuum of mutually intelligible varieties of Levantine Arabic spoken by most Palestinians in Palestine, Israel and in the Palestinian diaspora. Together with Jordanian Arabic, it has the ISO 639-3 language cod ...

, 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 Nablus ( ; ar, نابلس, Nābulus ; he, שכם, Šəḵem, ISO 259-3: ; Samaritan Hebrew: , romanized: ; el, Νεάπολις, Νeápolis) is a Palestinian city in the West Bank, located approximately north of Jerusalem, with a populati ...

, in Palestine's

Area A Area is the quantity that expresses the extent of a region on the plane or on a curved surface. The area of a plane region or ''plane area'' refers to the area of a shape or planar lamina, while '' surface area'' refers to the area of an op ...

History and discovery

Samaritan letters and Jerusalem coin, Guillaume Postel 1538, Linguarum duodecim characteribus differentium alphabetum, introductio

The Samaritan language first became known in detail to the Western world with the publication of a manuscript of the

in 1631 by Jean Morin. In 1616 the traveler Pietro della Valle had purchased a copy of the text in

Damascus )), is an adjective which means "spacious". , motto = , image_flag = Flag of Damascus.svg , image_seal = Emblem of Damascus.svg , seal_type = Seal , map_caption = , ...

, 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. S ...

ian library. Between 1957 and 1977

Ze'ev Ben-Haim Ze'ev Wolf Goldman, later known as Ze'ev Ben-Haim ( he, זאב בן-חיים) (28 December 1907 – 6 August 2013), was a leading Israeli linguist and a former president of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. Biography Ben-Haim was born in ...

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 The Samaritan script is used by the Samaritans for religious writings, including the Samaritan Pentateuch, writings in Samaritan Hebrew, and for commentaries and translations in Samaritan Aramaic and occasionally Arabic. Samaritan is a direct ...

, 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 alpha ...

. 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""The ...

, employ the later square Hebrew alphabet, 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 Fertil ...

that

began using in the Babylonian captivity 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 Imperial Aramaic is a linguistic term, coined by modern scholars in order to designate a specific historical variety of Aramaic language. The term is polysemic, with two distinctive meanings, wider (sociolinguistic) and narrower ( dialectologi ...

, its chancellery script while the Samaritans continued to use the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, which evolved into the

. 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".

Segolate Segolates are words in the Hebrew language whose end is of the form CVCVC, where the penultimate vowel receives syllable stress. Such words are called "segolates" because the final unstressed vowel is typically (but not always) ''segol''. These w ...

s 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)" ar ...

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 s ...

of the following consonant, unless it is a

guttural Guttural speech sounds are those with a primary place of articulation near the back of the oral cavity, especially where it's difficult to distinguish a sound's place of articulation and its phonation. In popular usage it is an imprecise term fo ...

; 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 Divinity or the divine are things that are either related to, devoted to, or proceeding from a deity.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 In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a labial consonant articulated with both lips. Frequency Bilabial consonants are very common across languages. Only around 0.7% of the world's languages lack bilabial consonants altogether, including Tlingi ...

: 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

("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. * *

External links

* * {{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