How it works
The Aramaic alphabet to copy, letter by letter: the 22 letters in order, each with its name and the Hebrew letter it matches, then the signs for numbers. It is written from right to left.
Read the full guide
No vowels, right to left
No letter is a vowel and the script has no vowel marks. Three letters can also stand for a long vowel: Alaf, Waw and Yod. Paste two letters side by side and the second lands to the left of the first.
The letters behind Hebrew
The Hebrew alphabet has the same letters as the Imperial Aramaic script of the 5th century BC, most of them in nearly the same shapes, which is why each tile carries a Hebrew letter. Scholars mostly print Aramaic texts in Hebrew type for that reason. The Syriac alphabet descends from Aramaic too, and so, by way of Nabataean, does the Arabic one.
- 55 is five signs added up, 20, 20, 10, 3 and 2: 𐡜𐡜𐡛𐡚𐡙.
- Kaf, Mim, Nun, Pe and Sade each match two Hebrew letters: the second is the final form of the first.
- A device with no font for this script shows empty boxes; the Hebrew letter under each tile still reads.
Questions and answers
How many letters are in the Aramaic alphabet?
22. Unicode adds eight number signs and a section sign, which makes the 31 characters of the Imperial Aramaic block, U+10840 to U+1085F, in the standard since version 5.2 of October 2009.
What do the Aramaic letters sound like?
The note of each letter gives its sound in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Six have a second sound: Beth, Gamal, Dalath, Kaf, Pe and Taw. Beth is [b] and also [β], later [v].
Is this the old Aramaic alphabet?
It is the ancient one as Unicode encodes it: the Imperial Aramaic script, from when Aramaic was the official language of the Achaemenid Persian empire. The earliest Aramaic inscriptions used the Phoenician alphabet; the Aramaic alphabet grew out of it by the 8th century BC.
Which Aramaic alphabet letters are used today?
Not these shapes. Biblical Aramaic and the Aramaic of the Talmud are written in the Hebrew alphabet, Syriac and the Christian Neo-Aramaic dialects in the Syriac alphabet, and Mandaic in the Mandaic alphabet.