Biblical Aramaic: the most common words

About 270 verses of the Old Testament are in Aramaic, the language of the Babylonian and Persian empires. It is a close cousin of Hebrew, so once you know some Hebrew, much of it looks familiar. These are the words you will meet most often.

Where the Bible is in Aramaic

• Daniel 2:4 to 7:28. The king’s wise men answer him “in Aramaic”, אֲרָמִית (Daniel 2:4), and the book stays in Aramaic to the end of chapter 7.
• Ezra 4:8 to 6:18, and 7:12–26. Letters to and from the Persian kings, copied in the language they were written in, with the story around them.
• Jeremiah 10:11. One verse, a message to the nations in their own language: the gods who did not make the heavens and the earth will perish.
• Genesis 31:47. Two words. Laban names the heap of stones יְגַר שָׂהֲדוּתָא, “heap of witness” in Aramaic, and Jacob calls it גַּלְעֵד, the same thing in Hebrew.

In all there are 4,828 Aramaic words: 3,599 in Daniel, 1,212 in Ezra, 15 in Jeremiah and 2 in Genesis.

What changes from Hebrew

• “The” goes on the end. Hebrew puts הַ in front of a word. Aramaic adds -ā at the end: מַלְכָּא is “the king” (Daniel 2:4).
• Plurals end in -īn. Where Hebrew says -īm, Aramaic says -īn: “forever” is לְעָלְמִין (Daniel 2:4).
• Some sounds shift. Where Hebrew has ז, Aramaic often has ד: זָהָב and דְּהַב, “gold”. Where Hebrew has שׁ, Aramaic often has ת: שָׁלֹשׁ and תְּלָת, “three”. Hebrew אֶרֶץ, “earth”, is Aramaic אֲרַע.
• “Son” is בַּר. Daniel sees “one like a son of man”, כְּבַר אֱנָשׁ (Daniel 7:13).
• Watch for false friends. שְׁכַח means “find”, not “forget” as in Hebrew. And דִּי, the most common word of all, does the work of Hebrew אֲשֶׁר, “who, which”.

The 130 most common words

These are all the words used 8 times or more, apart from names. Together they are 51% of all the Aramaic words in the Bible, so learning them gets you about halfway. Each is shown in its dictionary form. The last column is the Hebrew word it is related to, when there is one you are likely to know.

Counts are from the Westminster Leningrad Codex. The meanings are our own, checked against the standard lexicons.

Read it

In the app’s Read tab you can open Daniel 2 or Ezra 4 and tap any word, Hebrew or Aramaic, for its meaning.