How Similar Are Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic?

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In this episode I examine Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic – the languages of the Hebrew Bible (or "Old Testament") – and see how similar they are!

In this video I did my best to pronounce Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic with their original full range of phonemes, including sound distinctions that you won't hear in Modern Hebrew. If you know some Modern Hebrew (or a modern form of Aramaic) the pronunciation in this video will sound different. I'm sure I didn't do it perfectly, but I tried to make it as authentic as possible.

Creative Commons images used in this video:

Commercial images licensed from Shutterstock.com

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction
00:19 Brief history
01:14 General similarities between Biblical Hebrew & Aramaic
03:05 Similar cognate vocabulary
03:51 MyHeritage (the sponsor of this episode)
06:42 Sound correspondences between Hebrew and Aramaic cognates
09:13 Differences in grammar
15:31 Comparing an Aramaic Bible verse with Hebrew translation
20:34 Comparing an Aramaic Targum verse with the Hebrew original