Saturday, January 22, 2011

Samaritan Hebrew Language


I use to scribble the Samaritan alphabets quiet often but not tried to write it as a calligraphic piece. After having an acquaintance with the language recently by seeing an article in the net about the language I thought of putting it up in paper using my pen.

 

It is written “Bereshit”( which means “In the beginning”) in Samaritan Hebrew language, as it is a beginning of  Samaritan Calligraphy, Bereshit is the most apt word. The Samaritan alphabet is the dialect of Old Hebrew or so called Paleo Hebrew, the alphabet was derived by the Samaritans. The characters or the alphabet, according to scholars is similar to the alphabet used for Torah before square Hebrew or Assyrian characters were introduced. The Samaritans themselves claim descent from the northern tribes of Israel. 
The Samaritan alphabet is still used by a few Samaritans in the city of Nablus and in the Samaritan quarter of Holon. This is a consonant alphabet, and vowels indicated with diacritics. And it is written from right to left in horizontal lines like Arabic and Hebrew.  Samaritan, an extinct Semitic language which is no longer a mother tongue, But it is still used to a limited extent as a liturgical language.The language is similar to Hebrew, but the pronunciation of Samaritans doesn’t give stress to the letters א, ע,ח , ה they uses only the letter ש as “sheen” and not “seen”. And some more difference like this do exists.
 
Hope i can go with more of Samaritan Calligraphy.and i will be coming up with more different calligraphies.

1 comment:

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