Eastern Middle Aramaic

Aramaic
ܐܪܡܝܐ‎, ארמיא Arāmāyā
Geographic distribution	Fertile Crescent, Eastern Arabia
Linguistic classification	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Northwest Semitic Aramaic
Early form	Old Aramaic (900–700 BC)
Subdivisions	Eastern Aramaic Western Aramaic
ISO 639-2 / 5
Linguasphere	12-AAA
Glottolog	aram1259
Arāmāyā in Syriac Esṭrangelā script

Aramaic (אַרָמָיָא Arāmāyā, Syriac: ܐܪܡܝܐ‎, Arabic آرامية) is a Middle Eastern language or group of languages belonging to the Semitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic language family. More specifically, it is part of the Northwest Semitic group, which also includes the Canaanite languages such as Hebrew and Phoenician. The Aramaic alphabet was widely adopted for other languages and is ancestral to the Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic alphabets.

During its approximately 3100 years of written history, Aramaic has served variously as a language of administration of empires and as a language of divine worship, as well as the spoken tongue of a number of Semitic peoples from the Near East.

It rose to prominence when it became the lingua franca of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC), and then the succeeding Neo-Babylonian Empire (605–539 BC), Achaemenid Empire (539–323 BC), Parthian Empire (247 BC–224 AD), and the Sasanian Empire (224–651), and of the states of post-imperial Assyria (Assur, Adiabene, Osroene, Beth Nuhadra, Beth Garmai and Hatra); the Aramean state of Palmyra, and the day-to-day language of Yehud Medinata and of Roman Judaea (539 BC – 70 AD). It was the language of Jesus and John the Baptist, who spoke a Western Aramaic language during his public ministry, as well as the language of large sections of the biblical books of Daniel and Ezra, and also the main language of the Talmud.