Linguists, how close is Arabic to Aramaic? I was told modern day Arabic speakers can understand Aramaic.?

Question

i understood Arabic to be a very ancient language, and that accounts for its immense vocabulary. But if the language is less than 2000 years old, it's not so ancient. How old is Aramaic? Would this account for the highly developed Arabic language? Please don't refer me to Wikipedia, their information is limited.

Nobody is actually answering my questions

Aramaic was not a jewish language, it was the common language of all the people in the area. Please read my actual question

Taivo, please check your facts before pontificating. Arabic speakers understand a great deal of Aramaic, as they can understand a great deal of Hebrew. i would like to trust your input, so please take care before providing erroneous information,

Answer 1

According to linguist Alice Faber (citing well known semitic linguists Robert Hetzron and John Huehnergard), Aramaic is part of the Northwest Semitic family, making its closest relatives Hebrew, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Moabite, Ammonite, and a few other Canaanite languages. Using the family metaphor, these languages are like first cousings of Aramaic. Arabic, on the other hand, would be more like a second cousin, meaning that Northwest Semitic languages and Arabic have an older common ancestor, namely Central Semitic (according to Faber). Therefore, Aramaic and Arabic are about as close as English and German.
You rightly point out that Aramaic is an older language with a history going back about 3,000 years, while Arabic dates back only about 1500 years. Before Arabic came around, Aramaic was the lingua franca of the Middle East, meaning it was the official language of business and communication (similar to the way English is used all over the world today). However, with the rise of Islam and the Arab conquest of the Middle East (7th & 8th centuries CE) Arabic replaced Aramaic as the lingua franca. Aramaic has survived until today only in small pockets of minorities, and is generally considered to be an endangered language.
Arabic is such a 'developed' language because it has been spoken continously by millions of people in many parts of the world since the Arab conquest. As Arabic came in contact with many different peoples and languages, it borrowed words and phrases from these languages, which contributed to the richness of its vocabulary. Just as Latin of the conquering Romans was changed in different parts of Europe, to the point that it became a group of different languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, etc.), so today there are many different Arabic dialects (Egyptian, Iraqi, Saudi, etc.) each with its own unique vocabulary, phonology, and syntax.
As for some Arabic speakers being able to understand Aramaic, I would imagine that this is because the minority Aramaic speakers would have borrowed many words from their Arabic speaking rulers over the centuries, perhaps making it possible for Arabic speakers to partly understand Aramaic.

Answer 2

Arabic (meaning Modern Standard Arabic and not the colloquial languages) and Aramaic are not as closely related as are Norwegian and English. The time depth for the separation of Norwegian and English from their common ancestor is about 2500 years. The time depth for the separation of Aramaic and Arabic from their common ancestor is more on the range of 4-5 thousand years. So the statement that modern Arabic speakers can understand Aramaic is false. They may recognize certain borrowed words and an occasional related vocabulary item, but understanding is impossible. All modern languages are equally "ancient". What the term "ancient" really means is the writing system. The earliest Aramaic documents are from about 1000 BC. The earliest Arabic documents are about a thousand years (or more) later than that (I'm not certain of the exact century, but it is after 100 AD). Aramaic and Arabic are nearly as distantly related as are English and Latin.

EDIT: "Understanding" is not being able to identify words in each language or even a phrase or two. Understanding is being able to carry on a conversation and comprehend extended texts in each other's languages. This is not possible between any of the Aramaic languages and "Arabic" (whether Modern Standard Arabic or one of the languages that comprise Spoken Arabic) and Hebrew. Since there are many common religious terms that have been borrowed between these languages, then discussions of religion may sound recognizable. However, trying to carry on a conversation about how to obtain food in the market or how to find a wife or how to build a barn are impossible between speakers of these languages.

Answer 3

The language closest to Aramaic spoken today is Assyrian. Assyrian speakers were used to help Mel Gibson write the screenplay for 'The Passion of the Christ'.

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Edit with additional information that I e-mailed the Asker, for the benefit of other users:

A few sites to tell you about the Assyrian language family:

http://www.assyrianlanguage.com/ (note especially the translations from the Book of Proverbs)

http://www.aina.org/aol/ (highly biased but gives both linguistic and cultural information)

http://www.nestorian.org/the_syriac_aramaic_assyrian_la.html (more concerned with the Nestorian religion than with the language but very comprehensive and including some useful linguistic info)

http://www.ethnologue.org/show_family.asp?subid=90041 (a site to show you just how complex the Aramaic language family is!)

Answer 4

Aramaic is actually the language closest to Hebrew. It was the language (or one) spoken by Jesus. It doesn't represent Arabic at all. Aramaic was before Hebrew, and is the ancient language of the Jews