Samaritan alphabet

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Samaritan alphabet
Type	Abjad
Spoken languages	Samaritan Hebrew, Samaritan Aramaic
Time period	600 BC–present
Parent systems	Proto-Canaanite alphabet  → Phoenician alphabet   → Paleo-Hebrew alphabet    → Samaritan alphabet
Unicode range	U+0800 to U+083F
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

History of the alphabet Middle Bronze Age 19 c. BCE Ugaritic 15 c. BCE Proto-Canaanite 15 c. BCE Phoenician 12 c. BCE Paleo-Hebrew 10 c. BCE Samaritan 6 c. BCE Aramaic 8 c. BCE Kharoṣṭhī 6 c. BCE Brāhmī & Indic 6 c. BCE (see Brahmic abugidas below) Hebrew 3 c. BCE Pahlavi 3 c. BCE Avestan 4 c. CE Palmyrene 2 c. BCE Syriac 2 c. BCE Sogdian 2 c. BCE Orkhon (Old Turkic) 6 c. CE Old Hungarian ca. 650 Old Uyghur Mongolian 1204 Nabataean 2 c. BCE Arabic 4 c. CE Mandaic 2 c. CE Georgian (disputed) ca. 430 CE Greek 8 c. BCE Etruscan 8 c. BCE Latin 7 c. BCE Runic 2 c. CE Coptic 3 c. CE Gothic 3 c. CE Armenian 405 Glagolitic 862 Cyrillic ca. 940 Paleohispanic 7 c. BCE Epigraphic South Arabian 9 c. BCE Ge’ez 5–6 c. BCE Meroitic 3 c. BCE Ogham 4 c. CE Hangul 1443 Zhuyin (Bopomofo) 1913 Brahmic-derived abugidas Northern Brāhmīc Gupta 5 c. BCE Mithilakshar 203 CE Siddhaṃ ca. 600 Tibetan ca. 650 ’Phagspa 1269 Lepcha 1700 Limbu 1740 Nāgarī ca. 750 Eastern Nāgarī Bengali ca. 1050 Assamese ca. 1050 Oriya ca. 1100 Devanāgarī ca. 1200 Ranjana ca. 1100 Newari ca. 1150 Moḍī ca. 1600 Gujarati ca. 1600 Cree 1841 Carrier 1885 Inuktitut 1870 Blackfoot 19 c. Sayisi Śāradā 770 Laṇḍā 10 c. Old Kashmiri Gurmukhī 1539 Takri Bhujimol (Old Nepal) 10 c. Ranjana 12 c. Soyombo 17 c. Prachalit Nepal Southern Brāhmīc Tamil-Brahmi 5 c. BCE Vatteluttu 4 c. BCE Pallava 6 c. CE Grantha 6 c. Sinhala 7 c. Tamil 8 c. CE Saurashtra 20 c. Malayalam 12 c. Tulu 15 c. Old Kawi 775 Balinese Javanese 9 c. Mon 9 c. Burmese 1050 Khmer 9 c. Thai 1283 Lao ca. 1350 Kadamba 5 c. Old Kannada 9 c. Kannada 16 c. Bhattiprolu Script ca. 400 BCE Telugu 16 c. Kalinga 6 c. CE Complete genealogy This box: view • talk • edit

The Samaritan alphabet is a direct descendant of the paleo-Hebrew variety of the Phoenician alphabet. The more commonly known "square letter" form of the Hebrew alphabet was adapted from the Aramaic alphabet which the Israelites absorbed from the Persian Empire.

Large parts of the Hebrew Bible were originally penned in script similar to Samaritan. Among the Jews it saw a short revival during the Hasmonean Kingdom. The Tetragrammaton was often still written in this script for some time after the current Hebrew alphabet was adopted among the Jews.

Today, it is used by the Samaritans for religious writings, including their (slightly different) version of the Pentateuch. It is used by them for writings in their dialect of Hebrew (Samaritan Hebrew) and also for commentaries and translations in Samaritan Aramaic and even Arabic.

On 8 February 2008, the Samaritan alphabet was accepted for inclusion in Unicode at code points 0800–083F. [1]

[edit] External links

• Script - on the Samaritan alphabet and writings in it.
• Omniglot.com - Samaritan alphabet

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