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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| IceBoy Newbie United States Joined 5109 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes | Message 1 of 17 30 November 2010 at 7:04am | IP Logged | ||
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My mother set up her nativity in her house this year and one of the pieces had some
strange writing on it that I can't seem to find a translation for. I assumed it was some sort of Aramaic but have had no luck. For all i know, it could be nothing, but I'm hoping someone may be more familiar with it than I am. Thanks! :) 
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| RealJames Diglot Newbie Japan realizeenglish.com/ Joined 5125 days ago 37 posts - 42 votes Speaks: French, English* Studies: Japanese | Message 2 of 17 30 November 2010 at 8:27am | IP Logged | ||
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it looks kind of like the katakana
ロトリヒフリタコくロビ which means nothing, so... not japanese ^^; lol sorry can't help much Edited by RealJames on 30 November 2010 at 8:28am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5568 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 3 of 17 30 November 2010 at 9:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Looks like Aramaic... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_alphabet
No idea what it means though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5557 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 4 of 17 30 November 2010 at 11:19am | IP Logged | ||
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Looks like Aramaic to me too. Some of the symbols seem a bit confused though. :/
I've rarely seen Aramaic written in anything other than Hebrew and Syriac (or their corresponding transliteration schemes) before. I initially thought I recognised "Yeshua" or "light" in the sentence, but on second glance, I'm probably way off...lol Edited by Teango on 30 November 2010 at 11:27am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Qbe Tetraglot Senior Member United States joewright.org/var Joined 7136 days ago 289 posts - 335 votes Speaks: English*, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Japanese, German, Mandarin, Aramaic | Message 5 of 17 01 December 2010 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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The shin (4th from the left) is a dead giveaway. The script looks like a form of late Semitic (500BC - 100AD). That'd make sense on a Nativity scene.
I don't remember the scripts well enough (it's been 15 years since that ancient Hebrew inscriptions class), so I did a little digging using some old class notes, Levi's link to the Aramaic alphabet and these: http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/28_chart.html http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/6_chart.html I'll throw out a conjecture, in the hope that it'll inspire someone who's more knowledgeable to weigh in with a better analysis. It may say שלומעלישראל (shalom al yisrael -- peace to/upon Israel) Starting with the most obvious characters: The shin in the fourth-last position is pretty obvious. The first character (furthest right) looks like it could be a shin too. The third character (looks like a right paren ')' ) could be a waw. The second-last character seems likely to be an aleph; there don't seem to be many other options. The final (leftmost) character is difficult, but it may be a form of lamedh (the second character from right looks even more like a modern lamedh). With those guesses, the pattern-matching portion of my brain wanted to the first (rightmost) 3 characters (sh-l-w) to be the beginning of "shalo[m]": the 4th character could be a mem. The last 5 characters could be 'yisrael' -- neither the yodh nor the resh would be a big stretch. The 5th character looks like an ayin, but the 6th is (in my opinion) the most difficult of the bunch: lamedh? daleth? If it's a lamedh, it'd looks different from the other two but would produce "שלומעלישראל". There's an amateur opinion for you. Come on, you experts, give us something better! 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 6 of 17 01 December 2010 at 10:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I go for some guy trying to write something that's supposed to look like Hebrew or Aramaic, but didn't have a clue what he was doing.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6123 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 7 of 17 02 December 2010 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | ||
I would agree that's it's an attempt by someone who doesn't know Hebrew to write something that looks like Hebrew--although the second word does look something like ישראל (yisrael), as Qbe mentioned... Edited by JW on 02 December 2010 at 5:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Qbe Tetraglot Senior Member United States joewright.org/var Joined 7136 days ago 289 posts - 335 votes Speaks: English*, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Japanese, German, Mandarin, Aramaic | Message 8 of 17 02 December 2010 at 6:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Bingo: I guess my Hebrew isn't so rusty after all. Edited by Qbe on 02 December 2010 at 6:18pm 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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