How to Start Reading the Aramaic of the Talmud
Talmudic vs Biblical Aramaic, the thirty words that run a sugya (מאי, תניא, תא שמע, תיקו…), a real passage with a word-by-word gloss, and the books to start with.
Open a page of the Babylonian Talmud and the Mishnah at the top is Hebrew. The discussion that follows, the Gemara, is mostly Aramaic, with Hebrew quotations woven through it. If you read Hebrew, you already have the alphabet and a good share of the vocabulary. What stops most people is a few dozen Aramaic words that run the argument: who said what, what is being asked, whether a proof works. This page gives you those words, a short real passage with a word-by-word gloss, and a realistic way to start.
Which Aramaic is this?
Aramaic is a family of dialects spoken across the Near East for well over two thousand years. Jewish texts use several of them, and they are not the same.
- Biblical Aramaic is the Aramaic of parts of Daniel (from the middle of 2:4 to 7:28) and Ezra (4:8 to 6:18 and 7:12 to 26), one verse of Jeremiah (10:11) and two words in Genesis (31:47). It is the oldest of the Jewish Aramaic texts, close to the official Aramaic of the Persian empire.
- Babylonian Talmudic Aramaic (scholars call it Jewish Babylonian Aramaic) is the language of the Gemara in the Babylonian Talmud, the Bavli. It was spoken by the Jews of Babylonia, in what is now Iraq, in the centuries when the Talmud was formed. It is an Eastern Aramaic dialect, a relative of Syriac and Mandaic.
- The Jerusalem Talmud (the Yerushalmi) is in Galilean Aramaic, a Western dialect. Targum Onkelos has its own literary Aramaic, and the Zohar another again.
If you have studied Biblical Aramaic, a lot carries over, but the Bavli will still surprise you. Two differences you will see at once: in the third-person future, where Biblical Aramaic starts the verb with י־, the Bavli uses ל־ or נ־ (לימא, "shall one say", the Gemara's way of floating a suggestion; ליהוי, "let it be"), and the ending ־א, which in older Aramaic meant "the", has become the ordinary form of a noun. טעמא is simply "reason", not necessarily "the reason".
The words that run the argument
The Gemara is built from a small set of moves: quote a source, ask a question, propose an answer, bring a proof, raise an objection. Each move has its word. Learn these and you can follow the shape of a passage before you understand its details.
Pronunciations are given in the Israeli style used in most English-language editions.
Who is speaking, and from what source
| Aramaic | Pronounced | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| אמר | amar | said; says |
| אמר ליה (א"ל) | amar leh | he said to him |
| איתמר | itmar | it was stated (opens a dispute between later sages, the amoraim) |
| תנן | tenan | we learned (in a mishnah) |
| מתניתין (מתני') | matnitin | our mishnah |
| תניא | tanya | it was taught (in a baraita, an early teaching outside the Mishnah) |
| תנו רבנן (ת"ר) | tanu rabanan | our rabbis taught (opens a baraita) |
| תנא | tana | a sage of the Mishnah's era taught; also, that sage |
| איכא דאמרי | ika de-amri | some say (a second version of the same report) |
Questions
| Aramaic | Pronounced | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| מאי | mai | what? |
| מאי טעמא (מ"ט) | mai ta'ama | what is the reason? |
| היכי | heikhi | how? |
| היכי דמי (ה"ד) | heikhi dami | what is the case? (literally "how is it like?") |
| מנא הני מילי (מנה"מ) | mena hanei milei | where are these words from? (what is the source?) |
| לימא | leima | shall we say? (a suggestion that is often rejected) |
| איבעיא להו | iba'ya lehu | they asked (introduces an open question) |
Building the argument
| Aramaic | Pronounced | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| אי | i | if |
| אי הכי (א"ה) | i hakhi | if so |
| הכי | hakhi | so, thus |
| נמי | nami | also |
| הכי נמי (ה"נ) | hakhi nami | so too; indeed |
| איכא | ika | there is |
| ליכא | leika | there is not |
| דילמא | dilma | perhaps (usually opening another possibility) |
| אלא | ela | rather; but |
| הא | ha | this; but surely; in הא … הא, "this case … that case" |
Proofs, objections and endings
| Aramaic | Pronounced | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| תא שמע (ת"ש) | ta shema | come and hear (opens a proof) |
| מיתיבי | meitivi | they objected (a source is brought against a view) |
| קשיא | kashya | a difficulty (the objection stands, unanswered) |
| תיובתא | tiyuvta | a refutation (the view is rejected) |
| שמע מינה (ש"מ) | shema mina | learn from this |
| קא משמע לן (קמ"ל) | ka mashma lan | it teaches us |
| תיקו | teiku | let it stand: the question remains unresolved |
A few pieces of grammar that come up on every page
First, a warning: the printed page is full of abbreviations, like the א"ל and ת"ש in the tables above. Decoding them is part of reading the page, and every bilingual edition spells them out.
- ד־ (de- or di-) is attached to the front of a word and means "of", "that", "which" or "who". דאמר is "who said" or "since he said". It does the work of Hebrew של and ש־ together.
- ליה, לה, להו, לן are "to him, to her, to them, to us". You will meet them constantly after אמר and סבירא (holds an opinion): סבירא ליה, "he holds".
- קא before a verb marks an action in progress or a point being made: מאי קא משמע לן? "What is it teaching us?"
- Plurals often end in ־י or ־ן: מילי (milei, matters, words), רבנן (rabanan, the rabbis).
A short passage
The most quoted line in the Talmud is probably Hillel's answer to a man who asked to be taught the whole Torah while standing on one foot (Shabbat 31a). Shammai had pushed him away. Hillel said:
דעלך סני לחברך לא תעביד, זו היא כל התורה כולה, ואידך פירושה הוא, זיל גמור.
| Word | Pronounced | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| ד־ | de- | that which |
| עלך | alakh | to you (literally "on you") |
| סני | sanei | is hateful |
| לחברך | le-khavrakh | to your fellow |
| לא תעביד | la ta'aveid | do not do |
| זו היא | zo hi | this is (Hebrew) |
| כל התורה כולה | kol ha-torah kulah | the whole Torah, all of it (Hebrew) |
| ואידך | ve-idakh | and the rest |
| פירושה הוא | perushah hu | is its explanation |
| זיל | zil | go |
| גמור | gemor | learn (it) |
"What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is its explanation. Go and learn."
Notice the switch: Hillel speaks in Aramaic, and the middle phrase is Hebrew. That is normal. The Gemara moves between the two languages inside a single sentence, and part of reading it is noticing which one you are in.
A second short line, from Taanit 23a, after the story of Choni the circle-maker, who slept for seventy years and woke to find no one who knew him:
אמר רבא היינו דאמרי אינשי או חברותא או מיתותא.
Amar Rava: heinu de-amri inshei, o khavruta o mituta. "Rava said: this is what people mean when they say, either companionship or death." היינו דאמרי אינשי (heinu de-amri inshei, "this is what people say") introduces a popular saying, and you will meet it again. חברותא is the same word as the chavruta, the study partner, which is the next point.
How to start
- Get your Hebrew to the point where you read unvoweled text without much trouble. The Mishnah, the quotations and much of the Gemara are Hebrew, and the Talmud page has no vowels.
- Use a bilingual edition at first. The Koren Talmud Bavli (Adin Steinsaltz's commentary in English) and the Schottenstein edition from ArtScroll both explain the text phrase by phrase. On Sefaria, the William Davidson Talmud gives the Aramaic with Steinsaltz's English, free.
- Start with a chapter that has concrete cases. Many yeshivas begin students with the second chapter of Bava Metzia, אלו מציאות, on found property: who may keep coins or a purse found in a public place, and what counts as a sign that lets the owner claim it back. The cases are easy to picture, which leaves your attention for the language.
- Go slowly. Daf Yomi, a page a day, is a fine practice for people who already read; for a beginner it is far too fast. A few lines read properly, with every Aramaic word looked up, teach more than a page skimmed in translation.
- Read with someone. The traditional way to learn Gemara is with a partner, out loud, arguing about what the text means. It works.
Dictionaries and reference books
- Yitzhak Frank, The Practical Talmud Dictionary. Built for exactly this stage: it lists the terms and phrases of the Gemara's argument with clear explanations.
- Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (1903). Old and enormous, covers Hebrew and Aramaic, and is freely available online.
- Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. The scholarly dictionary of this dialect, for when you want to know what a word really meant.
- The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (cal.huc.edu), free online, covers every Aramaic dialect with modern scholarship.
Jastrow is still worth having for its range, but treat its word origins with care: many of its etymologies were guesses that later scholarship dropped.
- Adin Steinsaltz, The Talmud: A Reference Guide. Explains the terms, the structure of an argument, and the layout of the printed page.
Later you will want the commentaries printed around the text, starting with Rashi. They are set in a different typeface, called Rashi script, which takes an afternoon or two to learn (the alphabet page on my site shows every letter in Rashi script next to the square one; it needs a free account). Leave it until the Aramaic on its own is no longer the obstacle.