Nabataean Aramaic

Nabataean Aramaic
A third-century AD funerary inscription from Umm al-Jimal, Jordan[1]
Region	Arabia Petraea
Extinct	Written form merged with Arabic during the early Islamic era c. AD 650.
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Northwest Semitic Aramaic Western Aramaic Nabataean Aramaic
Early forms	Proto-Afroasiatic Proto-Semitic Old Aramaic Middle Aramaic Western Middle Aramaic
Writing system	Nabataean alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Linguist List	qhy
Glottolog	None

Nabataean Aramaic is the extinct Aramaic variety used in inscriptions by the Nabataeans of the East Bank of the Jordan River, the Negev, and the Sinai Peninsula. Compared with other varieties of Aramaic, it is notable for the occurrence of a number of loanwords and grammatical borrowings from Arabic or other North Arabian languages.^[2]

Attested from the 2nd century BC onwards in several dozen longer dedicatory and funerary inscriptions and a few legal documents from the period of the Nabataean Kingdom, Nabataean Aramaic remained in use for several centuries after the kingdom's annexation by the Roman Empire in 106 AD. Over time, the distinctive Nabataean script was increasingly used to write texts in the Arabic language. As a result, its latest stage gave rise to the earliest form of the Arabic script.

The phonology of Nabataean Aramaic can only be reconstructed in part, based on the mostly consonantal Nabataean script and comparison with other kinds of Aramaic. Similarly, its morphology and syntax are incompletely attested, but are mostly comparable to other varieties of Aramaic from this period. The Nabataean lexicon is also largely Aramaic in origin, with notable borrowings from Arabic, Greek, and other languages.