Sja

Sja is the ISO 639‑3 language code for Samaritan Aramaic, an ancient Semitic tongue historically used by the Samaritan community of the ancient Near East. Samaritan Aramaic developed as a birthing of the Aramaic family around the 5th century BCE, deriving from Old Aramaic and sharing many features with Greek and Hebrew. It distinguishes itself through a unique script, the Samaritan alphabet, which is derived from the Paleo‑Punic system and retains characteristics of the Phoenician script.

The language has survived in a liturgical context. Samaritans use it for worship services in Mount Gerizim and for manuscripts dating as far back as the post‑Second Temple period. Despite limited daily usage, a body of biblical translations, commentary, and prayer books exists, many of which remain in manuscript form in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in Amsterdam and the Israel State Library. The nineteenth‑century discovery of the Temple of the Davidic Samaritans in Wadi Nashwan contributed significantly to the study of Samaritan Aramaic.

Linguistically, the language retains archaic forms of phonology and morphology, including verb stems such as the perfect and imperfect, that are reminiscent of Biblical Hebrew. Its syntax is predominantly verb‑subject‑object, but clitic attachment is prominent. Samaritan Aramaic also preserves the inventory of the Hurrian laryngeal phonemes that largely disappeared from other Semitic languages.

Modern severe endangerment is observed; the Samaritans are a small autonomous communal group numbering approximately 800 individuals, most of whom practice monolingualism in modern Hebrew or Arabic. Efforts to record and digitize Samaritan Aramaic manuscripts have been undertaken by linguists and biblical scholars to preserve the language’s legacy.