I was walking home the other day when a car passed me with a bumper sticker like this: 
. He pulled in and parked ahead of me so I waited for him to get out and said politely צַפְרָא טָבָא, and told him that I liked the sticker, and where could I get one? He immediately pulled two more out of the car and presented them to me.
We spoke for a few minutes, and it turns out that he is a native Aramaic speaker, and that the stickers are put out by an organization that has just opened an office in the centre of Jerusalem (in Ben Yehuda Street, appropriately enough), and they are planning to start holding classes in spoken Aramaic.
My only question is, why doesn’t it say אנא מליל ארמיא?
Steg (d.i.n.d.š.) | 08-Jun-07 at 8:28 am | Permalink
probably because then no one who didn’t already מליל ארמיא would understand it and get interested?
ari kinsberg | 05-Jul-07 at 8:06 pm | Permalink
was the guy kurdish?
in heberw, shouldn’t it be מדבר ארמית? i thought דובר ארמית would mean “an aramaic speaker,” not “i speak aramaic”?
Simon Montagu | 07-Jul-07 at 8:30 pm | Permalink
I asked him where he was from, but he didn’t reply.
I guess you’re right about דובר/מדבר, but they were probably more concerned about having a punchy slogan than exact translation.
aramaicgirl | 29-Apr-08 at 7:41 am | Permalink
he wasnt kurdish…he was aramaic like me and million other people in the world…maybe you think we dont exist anymore,but you see thats not true…we are living all over the world..i dont think a kurdish man would have a slogan like that in his car.this cant be possible (they dont like us..the most of them)..if you want to know more about the aramaic just ask me(or look for it in the internet).noone knows us.its so sad.
viktoria from germany (-: