Hey guys,
Is this thing still on? Steve here. 🙂
The summary of what I’m about to tell you is twofold: (1) I’ve published a “living book” on Galilean Aramaic online; and (2) this site is going to be pulled down and archived soon.
If you want the particulars, read on. 🙂
The Particulars
The state of dealing with Galilean Aramaic studies really brought some difficult folk out of the woodwork, an I’ve poked at this site here and there, not doing very much, until essentially shuttering it back in 2022.
However like with most things on the Internet, time goes on — and unless you update your tech, it does not. AramaicNT.org currently runs on an ancient version of WordPress which is in desperate need of updates, and has been degrading into a large gordion knot of trouble to maintain. The server is so old that depending on the day of the week I don’t have access to the backend (like I do now to publish updates) and this has led me to give up several times when trying to do something new with it.
Meanwhile, back in 2017 I finished the first rough draft of a grammar of Galilean Aramaic — something, in the grand scheme of things, which is waaay overdue. I had a rather generous offer to have it published… but I biffed it and never followed through. And that’s 100% on me — I had a lot on my plate at the time, and Aramaic studies weren’t my primary focus anymore. I have students over at RV who needed my full attention, and where I would do a little bit here and there with Aramaic, that was about it.
So I was essentially left with two problems: An unpublished monograph, and an unmaintainable website. This year I’ve decided to finally handle both.
Introducing GalileanAramaic.com
At the beginning of April, I began to transcode all of the LaTeX files into Markdown and have published the grammar in its current unedited state (with appropriate disclaimers) over on http://galileanaramaic.com and, more importantly, the source code for the grammar over on GitHub.
Due to a generous donation, the first initial pass is complete, and I would now like to solicit help proofreading the work from the general public. Errors can be reported over on the GitHub Issues page (which is best), on the Aramaic Designs YouTube community page, or over on my Ko-Fi page. The idea of treating this work like any other code repository has made it much more manageable.
The End of AramaicNT.org (Kinda…)
And this now brings me to the last bit: What to do with AramaicNT.org?
There is no salvaging the WordPress install. It’s too fragile and too much of a security risk. So what I am planning on doing is archiving and deprecating it. The domain, AramaicNT.org will continue to host 90% of the content it hosts now, but I’m going to give it similar treatment to what I’ve done with my monograph.
All pages here will be converted and hosted on a flat-file website. This means comments will go away, and any interactive bits too. However the most important articles (like the Lord’s Prayer, etc. and perhaps some of the lessons) I want to update, improve, and move over to GalileanAramaic.com.
Final Thoughts
Overall I would like to do more Aramaic-related stuff. An article here or there, some more videos over on the YouTube channel, or perhaps pick back up the old bracelet project (which I still have the olive wood and silver for). In any case it’ll be much easier to do so when things here are stabilized and I can put some effort into a much more focused work (i.e. the grammar).
If you’d like to participate, check out the following links — and I hope I’ll see you around. 🙂
- Elementary Galilean Aramaic – The book.
- Elementary Galilean Aramaic on GitHub – The source code for the book.
- Aramaic Designs YouTube Channel Community Page – Where updates are posted occasionally.
- Steve’s Ko-Fi Page – Where you can support the project.
Peace,
-Steve