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Aramaic is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria, and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the Southern Levant and eastern Anatolia where it has been continually written and spoken, in different varieties, for over three thousand years, today largely by Assyrians, Mandeans and Mizrahi Jews.
The Syriac language, also known as Syriac Aramaic and Classical Syriac ܠܫܢܐ ܥܬܝܩܐ, is an Aramaic dialect that emerged during the first century AD from a local Aramaic dialect that was spoken in the ancient region of Osroene, centered in the city of Edessa. During the Early Christian period, it became the main literary language of various Aramaic-speaking Christian communities in the historical region of Ancient Syria and throughout the Near East. As a liturgical language of Syriac Christianity, it gained a prominent role among Eastern Christian communities that used both Eastern Syriac and Western Syriac rites. Following the spread of Syriac Christianity, it also became a liturgical language of eastern Christian communities as far as India and China. It flourished from the 4th to the 8th century, and continued to have an important role during the next centuries, but by the end of the Middle Ages it was gradually reduced to liturgical use, since the role of vernacular language among its native speakers was overtaken by several emerging Neo-Aramaic dialects.
Assyrians are an indigenous ethnic group native to Mesopotamia, a geographical region in West Asia. Modern Assyrians descend from Ancient Mesopotamians such as ancient Assyrians and Babylonians, originating from the ancient indigenous Mesopotamians of Akkad and Sumer, who first developed the civilisation in northern Mesopotamia that would become Assyria in 2600 BCE. Modern Assyrians may culturally self-identify as Syriacs, Chaldeans, or Arameans for religious, geographic, and tribal identification.
Turoyo, also referred to as Surayt, or modern Suryoyo, is a Central Neo-Aramaic language traditionally spoken in the Tur Abdin region in southeastern Turkey and in northern Syria. Turoyo speakers are mostly adherents of the Syriac Orthodox Church, but there are also some Turoyo-speaking adherents of the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church, especially from the towns of Midyat and Qamishli. The language is also spoken throughout diaspora, among modern Assyrians/Syriacs. It is classified as a vulnerable language. Most speakers use the Classical Syriac language for literature and worship. Turoyo is not mutually intelligible with Western Neo-Aramaic, having been separated for over a thousand years; its closest relatives are Mlaḥsô and western varieties of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic like Suret.
Mlaḥsô or Mlahsö, sometimes referred to as Suryoyo or Surayt, is an extinct or dormant Central Neo-Aramaic language. It was traditionally spoken in eastern Turkey and later also in northeastern Syria by Syriac Orthodox Christians.
Suret, also known as Assyrian or Chaldean, refers to the varieties of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) spoken by Christians, largely ethnic Assyrians. The various NENA dialects descend from Old Aramaic, the lingua franca in the later phase of the Assyrian Empire, which slowly displaced the East Semitic Akkadian language beginning around the 10th century BC. They have been further heavily influenced by Classical Syriac, the Middle Aramaic dialect of Edessa, after its adoption as an official liturgical language of the Syriac churches, but Suret is not a direct descendant of Classical Syriac.
The Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Zakho is a dialect of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic originally spoken by Jews in Zakho, Iraq. Following the exodus of Jews from the Muslim lands, most speakers now live in Israel, principally Jerusalem and surrounding villages.
The Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia, a dialect of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic, was originally spoken by Jews in Urmia and surrounding areas of Iranian Azerbaijan from Salmas to Solduz and into what is now Yüksekova, Hakkâri and Başkale, Van Province in eastern Turkey. Most speakers now live in Israel.
Inter-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic, or Lishanid Noshan, is a modern Jewish-Aramaic dialect, a variant of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic. It was originally spoken in Kurdistan Region of Iraq, in and around Arbil between the Great Zab and Little Zab rivers. Most speakers now live in Israel.
Trans-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic, also known as Hulaulá, is a grouping of related dialects of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic originally spoken by Jews in Iranian Kurdistan and easternmost Iraqi Kurdistan. Most speakers now live in Israel.
Hertevin is a dialect of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic originally spoken by Chaldean Catholics in a cluster of villages in Siirt Province in southeastern Turkey. Speakers of Hértevin Aramaic have emigrated mostly to the West, and are now scattered and isolated from one another. A few speakers remain in Turkey. The closest related language variety is Bohtan Neo-Aramaic. Hertevin also shares many similarities with Turoyo.
Bohtan Neo-Aramaic is a dialect of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic originally spoken by ethnic Assyrians on the plain of Bohtan in the Ottoman Empire. Its speakers were displaced during the Assyrian genocide in 1915 and settled in Gardabani, near Rustavi in Georgia, Göygöl and Ağstafa in Azerbaijan. However it is now spoken in Moscow, Krymsk and Novopavlosk, Russia. It is considered to be a dialect of Assyrian Neo-Aramaic since it is a northeastern Aramaic language and its speakers are ethnically Assyrians.
The Neo-Aramaic or Modern Aramaic languages are varieties of Aramaic that evolved during the late medieval and early modern periods, and continue to the present day as vernacular (spoken) languages of modern Aramaic-speaking communities. Within the field of Aramaic studies, classification of Neo-Aramaic languages has been a subject of particular interest among scholars, who proposed several divisions, into two, three or four primary groups.
Central Neo-Aramaic languages represent a specific group of Neo-Aramaic languages, that is designated as Central in reference to its geographical position between Western Neo-Aramaic and other Eastern Aramaic groups. Its linguistic homeland is located in northern parts of the historical region of Syria. The group includes the Turoyo language as a spoken language of the Tur Abdin region and various groups in diaspora, and Mlahsô language that is recently extinct as a spoken language.
Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) is a grouping of related dialects of Neo-Aramaic spoken before World War I as a vernacular language by Jews and Assyrian Christians between the Tigris and Lake Urmia, stretching north to Lake Van and southwards to Mosul and Kirkuk. As a result of the Assyrian genocide, Christian speakers were forced out of the area that is now Turkey and in the early 1950s most Jewish speakers moved to Israel. The Kurdish-Turkish conflict resulted in further dislocations of speaker populations. As of the 1990s, the NENA group had an estimated number of fluent speakers among the Assyrians just below 500,000, spread throughout the Middle East and the Assyrian diaspora. In 2007, linguist Geoffrey Khan wrote that many dialects were nearing extinction with fluent speakers difficult to find.
Mar Youhannan Semaan Issayi ;1999)) was the Metropolitan Archbishop of Tehran of the Chaldean Catholics from March 16, 1971, until his death on February 7, 1999. He was born in Sanandaj سنندج, Kurdistan Iran on June 27, 1914, and ordained priest on March 3, 1940, and consecrated bishop on, October 22, 1967, in Iran.
The Eastern Aramaic languages have developed from the varieties of Aramaic that developed in and around Mesopotamia, as opposed to western varieties of the Levant. Most speakers are ethnic Syriac, although there are a minority of History of the Jews and Mandaeans, who also speak varieties of Eastern Aramaic.
Sanandaj is a city in the Central District of Sanandaj County, in the Kurdistan province of Iran, serving as the capital of the district, the county and the province. With a population of 414,069, Sanandaj is the twenty third largest city in Iran and the second largest Kurdish city.
Geoffrey Allan Khan FBA is a British linguist who has held the post of Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Cambridge since 2012. He has published grammars for the Aramaic dialects of Barwari, Qaraqosh, Erbil, Sulaymaniyah and Halabja in Iraq; of Urmia and Sanandaj in Iran; and leads the North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic DatabaseArchived 8 February 2018 at the Wayback Machine.
Estiphan Panoussi is an Iranian philologist, philosopher, orientalist, and international scholar of Iranian Assyrian (Aramaic) origin. He is professor emeritus of the University of Gothenburg and native speaker of Senaya, a Northeastern Neo-Aramaic language.
References
- ↑ Senaya at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ↑ Panoussi, Estiphan (1990). "On the Senaya Dialect". Studies in Neo-Aramaic: 105–129. doi:10.1163/9789004369535_010. ISBN 9781555404307.
- ↑ Kalin, Laura (2018). "Licensing and Differential Object Marking: The View from Neo-Aramaic". Syntax. 21 (2): 112–159. doi:10.1111/synt.12153.
- ↑ Mutzafi, Hezy (2008). "Trans-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. 71 (3): 409–431. doi:10.1017/S0041977X08000815. ISSN 0041-977X. JSTOR 40378798. S2CID 162155580.
- ↑ Fox, Samuel Ethan (1994). "The Relationships of the Eastern Neo-Aramaic Dialects". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 114 (2): 154–162. doi:10.2307/605827. ISSN 0003-0279. JSTOR 605827.
- ↑ Khan, Geoffrey (2020). "The Neo-Aramaic Dialects of Iran". Iranian Studies. 53 (3–4): 445–463. doi:10.1080/00210862.2020.1714430. S2CID 216353456.
- ↑ Khan, Geoffrey (2009). The Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Sanandaj. Gorgias Press. pp. 3–4. ISBN 978-1-60724-134-8.
