Lishana Deni

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Lishana Deni
לשנא דני Lišānā Denī, לשנא יהודיא Lišān Hōzāyē
Pronunciation [liˈʃɑnɑ ˈdɛni]
Native to Israel, Iraq, Turkey
Region Nineveh Plains, Iraqi Kurdistan (Iraq), Bohtan valley and Hakkari mountains (Turkey)
Native speakers
7,500 (1999) [1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 lsd
Glottolog lish1247
ELP Lishana Deni

Zakho Jewish Neo-Aramaic [2] [3] [4] is a dialect of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic originally spoken by Jews in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey in the lands west of the Great Zab. Following the exodus of Jews from the Muslim lands, most speakers now live in Israel, principally Jerusalem and surrounding villages.

Contents

Origins

Various Neo-Aramaic dialects were spoken across a wide area from the Zakho region, in the west, to Lake Urmia, in the northeast to Sanandaj, in the southeast (the area covers northern Iraq and northwestern Iran). The upheavals in their traditional region after the First World War and the founding of the State of Israel led most of the Jews of Kurdistan to move to Jerusalem and villages nearby.

However, uprooted from northern Iraq, and thrown together with so many different language groups in the fledgling nation, Lishana Deni began to be replaced in the speech of younger generations by Modern Hebrew.

Fewer than 8,000 people are known to speak Lishana Deni, and all of them are over 50 years old. Lishana Deni is written in the Hebrew alphabet. Spelling tends to be highly phonetic, and elided letters are not written.

Intelligibility

The language faces extinction in the next few decades. Although there is very little intelligibility between Lishana Deni and the other Jewish dialects, there is quite reasonable intelligibility between it and the Christian Neo-Aramaic dialects spoken in the region.

The Christian dialect of Chaldean Neo-Aramaic is closest to Lishana Deni, followed by the Ashiret dialects of Assyrian Neo-Aramaic. Like other Judaeo-Aramaic dialects, Lishana Deni is sometimes called Targumic , due to the long tradition of translating the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic, and the production of targumim.

Region

Lishana Deni was spoken by Kurdish Jews in Kurdistan Region, which is located west of the Great Zab river in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey. Most Lishana Deni speakers are rural and were farmers and shepherds but there are urban speakers as well in cities such as Nohadra, Zakho, Amedya and more.

The regions where Lishana Deni was spoken are Bohtan, Zakho and Nineveh Plains in Upper Mesopotamia, as well as Nerwa, Sapna, Barwari and Hakkari mountains.

See also

Related Research Articles

Aramaic is a language that originated among the Arameans in the ancient region of Syria, at the end of the 2nd millennium BC, and later became one of the most prominent languages of the ancient Near East. During its three thousand years long history, Aramaic went through several stages of development. It has served as a language of public life and administration of ancient kingdoms and empires, and also as a language of divine worship and religious study. It subsequently branched into several Neo-Aramaic languages that are still spoken in modern times.

Jewish languages

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Judeo-Arabic dialects Jewish varieties of Arabic

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Zakho City in Iraq

Zakho is a city in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, at the centre of the eponymous Zakho District of the Dohuk Governorate, located a few kilometers from the Iraq–Turkey border.

Chaldean Neo-Aramaic

Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, or simply Chaldean, is a Northeastern Neo-Aramaic language spoken throughout a large region stretching from the Nineveh plains, in northern Iraq, together with parts of southeastern Turkey.

Assyrian Neo-Aramaic or simply Assyrian, also known as Syriac, Eastern Syriac, Neo-Syriac and Modern Syriac, is an Aramaic language within the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family that is spoken by the Assyrian people. The various Assyrian 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.

Senaya or Sanandaj Christian Neo-Aramaic is a dialect of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic originally spoken by Christians in Sanandaj, Iranian Kurdistan. Most speakers now live in California, United States and few families still live in Tehran, Iran. They are mostly members of the Chaldean Catholic Church. Senaya is significantly different from Sanandaj Jewish Neo-Aramaic.

Urmia Jewish Neo-Aramaic is a dialect of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic was originally in Urmia and surrounding areas Iranian Azerbaijan, from Salmas to Solduz and into what is now eastern Turkey, Yüksekova and Başkale. Most speakers now live in Israel.

Inter-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic 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.

Barzani Jewish Neo-Aramaic is a modern Jewish Aramaic language, often called Neo-Aramaic or Judeo-Aramaic. It was originally spoken in three villages near Aqrah in Iraqi Kurdistan. The native name of the language is Lishanid Janan, which means 'our language', and is similar to names used by other Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects .

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Judeo-Aramaic languages

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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.

History of the Jews in Kurdistan Ethnic history and Jewish subdivision

Jews of Kurdistan are the ancient Eastern Jewish communities, inhabiting the region known as Kurdistan roughly covering parts of northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey. Until their immigration to Israel in the 1940s and early 1950s, the Jews of Kurdistan lived as closed ethnic communities. The Jews of Kurdistan largely spoke Aramaic and Kurdish dialects, in particular the Kurmanji dialect in Iraqi Kurdistan.

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 the subject of a particular interest among scholars, who proposed several divisions, into two, three or four primary groups.

Yona Sabar is a Kurdistani Jewish scholar, linguist and researcher. He is professor emeritus of Hebrew at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a native speaker of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic and has published more than 90 research articles about Jewish Neo-Aramaic and the folklore of the Jews of Kurdistan.

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 Christians between the Tigris and Lake Urmia, stretching north to Lake Van and southwards to Mosul and Kirkuk. As a result of the Sayfo 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.

Baghdad Jewish Arabic or autonym haki mal yihud or el-haki malna is the Arabic dialect spoken by the Jews of Baghdad and other towns of Southern Iraq. This dialect differs from the dialect spoken by the Jews in Northern Iraq, such as Mosul and 'Ana. The Baghdadi and Northern dialects may be regarded as subvarieties of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic. As with most Judeo-Arab communities, there are likely to be few, if any, speakers of the Judeo-Iraqi Arabic dialects who still reside within Iraq. Rather these dialects have been maintained or are facing critical endangerment within respective Judeo-Iraqi diasporas, namely those of Israel and the United States. In 2014, the film Farewell Baghdad, which is performed mostly in Jewish Baghdadi Arabic dialect, became the first film to be almost completely performed in Judeo-Iraqi Arabic.

References

  1. Lishana Deni at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Neuman, Yishai (2019). "Categorical Shifts of the Idiom Ribono shel(a)olam: From a Tannaitic Vocative to a Jewish Theocentric Interjection to a Substrate Component in Israeli Hebrew Discourse". Journal of Jewish Languages. 7 (2): 190–226. doi:10.1163/22134638-06011139a.
  3. Nissan, Ephraim (2019). "Names for the fishes of the river Tigris in Baghdadi Judaeo-Arabic and in Zakho Jewish Neo-Aramaic". La linguistique. 55 (1): 97. doi:10.3917/ling.551.0097.
  4. Nissan, E. (1 January 1999). "REVIEWS". Journal of Semitic Studies. XLIV (2): 320–322. doi:10.1093/jss/XLIV.2.320.

Bibliography