Suret ( syr, ܣܘܪܝܬ) (
">su:rɪtʰor
">su:rɪθ, also known as Assyrian or Chaldean, refers to the varieties of
Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) spoken by ethnic
Assyrians, including those identifying as religious groups rather than ethnic (Assyrian Jews and
Chaldean Catholics
Chaldean Catholics () ( syr, ܟܲܠܕܵܝܹ̈ܐ ܩܲܬܘܿܠܝܼܩܵܝܹ̈ܐ), also known as Chaldeans (, ''Kaldāyē''), Chaldo-Assyrians or Assyro-Chaldeans, are modern Assyrian adherents of the Chaldean Catholic Church, which originates f ...
) as a result of the Assyrian identity being banned in
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...
until 2004 and its continued unrecognized status in
Syria,
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...
, and
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
-
Palestine.
[Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Northeastern Neo-Aramaic". Glottolog 2.2. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.] The various NENA dialects descend from
Old Aramaic
Old Aramaic refers to the earliest stage of the Aramaic language, known from the Aramaic inscriptions discovered since the 19th century.
Emerging as the language of the city-states of the Arameans in the Levant in the Early Iron Age, Old Aramaic ...
, the ''
lingua franca'' in the later phase of the
Assyrian Empire
Assyrian may refer to:
* Assyrian people, the indigenous ethnic group of Mesopotamia.
* Assyria, a major Mesopotamian kingdom and empire.
** Early Assyrian Period
** Old Assyrian Period
** Middle Assyrian Empire
** Neo-Assyrian Empire
* Assyr ...
, which slowly displaced the
East Semitic
The East Semitic languages are one of three divisions of the Semitic languages. The East Semitic group is attested by three distinct languages, Akkadian, Eblaite and possibly Kishite, all of which have been long extinct. They were influenced b ...
Akkadian language
Akkadian (, Akkadian: )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages''. Ed. Roger D. Woodard (2004, Cambridge) Pages 218-280 is an extinct East Semitic language th ...
beginning around the 10th century BC.
[Bae, C. Aramaic as a Lingua Franca During the Persian Empire (538-333 BCE). Journal of Universal Language. March 2004, 1-20.] They have been further heavily influenced by
Classical Syriac, the
Middle Aramaic dialect of
Edessa, after its adoption as an official
liturgical language
A sacred language, holy language or liturgical language is any language that is cultivated and used primarily in church service or for other religious reasons by people who speak another, primary language in their daily lives.
Concept
A sacr ...
of the
Syriac churches
Syriac Christianity ( syr, ܡܫܝܚܝܘܬܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܬܐ / ''Mšiḥoyuṯo Suryoyto'' or ''Mšiḥāyūṯā Suryāytā'') is a distinctive branch of Eastern Christianity, whose formative theological writings and traditional liturgies are expr ...
, but Suret is not a direct descendant of Classical Syriac.
Suret speakers are indigenous to
Upper Mesopotamia
Upper Mesopotamia is the name used for the uplands and great outwash plain of northwestern Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey, in the northern Middle East. Since the early Muslim conquests of the mid-7th century, the region has been ...
, northwestern
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
, southeastern
Anatolia
Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The ...
and the northeastern
Levant
The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is ...
, which is a large region stretching from the plain of
Urmia
Urmia or Orumiyeh ( fa, ارومیه, Variously transliterated as ''Oroumieh'', ''Oroumiyeh'', ''Orūmīyeh'' and ''Urūmiyeh''.) is the largest city in West Azerbaijan Province of Iran and the capital of Urmia County. It is situated at an al ...
in northwestern
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
through to the
Nineveh Plains,
Erbil,
Kirkuk and
Duhok regions in northern
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...
, together with the northerneastern regions of
Syria and to southcentral and southeastern
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...
.
[ Maclean, Arthur John (1895). ''Grammar of the dialects of vernacular Syriac: as spoken by the Eastern Syrians of Kurdistan, north-west Persia, and the Plain of Mosul: with notices of the vernacular of the Jews of Azerbaijan and of Zakhu near Mosul''. Cambridge University Press, London.] Instability throughout the Middle East over the past century has led to a
worldwide diaspora of Suret speakers, with most speakers now living abroad in such places as North and South America, Australia, Europe and Russia. Speakers of Suret and
Turoyo (Surayt) are ethnic Assyrians and are the descendants of the ancient inhabitants of
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the ...
.
SIL distinguishes between Chaldean and Assyrian as varieties of Suret on non-
linguistic
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
grounds. Suret is mutually intelligible with some NENA dialects spoken by Jews, especially in the western part of its historical extent. Its mutual intelligibility with Turoyo is partial and asymmetrical, but more significant in written form.
[Khan 2008, pp. 6]
Suret is a moderately-
inflected
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defi ...
,
fusional language
Fusional languages or inflected languages are a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by their tendency to use a single inflectional morpheme to denote multiple grammatical, syntactic, or semantic features. ...
with a two-
gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures ...
noun system and rather flexible
word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
.
[Khan 2008, pp. 6] There is some
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to:
* Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire
* Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language
* Akkadian literature, literature in this language
* Akkadian cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...
influence on the language.
In its native region, speakers may use
Iranian
Iranian may refer to:
* Iran, a sovereign state
* Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran
* Iranian lan ...
,
Turkic and
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
loanwords, while diaspora communities may use loanwords borrowed from the languages of their respective countries. Suret is written from
right-to-left
In a script (commonly shortened to right to left or abbreviated RTL, RL-TB or R2L), writing starts from the right of the page and continues to the left, proceeding from top to bottom for new lines. Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Pashto, Urdu, Kashmir ...
and it uses the ''Madnḥāyā'' version of the
Syriac alphabet. Suret, alongside other modern Aramaic languages, is now considered
endangered
An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and in ...
, as newer generation of Assyrians tend to
not acquire the full language, mainly due to
emigration
Emigration is the act of leaving a resident country or place of residence with the intent to settle elsewhere (to permanently leave a country). Conversely, immigration describes the movement of people into one country from another (to permanent ...
and
acculturation
Acculturation is a process of social, psychological, and cultural change that stems from the balancing of two cultures while adapting to the prevailing culture of the society. Acculturation is a process in which an individual adopts, acquires and ...
into their new resident countries.
History
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to:
* Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire
* Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language
* Akkadian literature, literature in this language
* Akkadian cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...
and
Aramaic
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
have been in extensive contact since their old periods. Local unwritten Aramaic dialects emerged from
Imperial Aramaic
Imperial Aramaic is a linguistic term, coined by modern scholars in order to designate a specific historical variety of Aramaic language. The term is polysemic, with two distinctive meanings, wider (sociolinguistic) and narrower ( dialectologi ...
in
Assyria
Assyria ( Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the ...
. In around 700 BC, Aramaic slowly started to replace Akkadian in Assyria,
Babylonia and the
Levant
The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is ...
. Widespread bilingualism among Assyrian nationals was already present prior to the fall of the empire.
The language transition was achievable because the two languages featured similarities in grammar and vocabulary, and because the 22-lettered
Aramaic alphabet was simpler to learn than the
Akkadian cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo- syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-s ...
which had over 600 signs. The converging process that took place between Assyrian Akkadian and Aramaic across all aspects of both languages and societies is known as ''Aramaic-Assyrian symbiosis''.
Introduced as the official language of the
Assyrian Empire
Assyrian may refer to:
* Assyrian people, the indigenous ethnic group of Mesopotamia.
* Assyria, a major Mesopotamian kingdom and empire.
** Early Assyrian Period
** Old Assyrian Period
** Middle Assyrian Empire
** Neo-Assyrian Empire
* Assyr ...
by
Tiglath-Pileser III
Tiglath-Pileser III ( Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , meaning "my trust belongs to the son of Ešarra"), was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 745 BC to his death in 727. One of the most prominent and historically significant Assyrian kings, T ...
(745–727BC), it became the language of commerce and trade, the
vernacular language
A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...
of Assyria in the late
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostl ...
and
classical antiquity
Classical antiquity (also the classical era, classical period or classical age) is the period of cultural history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD centred on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ...
,
[Aramaic Documents of the Fifth Century B. C. by G. R. Driver](_blank)
/ref>[The British Survey, By British Society for International Understanding, 1968, page 3] and the lingua franca of the Neo-Assyrian Empire
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history and the final and greatest phase of Assyria as an independent state. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew t ...
(911–605 BC), Neo-Babylonian Empire
The Neo-Babylonian Empire or Second Babylonian Empire, historically known as the Chaldean Empire, was the last polity ruled by monarchs native to Mesopotamia. Beginning with the coronation of Nabopolassar as the King of Babylon in 626 BC and bei ...
(605–539 BC), the Achaemenid Empire (539–323 BC), the Parthian Empire
The Parthian Empire (), also known as the Arsacid Empire (), was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Iran from 247 BC to 224 AD. Its latter name comes from its founder, Arsaces I, who led the Parni tribe in conque ...
(247 BC–224 AD) and the Sasanian Empire (224–651 AD). Following the Achaemenid
The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Based in Western Asia, it was contemporarily the largest emp ...
conquest of Assyria under Darius I, the Aramaic
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
language was adopted as the "vehicle for written communication between the different regions of the vast empire with its different peoples and languages". After the conquest of Assyria by the Seleucid Empire in the late 4th century BC, Imperial Aramaic gradually lost its status as an imperial language, but continued to flourish alongside Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...
.
By the 1st century AD, Akkadian was extinct, though vocabulary and grammatical features still survive in modern NENA dialects.[Kaufman, Stephen A. (1974),The Akkadian influences on Aramaic. University of Chicago Press] The Neo-Aramaic languages
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 ...
evolved from Middle Syriac-Aramaic by the 13th century.[ p. 251] There is evidence that the drive for the adoption of Syriac was led by missionaries. Much literary effort was put into the production of an authoritative translation of the Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts ...
into Syriac, the Peshitta
The Peshitta ( syc, ܦܫܺܝܛܬܳܐ ''or'' ') is the standard version of the Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition, including the Maronite Church, the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Syriac Catholic Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, ...
(, '). At the same time, Ephrem the Syrian was producing the most treasured collection of poetry and theology in the Classical Syriac language.
By the 3rd century AD, churches in Urhay in the kingdom of Osroene
Osroene or Osrhoene (; grc-gre, Ὀσροηνή) was an ancient region and state in Upper Mesopotamia. The ''Kingdom of Osroene'', also known as the "Kingdom of Edessa" ( syc, ܡܠܟܘܬܐ ܕܒܝܬ ܐܘܪܗܝ / "Kingdom of Urhay"), according to ...
began to use Classical Syriac as the language of worship and it became the literary and liturgical language of many churches in the Fertile Crescent
The Fertile Crescent ( ar, الهلال الخصيب) is a crescent-shaped region in the Middle East, spanning modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Jordan, together with the northern region of Kuwait, southeastern region of ...
. Syriac was the common tongue of the region, where it was the native language of the Fertile Crescent, surrounding areas, as well as in parts of Eastern Arabia
Eastern Arabia, historically known as al-Baḥrayn ( ar, البحرين) until the 18th century, is a region stretched from Basra to Khasab along the Persian Gulf coast and included parts of modern-day Bahrain, Kuwait, Eastern Saudi Arabia, Unite ...
. It was the dominant language until 900 AD, till it was supplanted by Greek and later Arabic in a centuries-long process having begun in the Arab conquests.
The differences with the Church of the East led to the bitter Nestorian schism in the Syriac-speaking world. As a result of the schism as well as being split between living in the Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
in the west and the Sasanian Empire in the east, Syrian-Aramaic developed distinctive Western
Western may refer to:
Places
*Western, Nebraska, a village in the US
*Western, New York, a town in the US
*Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western world, countries that id ...
and Eastern varieties. Although remaining a single language with a high level of comprehension between the varieties, the two employ distinctive variations in pronunciation and writing systems and, to a lesser degree, in vocabulary and grammar. During the course of the third and fourth centuries AD, the inhabitants of the region began to embrace Christianity. Because of theological differences, Syriac-speaking Christians bifurcated during the 5th century into the Church of the East, or East Syrians under Sasanian rule, and the Syriac Orthodox, or West Syrians under the Byzantine empire
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
. After this separation, the two groups developed distinct dialects differing primarily in the pronunciation and written symbolisation of vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
s.
The Mongol
The Mongols ( mn, Монголчууд, , , ; ; russian: Монголы) are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, Inner Mongolia in China and the Buryatia Republic of the Russian Federation. The Mongols are the principal member ...
invasions of the 13th century and the religiously motivated massacres of Assyrians by Timur
Timur ; chg, ''Aqsaq Temür'', 'Timur the Lame') or as ''Sahib-i-Qiran'' ( 'Lord of the Auspicious Conjunction'), his epithet. ( chg, ''Temür'', 'Iron'; 9 April 133617–19 February 1405), later Timūr Gurkānī ( chg, ''Temür Kü ...
further contributed to the rapid decline of the language. In many places outside of northern Mesopotamia (the Assyrian homeland
The Assyrian homeland, Assyria ( syc, ܐܬܘܪ, Āṯūr or syc, ܒܝܬ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, Bêth Nahrin) refers to the homeland of the Assyrian people within which Assyrian civilisation developed, located in their indigenous Upper Mesopotamia. T ...
), even in liturgy, the language was replaced by Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
. "Modern Syriac-Aramaic" is a term occasionally used to refer to the modern Neo-Aramaic languages
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 ...
spoken by Christians, including Suret. Even if they cannot be positively identified as the direct descendants of attested Middle Syriac, they must have developed from closely related dialects belonging to the same branch of Aramaic, and the varieties spoken in Christian communities have long co-existed with and been influenced by Middle Syriac as a liturgical and literary language. Moreover, the name "Syriac", when used with no qualification, generally refers to one specific dialect of Middle Aramaic but not to Old Aramaic or to the various present-day Eastern and Central Neo-Aramaic
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 homelan ...
languages descended from it or from close relatives.
In 2004, the ''Constitution of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region'' recognized Syriac in article 7, section four, stating, "Syriac shall be the language of education and culture for those who speak it in addition to the Kurdish language." In 2005, the Constitution of Iraq recognised it as one of the "official languages in the administrative units in which they constitute density of population" in article 4, section four.
Script
History
The original Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the ...
n writing system, believed to be the world's oldest, was derived around 3600 BC from this method of keeping accounts. By the end of the 4th millennium BC, the Mesopotamians were using a triangular-shaped stylus made from a reed pressed into soft clay to record numbers. Around 2700 BC, cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sh ...
began to represent syllables of spoken Sumerian, a language isolate genetically unrelated to the Semitic and Indo-Iranian languages
The Indo-Iranian languages (also Indo-Iranic languages or Aryan languages) constitute the largest and southeasternmost extant branch of the Indo-European language family (with over 400 languages), predominantly spoken in the geographical subre ...
that it neighboured. About that time, Mesopotamian cuneiform became a general purpose writing system for logogram
In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced '' hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, ...
s, syllables and numbers. This script was adapted to another Mesopotamian language, the East Semitic
The East Semitic languages are one of three divisions of the Semitic languages. The East Semitic group is attested by three distinct languages, Akkadian, Eblaite and possibly Kishite, all of which have been long extinct. They were influenced b ...
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to:
* Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire
* Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language
* Akkadian literature, literature in this language
* Akkadian cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...
(Assyrian
Assyrian may refer to:
* Assyrian people, the indigenous ethnic group of Mesopotamia.
* Assyria, a major Mesopotamian kingdom and empire.
** Early Assyrian Period
** Old Assyrian Period
** Middle Assyrian Empire
** Neo-Assyrian Empire
* Assyrian ...
and Babylonian) around 2600 BC.
With the adoption of Aramaic
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
as the '' lingua franca'' of the Neo-Assyrian Empire
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history and the final and greatest phase of Assyria as an independent state. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew t ...
(911–609BC), Old Aramaic was also adapted to Mesopotamian cuneiform. The last cuneiform scripts in Akkadian discovered thus far date from the 1st century AD. Various bronze lion-weights found in Nineveh featured both the Akkadian and Aramaic text etched on them, bearing the names of Assyrian kings
The king of Assyria (Akkadian: ''Išši'ak Aššur'', later ''šar māt Aššur'') was the ruler of the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom of Assyria, which was founded in the late 21st century BC and fell in the late 7th century BC. For much of its ear ...
, such as Shalmaneser III
Shalmaneser III (''Šulmānu-ašarēdu'', "the god Shulmanu is pre-eminent") was king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father Ashurnasirpal II in 859 BC to his own death in 824 BC.
His long reign was a constant series of campai ...
(858-824 B.C), King Sargon (721-705 B.C) and Sennacherib
Sennacherib ( Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: or , meaning " Sîn has replaced the brothers") was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father Sargon II in 705BC to his own death in 681BC. The second king of the Sargonid dynas ...
(704-681 B.C). Indication of contemporaneous existence of the two languages in 4th century B.C. is present in an Aramaic document from Uruk
Uruk, also known as Warka or Warkah, was an ancient city of Sumer (and later of Babylonia) situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates River on the dried-up ancient channel of the Euphrates east of modern Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.Harm ...
written in cuneiform. In Babylon, Akkadian writing vanished by 140 B.C, with the exclusion of a few priests who used it for religious matters. Though it still continued to be employed for astronomical texts up until the common era
Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the o ...
.
The Syriac script is a writing system
A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable fo ...
primarily used to write the Syriac language from the 1st century AD. It is one of the Semitic abjad
An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels ...
s directly descending from the Aramaic alphabet and shares similarities with the Phoenician, Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
, Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
and the traditional Mongolian alphabet
Various Mongolian writing systems have been devised for the Mongolian language over the centuries, and from a variety of scripts. The oldest and native script, called simply the Mongolian script, has been the predominant script during most of Mo ...
s. The alphabet consists of 22 letters, all of which are consonants. It is a cursive script where some, but not all, letters connect within a word. Aramaic writing has been found as far north as Hadrian's Wall in Prehistoric Britain
Several species of humans have intermittently occupied Great Britain for almost a million years. The earliest evidence of human occupation around 900,000 years ago is at Happisburgh on the Norfolk coast, with stone tools and footprints prob ...
, in the form of inscriptions in Aramaic, made by Assyrian soldiers serving in the Roman Legions
The Roman legion ( la, legiō, ) was the largest military unit of the Roman army, composed of 5,200 infantry and 300 equites (cavalry) in the period of the Roman Republic (509 BC–27 BC) and of 5,600 infantry and 200 auxilia in the period of ...
in northern England during the 2ndcentury AD.
Modern development
The oldest and classical form of the alphabet is ' (); the name is thought to derive from the Greek adjective (''strongúlē'') 'round'. Although ʾEsṭrangēlā is no longer used as the main script for writing Syriac, it has undergone some revival since the 10th century.
When Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
gradually began to be the dominant spoken language in the Fertile Crescent
The Fertile Crescent ( ar, الهلال الخصيب) is a crescent-shaped region in the Middle East, spanning modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Jordan, together with the northern region of Kuwait, southeastern region of ...
after the 7th century AD, texts were often written in Arabic with the Syriac script. Malayalam
Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 2 ...
was also written with Syriac script and was called Suriyani Malayalam. Such non-Syriac languages written in Syriac script are called ''Garshuni Garshuni or Karshuni ( Syriac alphabet: , Arabic alphabet: ) are Arabic writings using the Syriac alphabet. The word "Garshuni", derived from the word "grasha" which literally translates as "pulling", was used by George Kiraz to coin the term "gars ...
'' or ''Karshuni''.
The ''Madnhāyā'', or 'eastern', version formed as a form of shorthand developed from ʾEsṭrangēlā and progressed further as handwriting patterns changed. The ''Madnhāyā'' version also possesses optional vowel markings to help pronounce Syriac. Other names for the script include ', 'conversational', often translated as "contemporary", reflecting its use in writing modern Neo-Aramaic.
Letters
Three letters act as matres lectionis: rather than being a consonant, they indicate a vowel. '' ʾĀlep̄'' (), the first letter, represents a glottal stop, but it can also indicate the presence of certain vowels (typically at the beginning or the end of a word, but also in the middle). The letter ''Waw
Waw or WAW may refer to:
* Waw (letter), a letter in many Semitic abjads
* Waw, the velomobile
* Another spelling for the town Wau, South Sudan
* Waw Township, Burma
*Warsaw Chopin Airport, an international airport serving Warsaw, Poland (IATA ai ...
'' () is the consonant ''w'', but can also represent the vowels ''o'' and ''u''. Likewise, the letter represents the consonant ''y'', but it also stands for the vowels ''i'' and ''e''. In addition to foreign sounds, a marking system is used to distinguish ', 'hard' letters) from ', 'soft' letters). The letters ''Bēṯ'', ''Gāmal'', ''Dālaṯ'', ''Kāp̄'', ''Pē'' and ''Taw'', all plosives
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases.
The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...
('hard'), are able to be spirantised into fricative
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...
s ('soft').
The system involves placing a single dot underneath the letter to give its 'soft' variant and a dot above the letter to give its 'hard' variant (though, in modern usage, no mark at all is usually used to indicate the 'hard' value).
Latin alphabet
In the 1930s, following the state policy for minority languages of the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
, a Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...
was developed and some material published. Despite the fact that this innovation did not displace the Syriac script, the usage of the Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern I ...
in the Assyrian community has become rather widespread due to the Assyrian diaspora
Assyrian may refer to:
* Assyrian people, the indigenous ethnic group of Mesopotamia.
* Assyria, a major Mesopotamian kingdom and empire.
** Early Assyrian Period
** Old Assyrian Period
** Middle Assyrian Empire
** Neo-Assyrian Empire
* Assyrian ...
's predominant settlement in Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...
and the English-speaking world
Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the '' Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest langua ...
, where the Latin script dominates. The Latin alphabet is preferred by most Assyrians for practical reasons and its convenience, especially in social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
, where it is used to communicate. Although the Syriac Latin alphabet contains diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s, most Assyrians rarely utilise the modified letters and would conveniently rely on the basic Latin alphabet. The Latin alphabet is also a useful tool to present Assyrian terminology to anyone who is not familiar with the Syriac script. A precise transcription
Transcription refers to the process of converting sounds (voice, music etc.) into letters or musical notes, or producing a copy of something in another medium, including:
Genetics
* Transcription (biology), the copying of DNA into RNA, the fir ...
may not be necessary for native Suret speakers, as they would be able to pronounce words correctly, but it can be very helpful for those not quite familiar with Syriac and more informed with the Latin script.
Phonology
Consonants
Notes:
* In all NENA dialects, voiced, voiceless, aspirated and emphatic consonants are recognised as distinct phonemes, though there can be an overlap between plain voiceless and voiceless emphatic in sound quality.
* In Iraqi Koine and many Urmian & Northern dialects, the palatals [], [] and aspirate [] are considered the predominant realisation of //, // and aspirate //.
*In the Koine and Urmi dialects, velar fricatives / / are typically uvular as
* The phoneme // is only used by Suret speakers under larger Arabic influence. In most dialects, it is realised as []. The one exception to this is the dialect of Hértevin language, Hértevin, which merged the two historical phonemes into [ħ], thus lacking [x] instead.
* The pharyngeal consonant, pharyngeal //, represented by the letter '' 'e'', is a marginal phoneme that is generally upheld in formal or religious speech. Among the majority of Suret speakers, e'' would be realised as [], [], [], [], Zero (linguistics), deleted, or even Gemination, geminating the previous consonant, depending on the dialect and phonological context.
* // may also be heard as a tap sound [].
* // is a phoneme heard in the Tyari
Tyari ( syr, ܛܝܵܪܹܐ, Ṭyārē) is an Assyrian tribe and a historical district within Hakkari, Turkey. The area was traditionally divided into Upper (''Tyari Letha'') and Lower Tyari (''Tyari Khtetha'')–each consisting of several Assyrian ...
, Barwari and Chaldean dialects. In most of the other varieties, it merges with //, though [] is found in loanwords.
* The phonemes and have allophonic realisations of [] and [] (respectively) in most Lower Tyari, Barwari and Chaldean dialects, which is a carryover of ''begadkefat'' from the Ancient Aramaic period.
* In the Upper Tyari dialects, /θ/ is realised as [] or []; in the Marga dialect, the /t/ may at times be replaced with [].
* In the Urmian dialect, // has a widespread allophone [] (it may vacillate to [] for some speakers).
* In the Jilu dialect, // is uttered as a tense []. This can also occur in other dialects.
* In the Iraqi Koine dialect, a labial-palatal approximant sound [] is also heard.[ Heinrichs, Wolfhart (ed.) (1990). ''Studies in Neo-Aramaic''. Scholars Press: Atlanta, Georgia. .]
*// is affricated, thus pronounced as [] in some Urmian, Tyari and Nochiya dialects. // would be affricated to [] in the same process.
* // is a marginal phoneme that occurs across all dialects. Either a result of the historic splitting of /g/, through loanwords, or by contact of [] with a voiced consonant.
*// is found predominately from loanwords, but, in some dialects, also from the voicing of // (e.g. ''ḥašbunā'' /xaʒbu:na:/, "counting", from the root ''ḥ-š-b,'' "to count") as in the Jilu dialect.
*/n/ can be pronounced [] before velar consonants [x] and [q] and as [] before labial consonants.
* In some speakers, a dental click (English "tsk") may be used para-linguistically as a negative response to a " yes or no" question. This feature is more common among those who still live in the homeland or in the Middle East, than those living in the diaspora.
Vowels
According to linguist Edward Odisho, there are six vowel phonemes in Iraqi Koine. They are as follows:
* , as commonly uttered in words like ''naša'' ("man; human"), is central for many speakers. It is usually in the Urmian and Nochiya dialects. For some Urmian and Jilu
Jīlū was a district located in the Hakkari region of upper Mesopotamia in modern-day Turkey.
Before 1915 Jīlū was home to Assyrians and as well as a minority of Kurds. There were 20 Assyrian villages in this district. The area was tradition ...
speakers, may be used instead. In those having a more pronounced Jilu dialect, this vowel is mostly fronted and raised to . In the Tyari
Tyari ( syr, ܛܝܵܪܹܐ, Ṭyārē) is an Assyrian tribe and a historical district within Hakkari, Turkey. The area was traditionally divided into Upper (''Tyari Letha'') and Lower Tyari (''Tyari Khtetha'')–each consisting of several Assyrian ...
and Barwari
Barwari ( syr, ܒܪܘܪ, ku, بهرواری, Berwarî) is a region in the Hakkari mountains in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey. The region is inhabited by Assyrians and Kurds, and was formerly also home to a number of Jews prior to the ...
dialects, it is usually more back .
*, a long vowel, as heard in ''raba'' ("much; many"), may also be realised as , depending on the speaker. It is more rounded and higher in the Urmian dialect, where it is realised as .
* , heard in ''beta'' ("house") is generally diphthongised to in the Halmon dialect (a Lower Tyari tribe). To note, the j diphthong is a vestigial
Vestigiality is the retention, during the process of evolution, of genetically determined structures or attributes that have lost some or all of the ancestral function in a given species. Assessment of the vestigiality must generally rely on co ...
trait of classical Syriac and thereby may be used in formal speech as well, such as in liturgy and hymn
A hymn is a type of song, and partially synonymous with devotional song, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word ''hy ...
s.
* , uttered in words like ''dədwa'' ("housefly"), is sometimes realised as (a schwa).
*The mid vowels, preserved in Tyari, Barwari, Baz and Chaldean dialects, are sometimes raised and merged with close vowels in Urmian and some other dialects:
**, as in ''gora'' ("big"), is raised to The Urmian dialect may diphthongise it to .
**, as in ''kepa'' ("rock"), is raised to .
*, as in ''tora'' ("bull") may be diphthongised to in some Tyari, Barwari, Chaldean and Jilu dialects.
*Across many dialects, close
Close may refer to:
Music
* ''Close'' (Kim Wilde album), 1988
* ''Close'' (Marvin Sapp album), 2017
* ''Close'' (Sean Bonniwell album), 1969
* "Close" (Sub Focus song), 2014
* "Close" (Nick Jonas song), 2016
* "Close" (Rae Sremmurd song), 201 ...
and close-mid vowels are lax
Los Angeles International Airport , commonly referred to as LAX (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary international airport serving Los Angeles, California and its surrounding metropolitan area. LAX is located in the W ...
when they occur in a closed syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
:
** or is usually realised as ;
** or is usually realised as .
East Syriac dialects may recognize half-close sounds as and also recognize the back vowel as a long form of .
Two basic diphthongs exist, namely and . For some words, many dialects have monophthongised them to and respectively. For substantives, A common vowel alteration is apophonically shifting the final ''-a'' to ''-e'', so ''ṭera'' ('bird') will be ''ṭere'' ('birds') in its plural form.
Phonetics of Iraqi Koine
Iraqi Koine is a merged dialect which formed in the mid-20th century, being influenced by both Urmian and Hakkari dialects.
*Iraqi Koine, like the majority of the Suret dialects, realises as instead of .
*Iraqi Koine generally realises the interdental fricatives , in words like ''maṯa'' ("village") and ''rqaḏa'' ("dancing") as alveolar stop
In phonetics and phonology, an alveolar stop is a type of consonantal sound, made with the tongue in contact with the alveolar ridge located just behind the teeth (hence alveolar), held tightly enough to block the passage of air (hence a stop con ...
s , respectively.
*Dorsal fricatives / / are heard as uvular as
*Predominantly, in words like ''qalama'' ("pen") does not merge with .
*The diphthong in words like ''tawra'' ("bull"), as heard in most of Hakkari dialects, are realised as : ''tora''.
*The diphthong in ''zuyze'' ("money") is retained as : ''zuze''.
*Depending on the speaker, the velar stops and may be affricated as and respectively.
*The in some present progressive verbs like ''či'axla'' (" heeats") is retained as : ''ki'axla''.
Phonetics of Chaldean-Neo-Aramaic
Consonants
*The Chaldean dialects are generally characterised by the presence of the fricatives (''th'') and (''dh'') which correspond to and , respectively, in other Assyrian dialects (excluding the Tyari
Tyari ( syr, ܛܝܵܪܹܐ, Ṭyārē) is an Assyrian tribe and a historical district within Hakkari, Turkey. The area was traditionally divided into Upper (''Tyari Letha'') and Lower Tyari (''Tyari Khtetha'')–each consisting of several Assyrian ...
dialect). However, the standard or educational form of Chaldean would realize the consonants and as .
*Most Chaldean Neo-Aramaic varieties would use the phoneme of , which corresponds to in most of Assyrian Neo-Aramaic dialects (excluding the Tyari dialect).
*In some Chaldean dialects is realized as . In others, it is either a tap or a trill
TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) is an Internet Standard implemented by devices called TRILL switches. TRILL combines techniques from bridging and routing, and is the application of link-state routing to the VLAN-aware cus ...
.
*Unlike in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, the guttural
Guttural speech sounds are those with a primary place of articulation near the back of the oral cavity, especially where it's difficult to distinguish a sound's place of articulation and its phonation. In popular usage it is an imprecise term fo ...
sounds of and are used predominantly in Chaldean varieties; this is a feature also seen in other Northeastern Neo-Aramaic languages.
Vowels
Grammar
NENA is a null-subject language
In linguistic typology, a null-subject language is a language whose grammar permits an independent clause to lack an explicit subject; such a clause is then said to have a null subject.
In the principles and parameters framework, the null subj ...
with both ergative morphology and a nominative-accusative system.
Due to language contact, Suret may share similar grammatical features with Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
and Kurdish
Kurdish may refer to:
*Kurds or Kurdish people
*Kurdish languages
*Kurdish alphabets
*Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes:
**Southern Kurdistan
**Eastern Kurdistan
**Northern Kurdistan
**Western Kurdistan
See also
* Kurd (dis ...
in the way they employ the negative copula in its full form before the verbal constituent
Constituent or constituency may refer to:
Politics
* An individual voter within an electoral district, state, community, or organization
* Advocacy group or constituency
* Constituent assembly
* Constituencies of Namibia
Other meanings
* Const ...
and also with the negated forms of the present perfect
The present perfect is a grammatical combination of the present tense and perfect aspect that is used to express a past event that has present consequences. The term is used particularly in the context of English grammar to refer to forms like " ...
.
;Verbal stems
Suffixes
Suret uses verbal inflections marking person and number. The suffix "''-e''" indicates a (usually masculine) plural
The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...
(i.e. ''warda'', "flower", becomes ''warde'', "flowers"). Enclitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a w ...
forms of personal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...
s are affixed to various parts of speech. As with the object pronoun
In linguistics, an object pronoun is a personal pronoun that is used typically as a grammatical object: the direct or indirect object of a verb, or the object of a preposition. Object pronouns contrast with subject pronouns. Object pronouns in En ...
, possessive pronouns
A possessive or ktetic form (abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict own ...
are suffixes that are attached to the end of nouns to express possession similar to the English pronouns ''my, your, his, her,'' etc., which reflects the gender and plurality of the person or persons. This is a synthetic feature found in other Semitic languages and also in unrelated languages such as Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
(Uralic
The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...
), Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
(Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
) and Turkish ( Turkic). Moreover, unlike many other languages, Suret has virtually no means of deriving words by adding prefixes or suffixes to words. Instead, they are formed according to a limited number of templates applied to roots.[Solomon, Zomaya S. (1994). ''Basic sentence structure in Assyrian Aramaic'', Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, VIII/1:83–107] Modern Assyrian, like Akkadian but unlike Arabic, has only "sound" plurals formed by means of a plural ending (i.e. no broken plurals formed by changing the word stem
In linguistics, a word stem is a part of a word responsible for its lexical meaning. The term is used with slightly different meanings depending on the morphology of the language in question. In Athabaskan linguistics, for example, a verb stem ...
). As in all Semitic languages, some masculine nouns take the prototypically feminine plural ending (''-tā'').
Possessive suffixes
Although possessive suffixes are more convenient and common, they can be optional for some people and seldom used, especially among those with the Tyari and Barwari dialects, which take a more analytic approach regarding possession, just like English possessive determiners. The following are periphrastic
In linguistics, periphrasis () is the use of one or more function words to express meaning that otherwise may be expressed by attaching an affix or clitic to a word. The resulting phrase includes two or more collocated words instead of one in ...
ways to express possession, using the word ''betā'' ("house") as a base (in Urmian/Iraqi Koine):
*my house: ''betā-it dīyī'' ("house-of mine")
*your ( masc., sing.) house: ''betā-it dīyux'' ("house-of yours")
*your (fem., sing.) house: ''betā-it dīyax'' ("house-of yours")
*your (plural) house: ''betā-it dīyōxun'' ("house-of yours")
*3rd person (masc., sing.): ''betā-it dīyū'' ("house-of his")
*3rd person (fem., sing.): ''betā-it dīyō'' ("house-of hers")
*3rd person (plural): ''betā-it dīyéh'' ("house-of theirs")
Stress
Like English, Suret is a stress-timed language, but would mostly retain unreduced vowels (as in Arabic), although some dialects may be more syllable-timed. An example of stress timing is noticeable in the word "''qat''", an adverb clause conjunction which translates to "so that" – The 'a' sound in "''qat''" is unstressed and thus would turn into a schwa if one would place the stress in the next word of the sentence, so; "''mīri qat āzekh''" becomes "''mīri qət āzekh''" ("I said that we go"). Another example is observed in teen numerical range (13-19); In some dialects, the words "''īštāser''" (sixteen) or "''arbāser''" (fourteen), among other teen numbers, the typically stressed vowel in the middle ( long A) is reduced to a schwa, hence "īštəser" and "''arbəser''", respectively. In native words, Suret almost always stresses the penult
Penult is a linguistics term for the second to last syllable of a word. It is an abbreviation of ''penultimate'', which describes the next-to-last item in a series. The penult follows the antepenult and precedes the ultima. For example, the main ...
imate syllable.
Although Suret, like all Semitic languages, is not a tonal language
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...
, a tonal stress is made on a plural possessive suffix -''éh'' (i.e. ''dīyéh''; "their") in the final vowel to tonally differentiate it from an unstressed -''eh'' (i.e. ''dīyeh''; "his"), which is a masculine singular possessive, with a standard stress pattern falling on the penult. The -''eh'' used to denote a singular third person
Third person, or third-person, may refer to:
* Third person (grammar), a point of view (in English, ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', and ''they'')
** Illeism, the act of referring to oneself in the third person
* Third-person narrative, a perspective in p ...
masculine possessive (e.g. ''bābeh'', "his father"; ''aqleh'', "his leg") is present in most of the traditional dialects in Hakkari and Nineveh Plains, but not for Urmian and some Iraqi Koine speakers, who instead use -''ū'' for possessive "his" (e.g. ''bābū'', "his father"; ''aqlū'', "his leg"), whilst retaining the stress in -''éh'' for "their".
This phenomenon however may not always be present, as some Hakkari speakers, especially those from Tyari and Barwar, would use analytic speech to denote possession. So, for instance, ''bābeh'' (literally, "father-his") would be uttered as ''bābā-id dīyeh'' (literally, "father-of his"). In Iraqi Koine and Urmian, the plural form and the third person plural possessive suffix of many words, such as ''wardeh'' and ''biyyeh'' ("flowers"/"eggs" and "their flower(s)"/"their eggs", respectively), would be homophone
A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same (to varying extent) as another word but differs in meaning. A ''homophone'' may also differ in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (p ...
s were it not for the varying, distinctive stress on the penult or ultima.
Determinative
When it comes to a determinative
A determinative, also known as a taxogram or semagram, is an ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic scripts which helps to disambiguate interpretation. They have no direct counterpart in spoken language, though they may ...
(like in English ''this'', ''a'', ''the'', ''few'', ''any'', ''which'', etc.), Suret generally has an absence of an article
Article often refers to:
* Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness
* Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication
Article may also refer to:
G ...
(English "the''"''), unlike other Semitic languages such as Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
, which does use a definite article
An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech.
In English, both "the" and "a(n)" a ...
( ar, ال, ''al-''). Demonstratives
Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
(''āhā'', ''āy''/''āw'' and ''ayyāhā/awwāhā'' translating to "this
This may refer to:
* ''This'', the singular proximal demonstrative pronoun
Places
* This, or ''Thinis'', an ancient city in Upper Egypt
* This, Ardennes, a commune in France
People with the surname
* Hervé This, French culinary chemist Arts, ...
", "that
''That'' is an English language word used for several grammatical purposes. These include use as an adjective, conjunction, pronoun, adverb, and intensifier; it has distance from the speaker, as opposed to words like ''this''. The word did not ori ...
" and "that one over there", respectively, demonstrating proximal, medial and distal deixis) are commonly utilised instead (e.g. ''āhā betā'', "this house"), which can have the sense of "the". An indefinite article ("a(n)") can mark definiteness if the word is a direct object
In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
(but not a subject) by using the prepositional prefix "''l-''" paired with the proper suffix (e.g. ''šāqil qālāmā'', "he takes a pen" vs. ''šāqil-lāh qālāmā'', "he takes the pen"). Partitive In linguistics, the partitive is a word, phrase, or case that indicates partialness. Nominal partitives are syntactic constructions, such as "some of the children", and may be classified semantically as either set partitives or entity partitives ba ...
articles may be used in some speech (e.g. ''bayyīton xačča miyyā?'', which translates to "do you l.want some water?").
In place of a definite article, Ancient Aramaic used the emphatic state, formed by the addition of the suffix: "''-ā''" for generally masculine words and "''-t(h)ā''" (if the word already ends in ''-ā'') for feminine. The definite forms were ''pallāxā'' for "the (male) worker" and ''pallāxtā'' for "the (female) worker". Beginning even in the Classical Syriac era, when the prefixed preposition "''d-''" came into more popular use and replaced state Morphology for marking possession, the emphatic (definite) form of the word became dominant and the definite sense of the word merged with the indefinite sense so that ''pālāxā'' became "a/the (male) worker" and ''pālaxtā'' became "a/the (female) worker."
Consonantal root
Most NENA noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
s and verbs are built from triconsonantal roots
The roots of verbs and most nouns in the Semitic languages are characterized as a sequence of consonants or "radicals" (hence the term consonantal root). Such abstract consonantal roots are used in the formation of actual words by adding the vowels ...
, which are a form of word formation in which the root
In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the su ...
is modified and which does not involve stringing morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology.
In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone are ...
s together sequentially. Unlike Arabic, broken plurals are not present. Semitic languages typically utilise triconsonantal roots, forming a "grid" into which vowels may be inserted without affecting the basic root.
The root ' () has the basic meaning of "taking", and the following are some words that can be formed from this root:
*' (): "he has taken" (literally "taken-by him")
*' (): "he takes"
*' (): "she takes"
*' (): "take!"
*' (): "taking"
*' (): "taken"
Tenses
Suret has lost the perfect and imperfect
The imperfect ( abbreviated ) is a verb form that combines past tense (reference to a past time) and imperfective aspect (reference to a continuing or repeated event or state). It can have meanings similar to the English "was walking" or "used to ...
morphological tenses common in other Semitic languages. The present tense
The present tense (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time. The present tense is used for actions which are happening now. In order to explain and understand present ...
is usually marked with the subject pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not c ...
followed by the participle
In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
; however, such pronouns are usually omitted in the case of the third person. This use of the participle to mark the present tense is the most common of a number of ''compound'' tenses that can be used to express varying senses of tense and aspect. Suret's new system of inflection is claimed to resemble the one of the Indo-European languages, namely the Iranian languages
The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau.
The Iranian languages are groupe ...
. This assertion is founded on
the utilisation of an active participle concerted with a copula and a passive participle with a genitive/ dative element which is present in Old Persian and in Neo-Aramaic.
Both Modern Persian and Suret build the present perfect tense around the past/resultative
In linguistics, a resultative (abbreviated ) is a form that expresses that something or someone has undergone a change in state as the result of the completion of an event. Resultatives appear as predicates of sentences, and are generally composed ...
participle in conjunct with the copula (though the placing and form of the copula unveil crucial differences). The more conservative Suret dialects lay the copula in its full shape before the verbal constituent
Constituent or constituency may refer to:
Politics
* An individual voter within an electoral district, state, community, or organization
* Advocacy group or constituency
* Constituent assembly
* Constituencies of Namibia
Other meanings
* Const ...
. In the Iraqi and Iranian dialects, the previous construction is addressable with different types of the copula (e.g. deictic
In linguistics, deixis (, ) is the use of general words and phrases to refer to a specific time, place, or person in context, e.g., the words ''tomorrow'', ''there'', and ''they''. Words are deictic if their semantic meaning is fixed but their de ...
) but with the elemental copula only the cliticised form is permitted. Among conservative Urmian speakers, only the construction with the enclitic ordered after the verbal constituent is allowed. Due to language contact, the similarities between Kurdish and Modern Persian and the Urmian dialects become even more evident with their negated forms of present perfect, where they display close similarities.
A recent feature of Suret is the usage of the infinitive
Infinitive (abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all languages. The word is deri ...
instead of the present base for the expression of the present progressive
The present continuous, also called the present progressive or present imperfect, is a verb form used in modern English that combines the present tense with the continuous aspect. It is formed by the present tense form of be and the present part ...
, which is also united with the copula. Although the language has some other varieties of the copula precedent to the verbal constituent, the common construction is with the infinitive and the basic copula cliticsed to it. In the Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia, the symmetrical order of the constituents is with the present perfect tense. This structure of the NENA dialects is to be compared with the present progressive in Kurdish and Turkish as well, where the enclitic follows the infinitive. Such construction is present in Kurdish, where it is frequently combined with the locative element "in, with", which is akin to the preposition bi- preceding the infinitive in Suret (as in "bi-ktawen" meaning 'I'm writing'). The similarities of the constituents and their alignment in the present progressive construction in Suret is clearly attributed to influence from the neighbouring languages, such as the use of the infinitive for this construction and the employment of the enclitic copula after the verbal base in all verbal constructions, which is due to the impinging of the Kurdish and Turkish speech.
The morphology
Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to:
Disciplines
* Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts
* Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...
and the valency of the verb, and the arrangement of the grammatical roles should be noticed when it comes to the similarities with Kurdish
Kurdish may refer to:
*Kurds or Kurdish people
*Kurdish languages
*Kurdish alphabets
*Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes:
**Southern Kurdistan
**Eastern Kurdistan
**Northern Kurdistan
**Western Kurdistan
See also
* Kurd (dis ...
. Unlike Old Persian, Modern Persian
New Persian ( fa, فارسی نو), also known as Modern Persian () and Dari (), is the current stage of the Persian language spoken since the 8th to 9th centuries until now in Greater Iran and surroundings. It is conventionally divided into thre ...
made no distinction between transitive and intransitive verb
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs are ...
s, where it unspecialised the absolutive
In grammar, the absolutive case (abbreviated ) is the case of nouns in ergative–absolutive languages that would generally be the subjects of intransitive verbs or the objects of transitive verbs in the translational equivalents of nominative ...
type of inflection. Different handling of inflection with transitive and intransitive verbs is also nonexistent in the NENA dialects. In contrast with Persian though, it was the ergative type that was generalised in NENA.
Ergativity
Although Aramaic has been a nominative-accusative language historically, split ergativity in Christian and Jewish Neo-Aramaic languages developed through interaction with ergative Iranian languages
The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau.
The Iranian languages are groupe ...
, such as Kurdish
Kurdish may refer to:
*Kurds or Kurdish people
*Kurdish languages
*Kurdish alphabets
*Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes:
**Southern Kurdistan
**Eastern Kurdistan
**Northern Kurdistan
**Western Kurdistan
See also
* Kurd (dis ...
, which is spoken by the Muslim population of the region. Ergativity formed in the perfective
The perfective aspect ( abbreviated ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole; i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the i ...
aspect only (the imperfective
The imperfective (abbreviated or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical aspect used to describe ongoing, habitual, repeated, or similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. Although many languages have a g ...
aspect is nominative-accusative), whereas the subject, the original agent
Agent may refer to:
Espionage, investigation, and law
*, spies or intelligence officers
* Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another
** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuranc ...
construction
Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form Physical object, objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. 1.b. and 1.c. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Pr ...
of the passive participle, was expressed as an oblique
Oblique may refer to:
* an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / )
*Oblique angle, in geometry
*Oblique triangle, in geometry
* Oblique lattice, in geometry
* Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the b ...
with dative case
In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a ...
, and is presented by verb-agreement rather than case. The absolutive argument in transitive clauses is the syntactic object
Object may refer to:
General meanings
* Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept
** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place
** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter
* Goal, an ...
. The dialects of Kurdish make a concordant distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs by using a tense-split ergative pattern, which is present in the tense system of some NENA dialects; The nominative accusative type is made use of in the present for all the verbs and also for intransitive verbs in past tense and the ergative type is used instead for transitive verbs.
Unique among the Semitic languages, the development of ergativity in Northeastern Neo-Aramaic dialects involved the departure of original Aramaic tensed finite verb
Traditionally, a finite verb (from la, fīnītus, past participle of to put an end to, bound, limit) is the form "to which number and person appertain", in other words, those inflected for number and person. Verbs were originally said to be ''fin ...
al forms. Thereafter, the active participle became the root of the Suret imperfective, while the passive
Passive may refer to:
* Passive voice, a grammatical voice common in many languages, see also Pseudopassive
* Passive language, a language from which an interpreter works
* Passivity (behavior), the condition of submitting to the influence of o ...
participle evolved into the Suret perfective. The Extended-Ergative dialects, which include Iraqi Koine, Hakkari and Christian Urmian dialects, show the lowest state of ergativity and would mark unaccusative In linguistics, an unaccusative verb is an intransitive verb whose grammatical subject is not a semantics, semantic agent (grammar), agent. In other words, the subject does not actively initiate, or is not actively responsible for, the action expres ...
subjects and intransitive verb
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs are ...
s in an ergative pattern.
Vocabulary
One online Suret dictionary
Sureth Dictionary
lists a total 40,642 words–half of which are root words. Due to geographical proximity, Suret has an extensive number of Iranian
Iranian may refer to:
* Iran, a sovereign state
* Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran
* Iranian lan ...
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...
s–namely Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
and Kurdish–incorporated in its vocabulary, as well as some Arabic, Russian, Azeri and Ottoman Turkish and, increasingly within the last century, English loanwords.
Suret has numerous words borrowed into its vocabulary directly from Akkadian, some of them also being borrowed into neighbouring Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. Several of these words are not attested in Classical Edessan Syriac, many of them being agricultural terms, being more likely to survive by being spoken in agrarian rural communities rather than the urban centres like Edessa. A few deviations in pronunciation between the Akkadian and the Assyrian Aramaic words are probably due to mistranslations of cuneiform signs which can have several readings. While Akkadian nouns generally end in "''-u''" in the nominative case, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic words nouns end with the vowel "''-a''" in their lemma form.
Dialects
SIL Ethnologue distinguishes five dialect groups: Urmian, Northern, Central, Western and Sapna, each with sub-dialects. Mutual intelligibility between the Suret dialects is as high as 80%–90%.
The Urmia
Urmia or Orumiyeh ( fa, ارومیه, Variously transliterated as ''Oroumieh'', ''Oroumiyeh'', ''Orūmīyeh'' and ''Urūmiyeh''.) is the largest city in West Azerbaijan Province of Iran and the capital of Urmia County. It is situated at an al ...
dialect has become the prestige dialect of Suret after 1836, when that dialect was chosen by Justin Perkins
Justin Perkins (March 5, 1805 – December 31, 1869) was an American Presbyterian missionary and linguist. He was the first citizen of the United States to reside in Iran (formally Qajar Iran). He became known for his work among the people there ...
, an American Presbyterian
Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...
missionary, for the creation of a standard literary dialect. A second standard dialect derived from General Urmian known as "Iraqi Koine", developed in the 20th century.
In 1852, Perkins's translation of the Bible into General Urmian was published by the American Bible Society
American Bible Society is a U.S.-based Christian nonprofit headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As the American member organization of United Bible Societies, it supports global Bible translation, production, distribution, literacy, engage ...
with a parallel text of the Classical Syriac Peshitta
The Peshitta ( syc, ܦܫܺܝܛܬܳܐ ''or'' ') is the standard version of the Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition, including the Maronite Church, the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Syriac Catholic Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, ...
.
Grouping
* ''Iranian group'':
** Urmia
Urmia or Orumiyeh ( fa, ارومیه, Variously transliterated as ''Oroumieh'', ''Oroumiyeh'', ''Orūmīyeh'' and ''Urūmiyeh''.) is the largest city in West Azerbaijan Province of Iran and the capital of Urmia County. It is situated at an al ...
(west of Lake Urmia
Lake Urmia;
az, اۇرمۇ گؤلۆ, script=Arab, italic=no, Urmu gölü;
ku, گۆلائوو رمیەیێ, Gola Ûrmiyeyê;
hy, Ուրմիա լիճ, Urmia lich;
arc, ܝܡܬܐ ܕܐܘܪܡܝܐ is an endorheic salt lake in Iran. The lake is l ...
) ( Christian Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia)
** Sopurghan (north of Urmia
Urmia or Orumiyeh ( fa, ارومیه, Variously transliterated as ''Oroumieh'', ''Oroumiyeh'', ''Orūmīyeh'' and ''Urūmiyeh''.) is the largest city in West Azerbaijan Province of Iran and the capital of Urmia County. It is situated at an al ...
)
** Naghadeh
Naqadeh (; ; ), formerly known as Sulduz, is the main town of Naqadeh County, West Azerbaijan Province in Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 72,975, in 18,320 families.
Name
Naqadeh is the current name of the town (and county). The for ...
(south of Lake Urmia
Lake Urmia;
az, اۇرمۇ گؤلۆ, script=Arab, italic=no, Urmu gölü;
ku, گۆلائوو رمیەیێ, Gola Ûrmiyeyê;
hy, Ուրմիա լիճ, Urmia lich;
arc, ܝܡܬܐ ܕܐܘܪܡܝܐ is an endorheic salt lake in Iran. The lake is l ...
)
** Salmas
Salmas ( fa, سلماس; ; ; ; syr, ܣܵܠܵܡܵܣ, Salamas) is the capital of Salmas County, West Azerbaijan Province in Iran. It is located northwest of Lake Urmia, near Turkey. According to the 2019 census, the city's population is 127,86 ...
(north west of Lake Urmia
Lake Urmia;
az, اۇرمۇ گؤلۆ, script=Arab, italic=no, Urmu gölü;
ku, گۆلائوو رمیەیێ, Gola Ûrmiyeyê;
hy, Ուրմիա լիճ, Urmia lich;
arc, ܝܡܬܐ ܕܐܘܪܡܝܐ is an endorheic salt lake in Iran. The lake is l ...
)
** Sanandaj (Iranian Kurdistan
Iranian Kurdistan or Eastern Kurdistan ( ku, ڕۆژھەڵاتی کوردستان, translit=Rojhilatê Kurdistanê) is an unofficial name for the parts of northwestern Iran with either a majority or sizable population of Kurds. Geographically, it ...
) ( Senaya dialect)
*''Turkey group'':
** Nochiya
** Jilu
Jīlū was a district located in the Hakkari region of upper Mesopotamia in modern-day Turkey.
Before 1915 Jīlū was home to Assyrians and as well as a minority of Kurds. There were 20 Assyrian villages in this district. The area was tradition ...
(west of Gavar and south of Qudshanis)
** Gawar (between Salmas
Salmas ( fa, سلماس; ; ; ; syr, ܣܵܠܵܡܵܣ, Salamas) is the capital of Salmas County, West Azerbaijan Province in Iran. It is located northwest of Lake Urmia, near Turkey. According to the 2019 census, the city's population is 127,86 ...
and Van)
** Diza
** Baz
** ] Lower Tyari
Tyari ( syr, ܛܝܵܪܹܐ, Ṭyārē) is an Assyrian tribe and a historical district within Hakkari, Turkey. The area was traditionally divided into Upper (''Tyari Letha'') and Lower Tyari (''Tyari Khtetha'')–each consisting of several Assyrian ...
– Dialects of the Tyari group share features with both the Chaldean Neo-Aramaic dialects in Northern Iraq (below) and Urmian (above).
*** Çığlı, Çukurca, Ashita
*** Zawita
Zawita ( ar, زاويتة, ku, زاویته, translit=Zawîte) is a town in the Dohuk Governorate, Kurdistan Region in Iraq. The name of the town is thought to come from the Syriac word for "corner."
The town is inhabited mainly by Kurds and ...
*** Halmon/Geramon
*** Mangesh
**Upper Tyari
***Walto
**Upper Barwari
Barwari ( syr, ܒܪܘܪ, ku, بهرواری, Berwarî) is a region in the Hakkari mountains in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey. The region is inhabited by Assyrians and Kurds, and was formerly also home to a number of Jews prior to the ...
*** Qudshanis
Qudshanis, "Kochanis" or "Kochanes" (officially ''Konak'', syr, ܩܘܕܫܢܝܣ, translit=Qūdšānīs , ; ku, Qoçanis, script=Latn), is a small village in the Hakkâri District of Hakkâri Province, Turkey. The village is populated by Kurds ...
(just south of Lake Van
Lake Van ( tr, Van Gölü; hy, Վանա լիճ, translit=Vana lič̣; ku, Gola Wanê) is the largest lake in Turkey. It lies in the far east of Turkey, in the provinces of Van and Bitlis in the Armenian highlands. It is a saline soda lake ...
)
**Tkhuma
Prior to World War I, the Tkhuma ( syr, ܬܚܘܡܐ, Tkhūmā "Borderland") were one of five principal and semi-independent Assyrian tribes subject to the spiritual and temporal jurisdiction of the Assyrian Patriarch with the title Mar Shimun. T ...
**Tal
**Lewin
**Bohtan
Bohtan (also Buhtan, ''Bokhti'') was a medieval Kurdish principality in the Ottoman Empire centered on the town of Jazirah ibn 'Omar (modern Cizre also known as ''Cizîra Botan'' (''Jazira Botan'') in southeastern Anatolia. Bohtanis were an a ...
( Neo-Aramaic dialect of Bohtan)
*''northern Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...
( Nineveh Plains)'':
**
***Tel Keppe
Tel Keppe ( syr, ܬܸܠ ܟܹܐܦܹܐ ', ar, تل كيف ', alternatively spelled Tel Kaif or Telkef) is an Assyrian town in northern Iraq. It is located in the Nineveh Governorate, less than 8 mi (13 km) northeast of Mosul.Welcome to Te ...
*** Alqosh
Alqosh ( syr, ܐܲܠܩܘܿܫ, Judeo-Aramaic: אלקוש, ar, ألقوش, alternatively spelled Alkosh or Alqush) is a town in the Nineveh Plains of northern Iraq, a sub-district of the Tel Kaif District and is situated 45 km north of the ...
*** Batnaya
Batnaya ( ar, باطنايا, syr, ܒܛܢܝܐ) is a village in Nineveh Governorate, Iraq. It is located in the Tel Kaif District in the Nineveh Plains.
In the village, there are Chaldean Catholic churches of Mar Quriaqos and Mart Maryam. Th ...
*** Qaraqosh
Qaraqosh, also known as Al-Hamdaniya or Bakhdida, is an Assyrian city in Iraq within the Nineveh Governorate, located about 32 km (20 mi) southeast of the city of Mosul and 60 km (37 mi) west of Erbil amid agricultural lands, close ...
*** Tesqopa
Tesqopa ( syr, ܬܠܐ ܙܩܝܦܐ, ar, تسقوبا) or Tel Skuf ( syr, ܬܠ ܣܩܘܦ, ar, تللسقف), also ''Tel Eskof'' or ''Tall Asqaf'' is a town in northern Iraq located approximately 19 miles (about 28 kilometres) north of Mosul. Th ...
*** Zakho
Zakho, also spelled Zaxo ( ku, زاخۆ, Zaxo, syr, ܙܵܟ݂ܘܿ, Zākhō, , ) 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 b ...
*** Araden
** Lower Barwari – The dialect within this group has more in common with Tyari than with Upper Barwari dialect
*** Dooreh
*** Hayes
Iraqi Koine
Iraqi Koine, also known as Iraqi Assyrian and "Standard" Assyrian, is a compromise between the rural Ashiret accents of Hakkari and Nineveh Plains (listed above) and the former prestigious dialect in Urmia
Urmia or Orumiyeh ( fa, ارومیه, Variously transliterated as ''Oroumieh'', ''Oroumiyeh'', ''Orūmīyeh'' and ''Urūmiyeh''.) is the largest city in West Azerbaijan Province of Iran and the capital of Urmia County. It is situated at an al ...
. Iraqi Koine does not really constitute a new dialect, but an incomplete merger of dialects, with some speakers sounding more Urmian, such as those from Habbaniyah
Al Habbaniyah or Habbaniya ( ar, ٱلْحَبَّانِيَّة, ''al-Ḥabbānīyah'') is a city 85 km (53 mi) west of Baghdad in Al-Anbar Province, in central Iraq. A military airfield, RAF Habbaniya, was the site of a battle in 1941, during Wor ...
, and others more Hakkarian, such as those who immigrated from northern Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...
. Koine is more analogous or similar to Urmian in terms of manner of articulation, place of articulation and its consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...
formations than it is to the Hakkari dialects, though it just lacks the regional Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
influence in some consonants and vowels, as the front vowels in Urmian tend to be more fronted and the back ones more rounded. For an English accent
Spoken English shows great variation across regions where it is the predominant language. For example, the United Kingdom has the largest variation of accents of any country in the world, and therefore no single "British accent" exists. This ar ...
equivalence, the difference between Iraqi Koine and Urmian dialect would be akin to the difference between Australian
Australian(s) may refer to:
Australia
* Australia, a country
* Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia
** European Australians
** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists
** Aboriginal A ...
and New Zealand English.
During the First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, many Assyrians living in the Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...
were forced from their homes, and many of their descendants now live in Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...
. The relocation has led to the creation of this dialect. Iraqi Koine was developed in the urban
Urban means "related to a city". In that sense, the term may refer to:
* Urban area, geographical area distinct from rural areas
* Urban culture, the culture of towns and cities
Urban may also refer to:
General
* Urban (name), a list of people ...
areas of Iraq (i.e. Baghdad
Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. I ...
, Basra
Basra ( ar, ٱلْبَصْرَة, al-Baṣrah) is an Iraqi city located on the Shatt al-Arab. It had an estimated population of 1.4 million in 2018. Basra is also Iraq's main port, although it does not have deep water access, which is han ...
, Habbaniyah and Kirkuk), which became the meccas for the rural Assyrian population. By the end of the 1950s, vast number of Assyrians started to speak Iraqi Koine. Today, Iraqi Koine is the predominant use of communication between the majority of the Assyrians from Iraqi cities and it is also used as the standard dialect in music and formal speech.
Some modern Hakkari speakers from Iraq can switch back and forth from their Hakkari dialects to Iraqi Koine when conversing with Assyrian speakers of other dialects. Some Syrian-Assyrians, who originate from Hakkari, may also speak or sing in Iraqi Koine. This is attributed to the growing exposure to Assyrian Standard-based literature, media and its use as a liturgical
Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. ''Liturgy'' can also be used to refer specifically to public worship by Christians. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and partic ...
language by the Church of the East, which is based in Iraq. Elements of original ''Ashiret'' dialects can still be observed in Iraqi Koine, especially in that of older speakers. Furthermore, Assyrian songs are generally sung in Iraqi Koine in order for them to be intelligible and have widespread recognition. To note, the emergence of Koine did not signify that the rest of the spoken dialects vanished. The ''Ashiret'' dialects are still active today and widely spoken in northern Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...
and northeastern Syria as some Assyrians remained in the rural areas and the fact that the first generation speakers who relocated in urban areas still maintained their native dialects.
Dialect continuum
Neo-Aramaic has a rather slightly defined dialect continuum
A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...
, starting from the Assyrians in northern Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...
(e.g. Alqosh
Alqosh ( syr, ܐܲܠܩܘܿܫ, Judeo-Aramaic: אלקוש, ar, ألقوش, alternatively spelled Alkosh or Alqush) is a town in the Nineveh Plains of northern Iraq, a sub-district of the Tel Kaif District and is situated 45 km north of the ...
, Batnaya
Batnaya ( ar, باطنايا, syr, ܒܛܢܝܐ) is a village in Nineveh Governorate, Iraq. It is located in the Tel Kaif District in the Nineveh Plains.
In the village, there are Chaldean Catholic churches of Mar Quriaqos and Mart Maryam. Th ...
) and ending with those in Western Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
(Urmia
Urmia or Orumiyeh ( fa, ارومیه, Variously transliterated as ''Oroumieh'', ''Oroumiyeh'', ''Orūmīyeh'' and ''Urūmiyeh''.) is the largest city in West Azerbaijan Province of Iran and the capital of Urmia County. It is situated at an al ...
). The dialects in Northern Iraq, such as those of Alqosh and Batnaya, would be minimally unintelligible to those in Western Iran.[Beth-Zay‘ā, Esha‘yā Shamāshā Dāwīd, ''Tash‘īthā d-Beth-Nahreyn'', Tehran: Assyrian Youth Cultural Society Press, 1963, p. 895]
Nearing the Iraqi-Turkey border, the Barwari
Barwari ( syr, ܒܪܘܪ, ku, بهرواری, Berwarî) is a region in the Hakkari mountains in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey. The region is inhabited by Assyrians and Kurds, and was formerly also home to a number of Jews prior to the ...
and Tyari
Tyari ( syr, ܛܝܵܪܹܐ, Ṭyārē) is an Assyrian tribe and a historical district within Hakkari, Turkey. The area was traditionally divided into Upper (''Tyari Letha'') and Lower Tyari (''Tyari Khtetha'')–each consisting of several Assyrian ...
dialects are more "traditionally Assyrian" and would sound like those in the Hakkari province in Turkey. Furthermore, the Barwar and Tyari dialects are "transitional", acquiring both Assyrian and Chaldean phonetic features (though they do not use /ħ/). Gawar, Diz and Jilu
Jīlū was a district located in the Hakkari region of upper Mesopotamia in modern-day Turkey.
Before 1915 Jīlū was home to Assyrians and as well as a minority of Kurds. There were 20 Assyrian villages in this district. The area was tradition ...
are in the "centre" of the spectrum, which lie halfway between Tyari and Urmia, having features of both respective dialects, though still being distinct in their own manner.[Odisho, Edward: The Sound System of Modern Assyrian (Neo-Aramaic) - Weisbaden, Harrassowitz, 1988]
In Hakkari, going east (towards Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
), the Nochiya dialect would begin to sound distinct to the Tyari/Barwar dialects and more like the Urmian dialect in Urmia
Urmia or Orumiyeh ( fa, ارومیه, Variously transliterated as ''Oroumieh'', ''Oroumiyeh'', ''Orūmīyeh'' and ''Urūmiyeh''.) is the largest city in West Azerbaijan Province of Iran and the capital of Urmia County. It is situated at an al ...
, West Azerbaijan province, containing a few Urmian features. The Urmian dialect, alongside Iraqi Koine, are considered to be "Standard Assyrian", though Iraqi Koine is more widespread and has thus become the more common standard dialect in recent times. Both Koine and Urmian share phonetic characteristics with the Nochiya dialect to some degree.
Literature
Early Syriac texts still date to the 2nd century, notably the Syriac Bible and the '' Diatesseron'' Gospel harmony. The bulk of Syriac literary production dates to between the 4th and 8th centuries.
Classical Syriac literacy survives into the 9th century, though Syriac Christian authors in this period increasingly wrote in Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
. The emergence of spoken Neo-Aramaic is conventionally dated to the 13th century, but a number of authors continued producing literary works in Syriac in the later medieval period.
Because Assyrian, alongside Turoyo
Turoyo ( syr, ܛܘܪܝܐ) (''Ṭūr ‘Abdinian Aramaic''), also referred to as modern Surayt ( syr, ܣܘܪܝܬ), or modern Suryoyo ( syr, ܣܘܪܝܝܐ), is a Central Neo-Aramaic language traditionally spoken in the Tur Abdin region in southeas ...
, is the most widely spoken variety of Syriac today, modern Syriac literature would therefore usually be written in those varieties. The conversion of the Mongols
The Mongols ( mn, Монголчууд, , , ; ; russian: Монголы) are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, Inner Mongolia in China and the Buryatia Republic of the Russian Federation. The Mongols are the principal membe ...
to Islam began a period of retreat and hardship for Syriac Christianity and its adherents, although there still has been a continuous stream of Syriac literature in Upper Mesopotamia
Upper Mesopotamia is the name used for the uplands and great outwash plain of northwestern Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey, in the northern Middle East. Since the early Muslim conquests of the mid-7th century, the region has been ...
and the Levant
The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is ...
from the 14th century through to the present day. This has included the flourishing of literature from the various colloquial Eastern Aramaic
The Eastern Aramaic languages have developed from the varieties of Aramaic that developed in and around Mesopotamia (Iraq, southeast Turkey, northeast Syria and northwest and southwest Iran), as opposed to western varieties of the Levant (modern ...
Neo-Aramaic languages still spoken by Assyrians.
This ''Neo-Syriac'' literature bears a dual tradition: it continues the traditions of the Syriac literature of the past and it incorporates a converging stream of the less homogeneous spoken language. The first such flourishing of Neo-Syriac was the seventeenth century literature of the School of Alqosh
Alqosh ( syr, ܐܲܠܩܘܿܫ, Judeo-Aramaic: אלקוש, ar, ألقوش, alternatively spelled Alkosh or Alqush) is a town in the Nineveh Plains of northern Iraq, a sub-district of the Tel Kaif District and is situated 45 km north of the ...
, in northern Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...
.[William Wright: ''A Short History of Syriac Literature'', 1894, 1974 (reprint)] This literature led to the establishment of Assyrian Aramaic as written literary languages.
In the nineteenth century, printing press
A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the ...
es were established in Urmia
Urmia or Orumiyeh ( fa, ارومیه, Variously transliterated as ''Oroumieh'', ''Oroumiyeh'', ''Orūmīyeh'' and ''Urūmiyeh''.) is the largest city in West Azerbaijan Province of Iran and the capital of Urmia County. It is situated at an al ...
, in northern Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
. This led to the establishment of the 'General Urmian' dialect of Assyrian Neo-Aramaic as the standard in much Neo-Syriac Assyrian literature up until the 20th century. The ''Urmia Bible'', published in 1852 by Justin Perkins was based on the Peshitta
The Peshitta ( syc, ܦܫܺܝܛܬܳܐ ''or'' ') is the standard version of the Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition, including the Maronite Church, the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Syriac Catholic Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, ...
, where it included a parallel translation in the Urmian dialect. The comparative ease of modern publishing methods has encouraged other colloquial Neo-Aramaic languages, like Turoyo, to begin to produce literature.
See also
* Assyrian people
* Aramaic
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
* Syriac alphabet
* Syriac language
Notes
References
Sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
Remarks on the Historical Background of the Modern Assyrian Language
Geoffrey Khan
Geoffrey Allan Khan FBA (born 1 February 1958) 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 ...
, University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...
* Maclean, Arthur John (1895). ''Grammar of the dialects of vernacular Syriac: as spoken by the Eastern Syrians of Kurdistan, north-west Persia, and the Plain of Mosul: with notices of the vernacular of the Jews of Azerbaijan and of Zakhu near Mosul''. Cambridge University Press, London.
*
*
*
*
External links
* Latin Alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...
on Wikiversity
Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project that supports learning communities, their learning materials, and resulting activities. It differs from Wikipedia in that it offers tutorials and other materials for the fostering of learning, rather ...
Assyrian Neo-Aramaic alphabets
at ''Omniglot''
Semitisches Tonarchiv: Dokumentgruppe "Aramäisch/Neuostaramäisch (christl.)"
{{authority control
Eastern Aramaic languages
Christian Northeastern Neo-Aramaic dialects
Languages of Iraq
Languages of Syria
Languages of Iran
Languages of Armenia
Languages of Georgia (country)
Languages of Turkey
Fusional languages
Stress-timed languages
Subject–verb–object languages
Subject–object–verb languages
Verb–subject–object languages
Verb–object–subject languages
Object–verb–subject languages
Object–subject–verb languages
Endangered Afroasiatic languages
Languages of Kurdistan