Iraqi Kurdistan
Iraqi Kurdistan or Southern Kurdistan () refers to the Kurds, Kurdish-populated part of northern Iraq. It is considered one of the four parts of Greater Kurdistan in West Asia, which also includes parts of southeastern Turkey (Northern Kurdist ...
. Most speakers now live in Israel.
Classification
Speakers sometimes call their language ''Lishana Noshan'' or ''Lishana Akhni'', both of which mean 'our language'. To distinguish it from other dialects of Jewish Neo-Aramaic, Hulaulá is sometimes called ''Galiglu'' ('mine-yours'), demonstrating different use of prepositions and pronominal suffixes. Scholarly sources tend simply to call it ''Persian Kurdistani Jewish Neo-Aramaic''.
In terms of internal classification of Trans-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic, Mutzafi (2008) suggests a three-way split based on the various forms of the positive present copula:
* Western Trans-Zab ( Inter-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic), including the dialect cluster in Arbel
* North Eastern Trans-Zab ( Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia), including the dialect cluster in Urmi and adjacent Irani and Turkish areas
* South Eastern Trans-Zab (including Sanandaj Jewish Neo-Aramaic), in Iranian Kurdistan and areas to the south, as well as Iraqi towns Sulemaniyya, Halabja, Penjwin and Khanaqin.
History
Hulaulá sits at the southeastern extreme of the wide area over which various Neo-Aramaic dialects used to be spoken. From Sanandaj, the capital of Kurdistan Province, Iran, the area extended north, to the banks of Lake Urmia. From there, it extended west to Lake Van (in
Turkey
Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...
), and south onto the Plain of
Mosul
Mosul ( ; , , ; ; ; ) is a major city in northern Iraq, serving as the capital of Nineveh Governorate. It is the second largest city in Iraq overall after the capital Baghdad. Situated on the banks of Tigris, the city encloses the ruins of the ...
(in
Iraq
Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and ...
). Then it headed east again, through Arbil, back to Sanandaj.
The upheavals in their traditional region after the
First World War
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
and the founding of the State of Israel led most of the Persian Jews to settle in the new homeland in the early 1950s. Most older speakers still have Kurdish as a second language, while younger generations have
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
. Hulaulá is the most widely spoken of all the Jewish Neo-Aramaic languages, with around 10,000 speakers. Almost all of these live in Israel, with a few remaining in Iran, and some in the United States.
The various dialects of Hulaulá were clustered around the major settlement areas of Jews in the region: the cities of Sanandaj and Saqqez in Kurdistan Province, Iran, with a southern outpost at Kerend, and a cluster in the
Iraq
Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and ...
i city of Sulaymaniyah. Hulaulá is full of loanwords from
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
Hebrew alphabet
The Hebrew alphabet (, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is a unicase, unicameral abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably ...
. Spelling tends to be highly phonetic, and elided letters are not written.
Grammar
In general, the Trans-Zab dialect bundle has many isoglosses, such as final stress, e.g. ''gorá'' "man" vs. ''góra'' "elsewhere", merged interdentals /ṯ/ and /ḏ/ into /l/, e.g. ''belá'' "house" (< *bayṯā) and ''ʾelá'' "festival" (< *ʿeḏā), lexemes, e.g. ''băruxa'' "friend2, the definite suffix ''-aké'' borrowed from Gorani, and verb-final word order influenced by Iranian. Though most Trans-Zab dialects are similar, Trans-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic is unique in its definite suffix, ''-aké''. The final ''é'' could have been borrowed from Akre or through contraction of ''-aka-y'' in Sorani.
All Trans-Zab varieties are verb-final, and its sentence structure is SOV.
Hulaulá exhibits many phonological and morphosyntactic innovations. The most widely applicable are listed below:
* interdental to lateral shift;
* dI and *It to the lateral consonant l, as in the case of *ʾidIa ̄Ita ̄ . *ʾila ̄la . ʾila ̄le ́ ‘‘hands’’;
* interdental to alveolar shift;
* dI and *It shifted to d rather than to l, chiefly in the vicinity of an alveolar sonorant l, r, or n;
* interdental to h;
** a small number of lexical items shift when preceding an r or r(with a dot underneath);
* penultimate to ultimate stress;
** in the nominal system, stress is shifted from the penultimate to the ultimate syllable. Importantly, this does not apply to adverbs. This change likely arose from contact with Kurdish and Azerbaijani; it is possible for this feature to have developed independently in different Trans-Zab dialect, but equally possibly is a proto-Trans-Zab which already possessed this characteristic. And,
* w to f l__-ta;
**via partial assimilation to the /t/ of feminine suffix -ta, the consonant /w/ shifted to /f/. This is seen most often on feminine nouns and adjectives which were derived from older masculine forms. Therefore, /w/ and /f/ reflect a gender-based morphophonemic alternation.
See also
*
Aramaic alphabet
The ancient Aramaic alphabet was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian peoples throughout the Fertile Crescent. It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects und ...
*
Aramaic language
Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient Syria (region), region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai Peninsula, Sinai, Southeastern Anatolia Regi ...
*
Jewish languages
Jewish languages are the various languages and dialects that developed in Jewish communities in the Jewish diaspora, diaspora. The original Jewish language is Hebrew, supplanted as the primary vernacular by Aramaic following the Babylonian capti ...
References
Further reading
* Heinrichs, Wolfhart (ed.) (1990). ''Studies in Neo-Aramaic''. Scholars Press: Atlanta, Georgia. .
* 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.