Turoyo (), also referred to as Surayt (), or modern Suryoyo (), is a
Central Neo-Aramaic language traditionally spoken by the
Syriac Christian community in the
Tur Abdin region located in southeastern
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 in northeastern
Syria
Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...
. Turoyo speakers are mostly adherents of the
Syriac Orthodox Church. Originally spoken and exclusive to Tur Abdin, it is now majority spoken in the diaspora. It is classified as a vulnerable language. Most speakers use the
Classical Syriac language for literature and worship. Its closest relatives are
Mlaḥsô and western varieties of
Northeastern Neo-Aramaic like
Suret. Turoyo is not
mutually intelligible with
Western Neo-Aramaic, having been separated for over a thousand years.
Etymology
Term comes from the word ', meaning 'mountain', thus designating a specific
Neo-Aramaic language of the mountain region of
Tur Abdin in southeastern part of modern
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 ...
(hence ''Turabdinian'' Aramaic). Other, more general names for the language are ' or '.
Term ''Surayt'' is commonly used by its speakers, as a general designation for their language, modern or historical. It is also used by the recent EU funded programme to revitalize the language, in preference to ', since Surayt is a historical name for the language used by its speakers, while Turoyo is a more academic name for the language used to distinguish it from other Neo-Aramaic languages, and Classical Syriac. However, especially in the
diaspora
A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of birth, place of origin. The word is used in reference to people who identify with a specific geographic location, but currently resi ...
, the language is frequently called ''Surayt'', ''Suryoyo'' (or ''Surayt'', ''Sŭryoyo'' or ''Süryoyo'' depending on dialect), meaning "Syriac" in general. Since it has developed as one of western variants of the Syriac language, Turoyo is sometimes also referred to as ''Western Neo-Syriac''.
History
Turoyo has evolved from the
Eastern Aramaic colloquial varieties that have been spoken in
Tur Abdin and the surrounding plain for more than a thousand years since the initial introduction of
Aramaic
Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...
to the region. However, it has also been influenced by
Classical Syriac, which itself was the variety of the
Eastern Middle Aramaic spoken farther west, in the city of
Edessa, today known as
Urfa. Due to the proximity of Tur Abdin to Edessa, and the closeness of their parent languages, meant that Turoyo bears a greater similarity to Classical Syriac than do Northeastern Neo-Aramaic varieties.
The homeland of Turoyo is the
Tur Abdin region in southeastern Turkey. This region is a traditional stronghold of
Syriac Orthodox Christians. The Turoyo-speaking population prior to the
Sayfo
The Sayfo (, ), also known as the Seyfo or the Assyrian genocide, was the mass murder and deportation of Assyrian people, Assyrian/Syriac Christians in southeastern Anatolia and Persia's Azerbaijan (Iran), Azerbaijan province by Ottoman Army ...
largely adhered to the Syriac Orthodox Church. In 1970, it was estimated that there were 20,000 Turoyo-speakers still living in the area, however, they gradually migrated to
Western Europe
Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's extent varies depending on context.
The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the Western half of the ancient Mediterranean ...
and elsewhere in the world. The Turoyo-speaking diaspora is now estimated at . In the
diaspora
A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of birth, place of origin. The word is used in reference to people who identify with a specific geographic location, but currently resi ...
communities, Turoyo is usually a second language which is supplemented by more mainstream languages. The language is considered endangered by
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...
, but efforts are still made by Turoyo-speaking communities to sustain the language through use in homelife, school programs to teach Turoyo on the weekends, and summer day camps.
Until recently, Turoyo was a spoken vernacular and was never written down: Kthobonoyo (
Classical Syriac) was the written language. In the 1880s, various attempts were made, with the encouragement of western missionaries, to write Turoyo in the
Syriac alphabet
The Syriac alphabet ( ) is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language since the 1st century. It is one of the Semitic languages, Semitic abjads descending from the Aramaic alphabet through the Palmyrene alphabet, and shares sim ...
, in the ''Serto'' and in ''Estrangelo'' script used for West-Syriac Kthobhonoyo. One of the first comprehensive studies of the language was published in 1881, by orientalists
Eugen Prym and
Albert Socin, who classified it as a
Neo-Aramaic dialect.
However, with upheaval in their homeland through the twentieth century, many Turoyo speakers have emigrated around the world (particularly to
Syria
Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...
,
Lebanon
Lebanon, officially the Republic of Lebanon, is a country in the Levant region of West Asia. Situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian Peninsula, it is bordered by Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south ...
,
Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...
and
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
). The Swedish government's education policy, that every child be educated in his or her first language, led to the commissioning of teaching materials in Turoyo. Yusuf Ishaq thus developed an alphabet for Turoyo based on the
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a 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 Magna Graecia. The Gree ...
. Silas Üzel also created a separate Latin alphabet for Turoyo in Germany.
A series of reading books and workbooks that introduce Ishaq's alphabet are called , or "Come, Let's Read!" This project has also produced a
Swedish-Turoyo dictionary of 4500 entries: the ''Svensk-turabdinskt Lexikon: Leksiqon Swedoyo-Suryoyo''. Another old teacher, writer and translator of Turoyo is Yuhanun Üzel (1934-2023) who in 2009 finished the translation of the
Peshitta
The Peshitta ( ''or'' ') is the standard Syriac edition of the Bible for Syriac Christian churches and traditions that follow the liturgies of the Syriac Rites.
The Peshitta is originally and traditionally written in the Classical Syriac d ...
Bible in Turoyo, with Benjamin Bar Shabo and Yakup Bilgic, in
Serto (West-Syriac) and Latin script, a foundation for the "Aramaic-Syriac language". A team of AI researchers completed the first translation model for Turoyo in 2023.
Dialects
Turoyo has borrowed some words from
Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
,
Kurdish,
Armenian
Armenian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent
** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...
, and
Turkish. The main dialect of Turoyo is that of
Midyat (Mëḏyoyo), in the east of Turkey's
Mardin Province. Every village have distinctive dialects (Midwoyo, Kfarzoyo, `Iwarnoyo, Nihloyo, and Izloyo, respectively). All Turoyo dialects are mutually intelligible with each other. There is a dialectal split between the town of Midyat and the villages, with only slight differences between the individual villages. A closely related language or dialect,
Mlaḥsô, spoken in two villages in
Diyarbakır
Diyarbakır is the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey. It is the administrative center of Diyarbakır Province.
Situated around a high plateau by the banks of the Tigris river on which stands the historic Diyarbakır Fortress, it is ...
, is now deemed extinct.
Alphabet
Turoyo is written both in Latin and
Syriac (
Serto) characters. The orthography below was the outcome of the International Surayt Conference held at the University of Cambridge (27–30 August 2015).
Attempts to write down Turoyo have begun since the 16th century, with Jewish Neo-Aramaic adaptions and translations of Biblical texts, commentaries, as well as hagiographic stories, books, and folktales in Christian dialects. The East Syriac Bishop Mar Yohannan working with American missionary Rev. Justin Perkins also tried to write the vernacular version of religious texts, culminating in the production of school-cards in 1836.
In 1970s Germany, members of the Aramean evangelical movement (''Aramäische Freie Christengemeinde'') used Turoyo to write short texts and songs.
The Syriac evangelical movement has also published over 300 Turoyo hymns in a compedium named ''Kole Ruhonoye'' in 2012, as well as translating the four gospels with Mark and John being published so far.
The alphabet as used in a forthcoming translation of ''New Peshitta in Turoyo'' by Yuhanun Bar Shabo, ''Sfar mele surtoṯoyo – Picture dictionary'' and Benjamin Bar Shabo's ''
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (also known as ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English Children's literature, children's novel by Lewis Carroll, a mathematics university don, don at the University of Oxford. It details the story of a ...
''.
In the 1970s, educator Yusuf Ishaq attempted to systematically incorporate the Turoyo language into a Latin orthography, which resulted in a series of reading books, entitled
oxu qorena Although this system is not used outside of Sweden, other Turoyo speakers have developed their own non-standardized Latin script to use the language on digital platforms.
The Swedish government's "mother-tongue education" project treated Turoyo as an immigrant language, like Arabic, Turkish, Kurdish, and began to teach the language in schools.
The staff of the National Swedish Institute for Teaching Material produced a Latin letter-based alphabet, grammar, dictionary, school books, and instructional material. Due to religious and political objections, the project was halted.
There are other efforts to translate famous works of literature, including The Aramaic Students Association's translation of ''The Little Prince'', the Nisbin Foundation's translation of ''Cinderella'' and ''Little Red Riding Hood.''
Phonology
Phonetically, Turoyo is very similar to Classical Syriac. The additional
phoneme
A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...
s (as in ''judge''), (as in ''church'') (as in ''azure'') and a few instances of (the Arabic
ẓāʾ
, or (), is the seventeenth letter of the Arabic alphabet, one of the six letters not in the twenty-two akin to the Phoenician alphabet (the others being , , , , ). In name and shape, it is a variant of . Its numerical value is 900 (see Abjad n ...
) mostly only appear in loanwords from other languages.
The most distinctive feature of Turoyo phonology is its use of
reduced vowels in
closed syllable
A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...
s. The phonetic value of such reduced vowels differs depending both on the value of original vowel and the dialect spoken. The Miḏyoyo dialect also reduces vowels in pre-stress open syllables. That has the effect of producing a syllabic
schwa in most dialects (in Classical Syriac, the schwa is not syllabic).
Consonants
Vowels
Turoyo has the following set of vowels:
Morphology
The verbal system of Turoyo is similar to that used in other
Neo-Aramaic languages. In Classical Syriac, the ancient
perfect and
imperfect tenses had started to become
preterite
The preterite or preterit ( ; abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense or verb form serving to denote events that took place or were completed in the past; in some languages, such as Spanish, French, and English, it is equivalent to the simple p ...
and
future tense
In grammar, a future tense ( abbreviated ) is a verb form that generally marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future. An example of a future tense form is the French ''achètera'', mea ...
s respectively, and other tenses were formed by using the
participle
In linguistics, a participle (; abbr. ) 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 a verb and used as an adject ...
s with
pronominal clitic
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 ...
s or shortened forms of the verb ''hwā'' ('to become'). Most modern Aramaic languages have completely abandoned the old tenses and form all tenses from stems based around the old participles. The classical clitics have become incorporated fully into the verb form, and can be considered more like inflections.
Turoyo has also developed the use of the
demonstrative pronouns much more than any other Aramaic language. In Turoyo, they have become
definite article
In grammar, 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" ...
s:
*masculine singular: u malko (''the king'')
*feminine singular: i malëkṯo (''the queen'')
*plural common: am malke (''the kings''), am malkoṯe (''the queens'').
The other Central Neo-Aramaic dialect, of
Mlahsô and Ansha villages in
Diyarbakır Province is somewhat different from Turoyo. It is virtually extinct; its last few speakers live in
Qamishli in northeastern
Syria
Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...
and in the diaspora.
Syntax
Turoyo has three sets of particles that take the place of the
copula in
nominal clauses: enclitic copula, independent copula, and emphatic independent copula. In Turoyo, the non-enclitic copula (or the existential particle) is articulated with the use of two sets of particles: ''kal'' and ''kit''.
See also
Notes
References
Sources
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External links
Turoyo alphabets and pronunciationat ''Omniglot''
Semitisches Tonarchiv: Dokumentgruppe "Aramäisch/Turoyo"The Turoyo language todaySyriac Turoyo-BibleTuroyo is studied and taught at the HSE Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies
{{DEFAULTSORT:Turoyo Language
Eastern Aramaic languages
Languages of Syria
Languages of Turkey
Neo-Aramaic languages
Endangered Afroasiatic languages
Tur Abdin
Languages of Kurdistan