Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

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księżycowy
Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby księżycowy » 2019-06-19, 10:28

So, I just found this: https://aramaicstudies.org/
Which, of I'm not mistaken is for Chaldean.

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Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby n8an » 2019-06-19, 12:45

księżycowy wrote:So, I just found this: https://aramaicstudies.org/
Which, of I'm not mistaken is for Chaldean.


It looks like an interesting site!

...though unfortunately it seems none of the material is available for viewing :(

As for the dialect, it says that it uses "the" Nineveh dialect (there are, of course, many in Nineveh) which is sometimes called "Chaldean". On the FAQs, it has this:

"Q. In what dialect will the class be taught in?


A. The Class is taught in a unitary dialect, consisting of Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac. Students will be taught how to read and write in standardized Syriac (Eastern Aramaic) allowing them to build their speaking skills."

There is no such thing as a unitary dialect, and "Assyrian" "Chaldean" and "Syriac" are church denominations and not real names of dialects. Plenty of Assyrian Church of the East followers speak Chaldean, Chaldean Catholics speak Assyrian and Syriac Catholics/Orthodox speak both. And vice versa. When some people refer to "Assyrian" they mean Iraqi Koine or Urmi, "Chaldean" meaning Nineveh...but what is "Syriac"? Classical Syriac? The Eastern dialect spoken in Syriac Orthodox/Catholic Iraqi towns like Bakhdeda and Bartella, which is very similar to Nineveh dialects? Or the very different central Eastern dialect spoken by Syriac Orthodox Suryoyos in Turkey known as Turoyo?

If the author means to combine dialects to create some kind of standard, Iraqi Koine is probably the best bet at a middle ground. You could throw in some Arabic loanwords to make it sound more "Nineveh" or an Urmi kind of accent or something. But to include Turoyo would make it totally unintelligible to anybody, as they are very different.

Any, let me know if you get any more info about this course :D

księżycowy

Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby księżycowy » 2019-06-19, 13:18

Obviously you know waaaaaaay more about the terminology and dialectology of Neo-Aramaic than I do, so I completely defer to you on all that. :)

I have to say I am curious about the book. Especially because it has audio recordings. I have noticed some weird wordings and such on the website, so I assume it's been written by a non-native speaker of English. Still, for 30~40$ on Amazon, I may pick up a copy.

I wish, though, that there were recordings for Introductory Chaldean and Chaldean Grammar though. Those are great textbooks. *sigh*

At the moment, I'm considering purchasing the two textbooks that are for sale at the Mor Ephrem Monastery website (http://morephrem.com/bookshop/) before anything else though.

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Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby n8an » 2019-06-19, 13:37

księżycowy wrote:Obviously you know waaaaaaay more about the terminology and dialectology of Neo-Aramaic than I do, so I completely defer to you on all that. :)


I'm exposed to faaaar too many arguments about this language/ethnicity/culture/whatever IRL and it seems to have imprinted itself on my brain :ohwell:

I have to say I am curious about the book. Especially because it has audio recordings. I have noticed some weird wordings and such on the website, so I assume it's been written by a non-native speaker of English. Still, for 30~40$ on Amazon, I may pick up a copy.

I wish, though, that there were recordings for Introductory Chaldean and Chaldean Grammar though. Those are great textbooks. *sigh*


So true! Those books were great. I really feel that a little bit more of the Introductory Chaldean style course would have been soooo helpful. I think that's probably the leading course available.

At the moment, I'm considering purchasing the two textbooks that are for sale at the Mor Ephrem Monastery website (http://morephrem.com/bookshop/) before anything else though.


This looks sooo cool! Thanks for sharing! This is for the Turoyo dialect, which I think sounds ULTRA cool 8-)

Do you know any native speakers IRL?

księżycowy

Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby księżycowy » 2019-06-19, 13:44

Nope, unfortunately I don't know any native speakers. That's kinda why I love to get recordings.

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Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby n8an » 2019-06-19, 14:03

księżycowy wrote:Nope, unfortunately I don't know any native speakers. That's kinda why I love to get recordings.


Recordings are often even better than native speakers. My friends refuse to really help me :?

Do you have a church near you?

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Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby Antea » 2019-06-20, 19:49

Sometimes I watch the Assyrian TV in Facebook. Between Arabic and Hebrew, I catch meaning from time to time :roll: . Have you tried with this TV channel?

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Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby Antea » 2019-06-20, 19:51

THe channel is also live on YouTube.

księżycowy

Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby księżycowy » 2019-06-20, 19:55

n8an wrote:Do you have a church near you?

Not that I know of. I mean, not a Assyrian church anyway.

I did email the website (that just so happens to be a church!) that is mentioned in the credits to the too Chaldean textbooks. I asked them if there was any interest in recording audio for the texts. I haven't heard back (and I'm not sure they'd do it anyway), but it was worth a shot. :P

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Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby Linguaphile » 2019-06-20, 20:25

There are a few short recordings here on the site księżycowy posted:
https://aramaicstudies.org/church_classes/
About 20 minutes' worth, mostly with English translations of words, phrases, etc. You may have already seen it but the heading "church classes" doesn't make it obvious that they are brief language lessons so I thought I'd point it out. :D They apparently are part of an 8-day language course (ܐܝܼܠܘܼܦ ܘܡܲܚܟܝܼ ܠܸܫܵܢܘܼܟܼ) that starts again in a couple of weeks at the church.

n8an wrote:If the author means to combine dialects to create some kind of standard

This is what many speakers in the United States do already with the way they really speak so it does not surprise me a bit that the course is described that way. I think it's also why many native speakers in the United States aren't willing to help non-native speakers learn the language; they don't consider their language "correct" because they know it is a mix of various dialects, Arabic loans, English loans, etc. At least that has been my experience here (where many native speakers have more than one dialect spoken in their family, and certainly in the wider community, and it therefore becomes a mix). Many of the native speakers I've known have been very shy about telling me how to say even the simplest phrases, and sometimes come back the next day and tell me "Yesterday I told you X, but actually you should say Y" - after checking with relatives. Or I will ask a group of people how to say something and they will discuss it among themselves at length in Assyrian, coming up with various options and arguing about them and where they are used, before agreeing on the whatever they decide is the most "proper" way to translate it.
Sono di continuo a caccia di parole. Descriverei il processo così: Ogni giorno entro in un bosco con un cestino in mano. Trovo le parole tutt'attorno: sugli alberi, nei cespugli, per terra (in realtà: per la strada, durante la conversazioni, mentre leggo). Ne raccolgo quante più possibile. -Jhumpa Lahiri

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Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby Maliktha » 2019-10-11, 20:54

n8an wrote:
voron wrote:There is "rind" in Kurdish which means "beautiful" and is often used in songs (for example in this song "Rinda min" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iafZddqbIVY). I wonder if they are related.


It's quite possible.

One of the most famous Kurdish words in Assyrian has to be "jaareh" (zhaareh) - meaning "poor thing!".

There is also the word "miskeena" (which is either a native word, or borrowed from Arabic "maskeen" or Hebrew "misken"), but as far as I've experienced "jaareh" is used by all, from Assyrian speakers in Urmia to Chaldean speakers in Alqosh. It's super prevalent!


"Miskeen" in Arabic was borrowed from aramaic which was borrowed from Akkadian. It is a native word depending on how you see it as Assyrians, prior using aramaic spoke a dialect of akkadian
See here v
https://twitter.com/LKeath/status/10327 ... 43745?s=19

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Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby Maliktha » 2019-10-11, 20:59

Drink wrote:Yes, I know Arabic, as I indicate on my profile.

Remember when I wrote this?:
Drink wrote:For example, the dialect of Zakho (the largest subdialect of Lishana Deni, from what I can tell) has > s and > z, while the dialect of Amədya (the one I'm learning, because I happen to have access to the book) retains , but has > d. Since these are pretty important phonemes, I have to imagine they make a significant difference.

If you didn't understand what that meant, and are standard transliteration characters for Semitic languages, especially Hebrew and Aramaic. The line just indicates it is a fricative variant, so = ث ("th") and = ذ ("dh"). The ">" is standard linguistic notation to indicate a change in pronunciation, so > d means that what used to be pronounced ذ ("dh") is now pronounced د ("d"). These transliteration characters are much easier to work with than IPA, so I suggest you learn them. IPA is really only needed when getting into finer details of pronunciation.

Now from what I've learned so far about Amədya, the native Aramaic ع and ح sounds became ء and خ, respectively, except for a few cases where they remained (and I think that's true of all Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialects). However, new ع and ح sounds came in from Arabic, Kurdish, and liturgical Hebrew. So when you say that Chaldean has the word mshee7a, rather than msheekha, I would think that it must be a borrowing from liturgical Syriac or influenced by the Arabic word masee7, or it's one of those few cases where the sound simply remained and didn't shift. Incidentally, Amədya uses the word masheeya7 (borrowed from Hebrew). Since you say that Chaldean uses the preposition "immookh", this word would originally have had the ع sound "3immookh", but my guess is that it is pronounced "2immookh" in Chaldean (2 = ء in case you didn't know that one), am I right about that? You can also test out the word for "eye". Is it "ena" or "3ena"?

I think that in Amədya, "What are you doing?" would be "ma godət?", but maybe it could also be "mat 2wada?".



As a person who speaks the Nineveh dialect, "7" is not taken from Arabic.

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Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby Drink » 2019-10-18, 8:47

Maliktha wrote:As a person who speaks the Nineveh dialect, "7" is not taken from Arabic.


Can you give some examples of words with "7"?

My understanding is that most words where older Aramaic had "7", it has become "5" (i.e. "kh"), with a small number of exceptions that retained "7".
שתה וגם גמליך אשקה

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Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby n8an » 2019-10-18, 9:04

Drink wrote:Can you give some examples of words with "7"?

My understanding is that most words where older Aramaic had "7", it has become "5" (i.e. "kh"), with a small number of exceptions that retained "7".


It depends on the dialect.

Ankawa uses both pronunciations at different times for the same letter. I think most Nineveh dialects would be like that too.

Urmi doesn't have 7. Most Iraqi Koine doesn't either, but some might since Iraqi Koine is not standardised. I have no idea about the Eastern dialects spoken in Syria (not including the western ones of Maaloula etc). Other sub dialects that still exist can vary.

Examples:

msheekha/mshee7a = messiah

khzelee/7zelee = I saw

kha/7a - one


Nineveh uses the root "7 b" for love/like. The other dialects don't seem to use it as much - "k7ebinakh" vs "bayinakh" - but I think it does exist, and sometimes they pronounce that like "gh" ("maghbinakh").

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Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby Antea » 2019-11-23, 8:27


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Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby Wingster » 2020-03-08, 0:15

Drink wrote:
Maliktha wrote:As a person who speaks the Nineveh dialect, "7" is not taken from Arabic.


Can you give some examples of words with "7"?

My understanding is that most words where older Aramaic had "7", it has become "5" (i.e. "kh"), with a small number of exceptions that retained "7".

Although true that ħ("7") shifted to X("5") in North eastern Neo Aramaic, it has been retained in certain dialects in a considerable amount of words.
Historical ħ(7) and ʕ(3) are retained in most words including an emphatic constant, ie near ṭ , ṣ and/or q(or innovated ones such as emphatic r, l or m).

In my dialect as an example we say
3aqubra - mouse
D3aṣa- to insert, to stick in
Mṭa3olə - to play
7paqa - to embrace, to hug
Shṭa7a- to lie down, to spread out
etc
There are even several cases of a preserved 3/7 in words that do not contain an emphatic consonant. Such as
Gamo3a - a sip
7yaka - to scratch, to itch

And these are inherited words, if you include borrowings from our liturgical language and words that have been changed due to contact with it, in our everyday speech many of our dialects are indeed rich in the "7" and "3" sounds.

It should be stressed though that only few dialects follow the rule above, these are mainly dialects close to Mosul and one dialect near Arbil. Other dialects around Arbil, south of Duhok and Zakho only follow this rule to a certain extent.

księżycowy

Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby księżycowy » 2020-03-09, 12:16

I just so happen to find this book today, it may be of interest for some. The price tag is a bit high, however.
http://subaran.com/book/aramaic-for-beginers/

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Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby eskandar » 2020-11-20, 16:26

Pretty amazing free online resource for Surayt-Aramaic (Turoyo): http://www.surayt.com/
Includes web materials, textbooks, corpus, and an app, all free and available in multiple languages.
Please correct my mistakes in any language.

księżycowy

Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby księżycowy » 2020-11-20, 17:43

That was way back on page one, but thanks for posting again! :)

These links can easily get lost in these type of threads.

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Re: Assyrian neo-Aramaic (and other neo-Aramaic dialects)

Postby n8an » 2021-05-27, 14:11

I haven't spent a single second studying Sureth in months :-(


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