Aramaic anyone?

[Prosper_Youplaboum]

Shalom

I couldn't find any specific thread or forum (here) about (Modern) Aramaic... is there one?
And what I wanted to know is: is there someone on Unilang who'd be fluent in a Modern Aramaic language (say Sureth/Swadaya/Madinkhaya) ?

todhah

[Babelfish]

Shalom
The first place you might want to look in is the Other Languages forum. I'd also ask in the Arabic forum, since AFAIK these modern Aramaic languages you mention are pretty much only spoken by communities in certain Arabic countries.
In Israel I did read about a kibbutz in which members use Aramaic for everyday conversations (!) but I suppose that's some kind of classical Aramaic as is used in the Bible and other religion-related books. I don't think there's much relation between Hebrew speaking and Neo-Aramaic speaking communities.

[Prosper_Youplaboum]

Brikh t.ahra

The first place you might want to look in is the Other Languages forum. I'd also ask in the Arabic forum, since AFAIK these modern Aramaic languages you mention are pretty much only spoken by communities in certain Arabic countries.

well, also in Iran, Turkey, Israel and in the diaspora (USA, France, Sweden...)

In Israel I did read about a kibbutz in which members use Aramaic for everyday conversations (!) but I suppose that's some kind of classical Aramaic as is used in the Bible and other religion-related books. I don't think there's much relation between Hebrew speaking and Neo-Aramaic speaking communities.

there are Modern Aramaic-speaking Jews in Israel too, according to what I read.
Well, talking a modernized version of Biblical Aramaic should be cool but I wonder how you can learn to speak like that - for vocabulary reasons mainly.

Todhah / Tawdi saggi

[Yaron]

If I'm not mistaken in Israel there's the Nash Didan (Our people in their language) community, I'm not sure it is the exact same thing as the Modern Aramaic/Syriac spoken in Syria.

For modern Aramaic you can take a look at Wikipedia: http://arc.wikipedia.org
If you are already familiar with Hebrew and/or Arabic you'll find it pretty easy to learn, most words sound pretty similar.

I'm not fluent in this language but I can understand a little, apparently there are 3 different fonts, I can understand most of the glyphs, I need some help for the others.
Also notice that there are differences between the scripts because some of them have final letters (אותיות סופיות) and some of them have only a single form, basically it depends on the font installed on your computer.
If you would really like to learn the commonly used script you should try this video, very catchy tune:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOD1JC5JLDw

♫ Alap atour yamani ♫ ☺

If you still need my help don't hesitate to contact me ☺

[sitifan]

http://judaism.about.com/od/hebre1/f/aramaic.htm
Kurdish Jews still speak Aramaic today.