Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia
| Lishán Didán | |
|---|---|
| לשן דידן Lišān Didān, לשנן Lišānān | |
| Pronunciation | [liˈʃan diˈdan] [liˈʃanan] |
| Native to | Israel, United States; originally Iran, Turkey; briefly Azerbaijan, Georgia (country) |
| Region | Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, New York, Los Angeles; originally from Iranian Azerbaijan |
Native speakers | 4,500 (2001)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | trg |
| Glottolog | lish1246 |
| ELP | Jewish Azerbaijani Neo-Aramaic |
The Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia, a dialect of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic, was originally spoken by Jews in Urmia and surrounding areas of Iranian Azerbaijan from Salmas to Solduz and into what is now Yüksekova, Hakkâri and Başkale, Van Province in eastern Turkey.[2] Most speakers now live in Israel.
Lishan Didan is often referred to by scholars as Jewish (Persian) Azerbaijani Neo-Aramaic.[2] Its speakers lived in Northern Iran in the cities and townships of Northern Iranian Azerbaijan, notably Urmia (briefly: Rezaiyeh), Salmas (also: Shahpur), and Naghade (also: Solduz).
Lishan Didan (pronunciation: [li:ˈʃan di:ˈdan]) literally translates to "our language" (morphological gloss: tongue-∅ GEN.1PL.EX). The name of the language exhibits clusivity marking: a more exact translation of "Lishan Didan" would be "our language, but not yours." When one speaker of the language is speaking to another, they may refer to the language using inclusive marking "Lishanan" (pronunciation: [liˈʃa:nan]), which can be translated as "our language, including yours" (morphological gloss: tongue-∅-1PL.IN). This distinction may be unique among the Neo-Aramaic Languages.
Similarly, speakers of the language often refer to themselves/their community as "Nash Didan" (pronunciation: naʃ di:ˈdan), meaning "our people."
The term targum is often used to describe Lishan Didan, as it is a traditional and common term for many Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects. When members of the Nash Didan communities of Urmia and Naghade immigrated to Israel in the 1950s, some referred to themselves as Edat haTargum ("The Community of the Targum") in Hebrew. This is in reference to the Nash Didan identity closely aligning with the long history of Aramaic Targum in Judaism. In addition to speaking a variety of Aramaic, Nash Didan have religious practices such as maintaining of the custom of meturgeman (targumic recitation: public recitation of a translation of the public Torah Reading into vernacular Aramaic) in the synagogue, and the age-old practice of using targumim to teach Biblical Hebrew. Due largely to these pracitces, some Nash Didan Jews had such a solid foundation of the Hebrew Language, they did not require ulpan classes upon immigration to Israel.
The language's ISO code is trg, stemming from the word targum.
History
[edit]Various Neo-Aramaic dialects were spoken across a wide area from Lake Urmia to Lake Van (in Turkey), down to the plain of Mosul (in Iraq) and back across to Sanandaj (in Iran again). This cluster of languages can be split into a few categories based upon location and religion (Christian or Jewish). The Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia belongs to the Northeastern cluster of Jewish Neo-Aramaic.
Jewish Neo-Aramaic varieties were by-and-large more similar to each other than to the dialects of their Christian neighbors, but there may be evidence for a small amount of sprachbrunding. It was generally far more likely for Jews to assimilate into Assyrian communities than vice-versa, but it is unclear the effect it had on language contact. On a lingusitic level, Jewish langauges often persist as a means of identity marking though Situational code-switching, and as such often develop in ways that intentionally stymy mutual intelligibility. The Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia in particular is sometimes described as asymmetrically intelligibile to other varieties of Neo-Aramaic (i.e. it is easier for speakers of these dialects to understand other dialects than for speakers of other dialects to understand these).
There are two major dialect clusters of The Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia. The northern cluster of dialects centered on Urmia and Salmas in West Azerbaijan province of Iran, and extended into the Jewish villages of Van Province, Turkey.[4] The southern cluster of dialects was focused on the town of Mahabad and villages just south of Lake Urmia.[5] The dialects of the two clusters are intelligible to one another, and most of the differences are due to receiving loanwords from different languages: Standard Persian, Kurdish and Turkish languages especially.[6]
The Nash Didan community
[edit]The history of Jews in this region goes back millenia. According to Nash Didan tradition, the Jewish community of Urmia dates back to the Babylonian Exile, when they were forcibly relocated from The Kingdom of Judah to Mesopotamia. Archeological evidence (including bronze, silver, and gold artifacts with Jewish iconography) points to Jewish settlement in the Urmia region as early as the 8th century BCE. This tradition further dictates that Nash Didan Jews did not return to Israel after the declaration issued by the emperor Cyrus II of Persia, after he conquered the region and ushered in the Second Temple period. Rather, they remained in the region under the Achaemenid Empire.[7]
Many of the Jews of Urmia worked as peddlers in the cloth trade, while others were jewelers or goldsmiths. The degree of education for the boys was primary school, with only some advancing their Jewish schooling in a Talmud yeshiva. Some of these students earned their livelihood by making talismans and amulets. There was also a small girls yeshiva with only twenty pupils. The last head of the girls yeshiva was known as Rəbbi Hawa.[2] The use of the title Rəbbi for female religious leaders is eceedingly rare in Jewish communities. The existence of a girls yeshiva itself was unheard of in that time -- it may even have been the only one in the entire Middle East.[2]
There were two main synagogues in Urmia, one large one and one smaller one. The large synagogue was called the synagogue of Sheikh Abdulla. The main synagogue shows strong influence of Qajar-era art and architecture. Sometime in 1900s, a decision was to restore and rennovate the synagoge, resulting in new paint covering the Hebrew and Aramaic calligraphy on the walls. It likely had a similar appearance to the calligraphy on the walls of the Tomb of Esther and Mordekhai in Hamedan. Today, the synagogues are abonded and in disarray. The main synagogue is preserved by the Iranian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts, who protected the site after a gang of illegal diggers attempted to loot the synagogue in 2021.[8]
This region has long suffered instability. The Ottoman and Persian Empires often used tensions between Assyrians, Azeris, Kurds, and Armenians to fight proxy wars in the region. By 1918, due to the assassination of Shimun XIX Benyamin, Patriarch of the Church of the East as part of the Assyrian Genocide, and the invasion of the Ottoman forces, many Jews were uprooted from their homes and fled. Some Jews temporarily relocated to Tbilisi. The upheavals in their traditional region after World War I and the founding of the State of Israel led most Nash Didan to settle near Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and small villages in various parts of the country.[9] Due to persecution and relocation, Neo-Aramaic began to be replaced by the speech of younger generations by Modern Hebrew.[9]
Not all Urmi Jews went to Israel. Beginning in the early 1900s, some came to the United States, forming a community in Chicago. Others stayed in Iran until after the Iranian Revolution, eventually moving to New York, Los Angeles, and other places in the United States, joining existing Persian Jewish communities. A few moved to Tehran, and remain there into the 21st century.
Most native speakers speak Hebrew to their children now.[10] Fewer than 5000 people are known to speak Urmi Jewish Neo-Aramaic, and most of them are older adults in their sixties who speak Hebrew as well.[9] The language faces extinction in the next few decades.[10] There are also a dwindling number of speakers scattered across the United States, as well as a handful in Tehran.
The Names of Lishan Didan and Related Neo-Aramaic Languages
[edit]Related Jewish Languages
[edit]Lishan Didan is often confused with a similar language Inter-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic (which is sometimes referred to as "Lishana Didan").
Another language is called Manuscript Barzani or Barzani Jewish Neo-Aramaic. Manuscript Barzani was spoken in a community in Iraqi Kurdistan of the Rewanduz/Arbel region.[11] This language is also called 'Targum,' as it follows distinct translation techniques used by Targum Onkelos and Targum Jonathan.[12][13] Many members of the Barzani family were rabbis and Torah scholars. The rabbis would travel around Kurdistan to set up and maintain yeshivas in the towns of Barzan, Aqra, Mosul, and Amediya. Much literature (commentaries on religious text, poetry, prayers, ritual instructions) has been compiled and published by the members of the Barzani family and their community. One of the most famous members of the Barzani family is Tanna'it Asenath Barzani, perhaps the first female rabbinical figure in modern Jewish history,
*h has been retained in some words in Barzani Jewish Neo-Aramaic and other communities near Kurdistan.[14] The following displays *h retention.[15]
| *h | |
|---|---|
| ghk | 'to laugh' |
| dbh | 'to slaughter' |
| rhm | 'to pity' |
| mhq | 'to erase' |
| htm | 'to sign' |
This is different from the Jewish Urmia language as this dialect has the voiceless glottal /h/[3] while Barzani Jewish Neo-Aramaic has regular pharyngealization with the voiced pharyngeal /ʕ/.
Assyrian Dialects
[edit]Another Assyrian community settled in Urmia after the local Kurds and Turkish army forced them to flee their homes.[16] Over ten thousand people died en route to Urmia.[16] After additional trouble in Urmia, the Assyrian community left and settled in Ba‘quba near Baghdad.[16] In the early 1930s some moved to Syria and lived near the Euphratic Khabur between al-Hasakah and Ras_al-Ayn.[16]
The following displays examples of divergence in phonology, morphology, and lexicon between the Jewish and Assyrian Urmia dialects.[17]
| Jewish Urmia | Assyrian Urmia | |
|---|---|---|
| belà | béta | 'house' |
| zorá | súra | 'small' |
| -u | -e | 'their' |
| -ilet | -iwət | 2ms copula |
| mqy | hmzm | 'to speak' |
| kwś | ˤsly | 'to descend' |
Intelligibility
[edit]Urmi Neo-Aramaic, at the northeastern extreme end of this area, is somewhat intelligible with Trans-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic (spoken further south, in Iranian Kurdistan) and Inter-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic (formerly spoken around Kirkuk, Iraq).[18]
However, the local Christian Neo-Aramaic dialects of Suret Neo-Aramaic are only mildly mutually intelligible: Christian and Jewish communities living side by side developed completely different variants of Aramaic that had more in common with their coreligionists living further away than with their neighbors.[3] The topography in many of the dialects of Neo-Aramaic is so distinct that small villages, (like the town of Arodhin which consisted of two Jewish families), had their own dialect.[11]
Phonology
[edit]| Labial | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | |||||
| Plosive/ Affricate |
voiceless | p | t | tʃ | k | q | ʔ |
| voiced | b | d | dʒ | ɡ | |||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | x | h | |
| voiced | w | z | ʒ | ɣ | |||
| Approximant | l | j | |||||
| Rhotic | r | ||||||
Most dialects feature a weakening of historically emphatic consonants. This dialect features suprasegmental emphasis (either pharyngealization or velarization) in historically emphatic contexts. For example, +xəlta [xɯ̽lˁtˁɑ] (= "mistake") was likely originally xəlṭa [xəltˁa] (or some variation on that phonology). This word contrasts with xəlta [xɪltʰɑ] (= "eaten" (3fs)) only in suprasegmental emphasis, forming a minimal pair (the aspiration and vowel fronting are likely conditioned on the presence of emphasis). In the traditional orthography, words were often spelled using the historical spellings if known by the writer. +xəlta may have been written חִלְטָא.
Sometimes these consonants can be realized differently:
- /q/ is often realized as [ɢ ~ ʁ] between a vowel/sonant and a vowel
- /w/ is realized as [β ~ v ~ w]
- /h/ is realized as [ɦ] in intervocalic and post-vocalic positions
- /n/ is realized as [ŋ] before /k/, /g/, and /q/
- /r/ is realized as [ɾ] in non-velarized words, and [r] in velarized words
- /b/, /d/, and /g/ tend to be devoiced when near voiceless consonants
Vowels
[edit]| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | ə | o |
| Open | ɑ |
Some vowels are realized in many different ways:
- /a/ is realized as
- [a] most commonly in non-velarized words
- [ɑ] when
- in the vicinity of back and labial consonants in stressed syllables
- in pretonic open syllables
- at the end of a word
- in velarized words
- [ʌ] when, for non-velarized words
- in unstressed closed syllables
- in open syllables that do not immediately precede the stress
- [ɔ] when in the sequence /aø/ (sometimes)
- [ɒ] when, for velarized words
- in unstressed closed syllables
- in open syllables that do not immediately precede the stress
- /ə/ is realized as
- /o/ is realized as
- /u/ is realized as
- /i/ and /e/ are realized with lowered onglides and/or offglides in velarized words
| Front | Central | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded | ||
| Close | i | y | ɯ | u | |
| Near-Close | ɪ | ʏ | ʊ | ||
| Mid | e | ø | ə | o | |
| Open-Mid | ʌ | ɔ | |||
| Open | a | ɑ | ɒ | ||
Comparisons
[edit]Below is a general comparison of different Neo-Aramaic dialect differences in phonology:[19]
| Ancient Aramaic | A. A. pronunciation | Zāxō | Dehōk | ʿAmadiya | Urmia | Irbil |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ידאֿ "hand" | ʾ īḏa | ʾ īza | ʾ īḏa | ʾ īda | īda | īla |
| ביתאֿ "house" | bēṯa | bēsa | bēṯa | bēṯa | bēla | bēla |
Reflexes
[edit]As a trans-Zab dialect, Jewish Salamas *ḏ has a reflex l like the Irbil dialect above. Examples are:[17]
| Jewish Salamas | English |
|---|---|
| nəqlá | 'thin' |
| rqül | 'dance' |
The reflex for Jewish Salamas of *ṯ is l like the Urmia and Irbil dialects above. Examples are:[17]
| Jewish Salamas | English |
|---|---|
| malá | 'village' |
| ksilá | 'hat' |
| sahlül(ġ)á | 'testimony' |
Suprasegmental Emphasis
[edit]Jewish Salamas lost the trait of word emphasis. This is the only Neo-Aramaic dialect that has completely lost this trait. Below is a comparison of Jewish Salamas and Christian Salamas suprasegmental emphasis.[17]
| Jewish Salamas | Christian Salamas | English |
|---|---|---|
| amrá | +amra | 'wool' |
| bəzzá | +bezza | 'hole' |
| susəltá | +susiya | 'plait, pigtail' |
Verbs
[edit]Urmia, like other Neo-Aramaic dialects, exhibits complex verbal morphology that allows for fine-grained expression of mood, tense, and aspect.[3]
| +qat ́Ә́l | he kills |
| +qatolé | he is killing |
| +qat ́Ә́lwa | he used to kill |
| +qatolá-wele | he was killing |
| +qt ́Ә́lle | he killed |
| +qt ́Ә́lwale | he had killed |
| +qtilé | he has killed |
| +qtilá-wele | he had killed |
Literature
[edit]Though few Neo-Aramaic dialects have written literature, educational and religious documents in Urmia were published and widely distributed in Urmia and the Kurdish mountains on both Persian and Turkish territory. Several newspapers were also published in the language. Most of this literature has been lost. However, at least one poem has been preserved, from the 1909 issue of the Syriac newspaper Kokba. The poem is the last literary survival of a classical Sugita, a type of Syriac poetry which often has three characteristic features:[5]
- initial stanzas provide the setting
- the body of the poem is often dialogue between two characters
- it is usually in acrostic form (optional. The poem presented here excludes this.)
The poem evidences borrowing and words from Turkish, Persian, Kurdish, Arabic, and some Greek origins.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Lishán Didán at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ a b c d Garbell, Irene (1965). The Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Persian Azerbaijan: Linguistic Analysis and Folkloristic Texts. Walter de Gruyter. p. 13. ISBN 978-3-11-087799-1.
- ^ a b c d e f Khan, Geoffrey (2008). The Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmi. Piscataway, NJ: Georgias Press.
- ^ Heinrichs, Wolfhard (1990). Studies in Neo-Aramaic. Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press.
- ^ a b Yaure, L (1957). "A Poem in the Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Urmia". Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 16 (2): 73–87. doi:10.1086/371377. S2CID 162120167.
- ^ Rees, M (2008). Lishan Didan, Targum Didan: Translation Language in a Neo-Aramaic Targum Tradition. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press.
- ^ "Nash-Didan | נאש דידן". nashdidan.co.il. 2019-07-26. Retrieved 2024-11-29.
- ^ "Iran arrests thieves digging secret tunnel to steal from synagogue". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. 2021-02-16. Retrieved 2024-11-29.
- ^ a b c "Israel - Languages". Ethnologue.
- ^ a b Mutzafi, H (2004). Two Texts in Barzani Jewish Neo-Aramaic. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies.
- ^ a b Sabar, Y (1984). The Arabic Elements in the Jewish Neo-Aramaic Texts of Nerwa and ʿAmādīya, Iraqi Kurdistan. American Oriental Society.
- ^ Jastrow, O (1997). The Neo-Aramaic Languages. New York: Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.
- ^ Mengozzi, A (2010). "That I Might Speak and the Ear Listen to Me" (PDF). On Genres in Traditional Modern Aramaic Literature.
- ^ Maclean, A. J (1895). Grammar of the dialects of vernacular Syriac: as spoken by the Eastern Syrians of Kurdistan, north-west Persia, and the Plain of Mosul. London: Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Khan, G (1999). A Grammar of Neo-Aramaic: The Dialect of the Jews of Arbel. Leiden, Brill.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ a b c d Coghill, E. (1999). "The Verbal System of North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic". CiteSeerX 10.1.1.507.4492.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ^ a b c d Khan, G and Lidia, N. (2015). Neo-Aramaic and Its Linguistic Context. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Sabar, Y (2002). A Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dictionary. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrossowitz Verlag.
- ^ "Neo-Aramaic". Jewish Virtual Library.
Bibliography
[edit]- Heinrichs, Wolfhart (ed.) (1990). Studies in Neo-Aramaic. Scholars Press: Atlanta, Georgia. ISBN 1-55540-430-8.
- Mahir Ünsal Eriş, Kürt Yahudileri - Din, Dil, Tarih, (Kurdish Jews) In Turkish, Kalan Publishing, Ankara, 2006
- 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
[edit]- The Nash Didan site (Hebrew) and Hebrew - Lishan Didan translator.
- Hebrew - Lishan Didan translator in the Nash Didan site