Documentation of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic languages

The Christian NENA dialects of the region may be classified into several clusters. These include the following:

1. The Bohtan cluster, spoken in villages in the area that is now the Şırnak and Siirt provinces of Turkey (referred to below as C NENA Bohtan).
2. The Cudi cluster, spoken in villages in the area of the Cudi mountain (Cudi Daği) that is now in the Şırnak province of Turkey (referred to as C NENA Cudi).
3. The Tiyare cluster, divided into Upper Tiyare and Lower Tiyare, spoken in villages on the western side of what is now the Hakkâri province of Turkey (referred to as C NENA Tiyare).
4. The Txuma cluster, spoken in villages lying to the east of the Lower Tiyare area (referred to as C NENA Txuma).
5. The Hakkari cluster, spoken in a variety of villages in the Hakkari mountains east and north-east of Tiyare, including villages in the area of lake Van, and Salamas in northwestern Iran (referred to as C NENA Hakkari).
6. The cluster of dialects spoken in the far east of Turkey in the areas of Šamməsdin, Gawar and in the mountains of Tergawar over the border in northwestern Iran (referred to as C NENA Šamməsdin-Gawar).
7. The Urmi cluster, which includes varieties of what is best considered a single dialect spoken by Christians in villages situated on the plain of Urmi and within the town of Urmi (referred to as C. Urmi).

Christian Urmi

C. Urmi is located on the north-eastern periphery of the diverse subgroup of Neo-Aramaic known as North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA).

History of the research

The C. Urmi dialect has gained a particularly prominent status among the Neo-Aramaic dialects due to its being the basis of the literary form of Neo- Aramaic that enjoyed a wide distribution and high prestige among the Assyrian community. This is reflected also in the large number of grammatical studies of the dialect that have been published. The majority of these studies are devoted to a description of the literary language and many have a pedagogical purpose.

The earliest grammar of the language is that of Stoddard (1855), who was one of the Protestant missionaries in Urmi and was actively involved in the shaping and standardization of the literary language. The groundwork for the grammar was laid by the missionary Albert Lewis Holladay, who left the mission in 1845 for reasons of health (Murre-van den Berg 1999).

Nöldeke’s grammar, Grammatik der Neusyrischen Sprache am Urmia-See und in Kurdistan (1868), is a major contribution to scholarly research of the language, with detailed treatment in particular of morphology and syntax, including copious comparisons with earlier forms of Aramaic and discussions of the background of loanwords in various languages. The main drawback of the work is that Nöldeke did not have direct access to the spoken language. It is based mainly on a corpus of texts printed by the Protestant mission press and the grammar of Stoddard.

Collections of texts in the C. Urmi dialect with German translations were published by Merx (1873) and Socin (1882). As part of a documentation project of the culture of the various ethnic groups of the Caucasus at the end of the nineteenth century, the Assyrian scholar A.I. Kalashev (1894a) published a short corpus of folktales in the C. Urmi dialect, which he gathered from the community of Guylasar in Armenia. Maclean’s 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 Zakhu Near Mosul (1895) is a major milestone in scholarly research of Neo-Aramaic. Maclean was head of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Assyrian Mission from 1886 to 1891 and acquired an excellent knowledge of a wide range of Neo-Aramaic dialects. The core of the grammar is a description of C. Urmi but it also contains a copious quantity of data concerning the phonology and morphology of other dialects in Iran, eastern Turkey and Iraq.

Jilu

Jilu is a small, mountainous, district of South-Eastern Turkey within the borders of the present-day Hakkari province. Up until 1915, the mountains of Hakkari were inhabited both by Kurds and by Christian speakers of NENA, now commonly referred to as Assyrians. These latter lived in villages scattered thinly over a vast area, partly within the Ottoman Empire, and partly within Persia. This territory, extending roughly from Sanandaj in the South-East to Zakho in the North-West, was largely mountainous, but included the plains around Urmi, in Persian Azerbaijan, and around Mosul, in Iraq.

In most areas the Christians were directly subject to the local Muslim authorities, but the remoteness and inaccessibility of Hakkari enabled them to claim a degree of autonomy. This they exercised through the Nestorian patriarch, who bore the traditional title of Mar Shamun. The patriarch normally resided at Qudshanis, just to the North of Julamerk, the present-day town of Hakkari. The Christian Neo-Aramaic speakers of Hakkari were divided into tribes, each of which occupied a separate district. The principal tribes were Upper Tiari, Lower Tiari, Tkhuma, Diz, Tal, Baz, and Jilu. In addition, there were non-tribal Christian districts of Hakkari which were directly subject to Kurdish overlords, such as the plain of Gawar, which bordered Jilu on the East.

Perhaps the wildest and most remote of the tribal districts was Jilu. Jilu was located on the southern slopes of Cilo Dag, a mountain whose peak reaches 4125 meters. The district consisted of seventeen villages. The most important of them were Mar Zeya, Zir, Zirini, Nara, Nerik, Bebokra, Ommud, Talana, and the sub-districts of Alsun and Ištazin. Pre-eminent among the villages of Jilu was Mar Zeya, located at about 37° 24' North and 43° 58' East. The village was built on steep slopes at an altitude of about 5500 feet. The total Christian population of Hakkari was more than 25,000.

Since the turn of the century, Assyrians have been emigrating from their homeland, and in the last few decades, this movement has accelerated. Many jolwé are among the emigrants, and they now are scattered throughout the world. Many Assyrians have come to live in the United States, and the largest number, both of Assyrians in general, and of jalwé in particular, are in Chicago. Still, the majority of jalwé remain in Iraq.

In recent years the position of the Assyrians in Iraq has become increasingly difficult. Several factors have contributed to the deterioration in their condition. First, the government has been engaged in a campaign against the Kurds. This has entailed the destruction of large numbers of villages in the North of Iraq, with a view to removing the Kurds from the traditional mountain homes and either killing them or putting them in areas which would be easier to control. Many Assyrian villages have been entirely leveled as part of this campaign, and their inhabitants have been displaced. Secondly, the Iraqi military build-up and the war with Iran led to the conscription of large numbers of Assyrian men, and the deaths of many in military service. Finally, the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the subsequent action of the Allies against Iraq led to an extreme worsening of conditions in the country, from which many wished to flee.

The upheavals of the last century have resulted in the mixing together of speakers of various dialects, and the creation of what Odisho (1988) calls the Iraqi Koine. Jilu speakers have been affected by this trend, and today many of them speak a version of the Koine with a few remaining features of their traditional dialect.2 However, the great divergence of the Jilu dialect from the standard seems to have helped to protect it from the general homogenization, so that even now, it is possible to find people who speak it well. Still, the Jilu dialect, and Neo-Aramaic in general, are likely on their last legs. The language cannot endure in exile for more than perhaps two generations, and even in Iraq and Iran, the increasingly urbanized Assyrians are giving up their ancestral tongue.

Be Daire (Badaraye)

The Christian Neo-Aramaic dialect Be Daire (Badaraye) was spoken in South-Eastern Turkey (Ṭal district in the Hakkari region) until some hundred years ago. Now the speakers of this dialect live in Australia, Georgia, Russia and other countries.