Documentation of Turoyo language

General information about the language

Turoyo, also known as Surayt, comprises a cluster of closely related Aramaic dialects first attested in the Mardin province of Turkey but today spoken primarily across the global diaspora of Süryani (Syriac Christians). Estimates of the total number of speakers vary from 50,000 (Weaver & Kiraz 2015) to 84,000 (Ethnologue 2009), of which nearly all reside in the diaspora, chiefly in Western Europe, Brazil, and the US. The name Turoyo refers to the historical region of Tur Abdin, which straddles the Mardin and Şırnak provinces of southern Anatolian Turkey, but within this region no more than 2,500 speakers reside, because of the 1915 genocide, forced migration due to the Kurdish conflict (1978–present), and perennial emigration to the West. The status of its documentation is extremely limited, with the speech of only a few diasporan communities satisfactorily documented (chiefly emigrants from Miden / Öğündük), and basic references (such as a dictionary) completely lacking.

The Tur Abdin region, the ancient home of Ṭuroyo and the last remaining stronghold of Aramaic in the Republic of Türkiye,1 stretches eastwards from the monastery of Mor Ḥananyo to the east of Mardin and is bounded on the North and East by the Tigris and the lowland plains (čōl) to the south, roughly coterminous with the Syrian border. Within this region are roughly two thousand speakers of Ṭuroyo in Midyat and across a dozen or so villages to the north, east, and south of Midyat, including Arbo (Turk. Taşköy), Arkaḥ (Turk. Ücköy), Anḥil (Turk. Yemişli), Badəbbe (Turk. Dibek), Bequsyone (Turk. Alagöz), Bṣorino (Turk. Haberli), Dayro da-Ṣlibo (Turk. Çatalçam), Dērqube (Turk. Karagöl), Əḥwo (Turk. Güzelsu), Gundk̇e (Turk. Odabaşı), ḥaḥ (Turk. Anıtlı), ʕIwardo (Turk. Gülgöze), Kafro (Turk. Elbeğendi), Kfarze (Turk. Altıntaş), Marbobo (Turk. Günyurdu), Midən (Turk. Öğündükköyü), Mzizaḥ (Turk. Doğançay), Sĕderí (Turk. Üçyol), Xărăbe Məšk̇a (Turk. Dağiçi).2 Each of these villages hosts its own distinct dialect, which is mutually comprehensible with those of the other villages but immediately distinguishable from them.

All of speakers of Ṭuroyo are members of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch, which uses Syriac according to the West Syrian Rite as its liturgical language. As such, Syriac remains the literary register for most educated Ṭuroyo-speakers, but there is a small but growing body of Ṭuroyo literature, primarily pedagogical texts for learning Ṭuroyo, local histories, and poetry. Speakers also use Ṭuroyo across other media, particularly social media. Over the last century and a half, scholars have collected various genres of oral literature from speakers of Ṭuroyo, including folklore, oral histories, and ethnographic accounts relating to the traditional lifeways of the Suryoyo people.

Ṭuroyo pertains to the Eastern branch of Aramaic, an umbrella term for a group of closely related Semitic languages which include literary languages such as Syriac, Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, and Mandaic, as well as vernaculars such as the North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) languages, Modern Mandaic, and Mlaḥsô, its closest relative (Jastrow 1994).

History of the research

Ṭuroyo first attracted scholarly attention when the German orientalist Eugen Prym and the Swiss orientalist Albert Socin encountered a speaker from Midyat, the metropolis of the Tur Abdin region, in March of 1869 in Damascus. They collected folkloric texts from him and subsequently published the results of their research as Der neu-aramaeische Dialekt des Ṭûr ʿAbdîn (Prym and Socin 1881) in two volumes, texts and translations, the second of which bears the subtitle Syrische Sagen und Märchen aus dem Volksmunde.

In 1923, the German Semitist Adolf Siegel published the first comprehensive description of the phonology and morphology of this corpus.

The German orientalist Hellmut Ritter (1892–1971) subsequently conducted original fieldwork in Istanbul with speakers of various dialects during the 1960s, some of the results of which he published in three volumes (Ritter 1967, 1969, and 1971). His draft dictionary of Ṭuroyo (Ritter 1979), which includes only nouns and uninflected words, and a grammar, which includes a very detailed sketch of Ṭuroyo verbal morphology (Ritter 1990), were only posthumously published by his students. Simultaneously, the German Semitist Otto Jastrow completed a description of the phonology and morphology of the dialect of Midən as his 1967 doctoral dissertation at Bamberg, of which a photomechanical reproduction was first printed as Jastrow 1967. This dissertation was subsequently edited and published as Jastrow 1985.

In 2018, the HSE Russian Expedition to Tur Abdin, under the direction of Sergey Loesov, began collecting new texts from the other village dialects which had remained largely undocumented since the days of Ritter, for the first time in their native setting. This fieldwork, which has continued until the present date, has produced several articles, including Häberl, Kuzin, Loesov, and Lyavdansky 2020, Häberl and Loesov 2021, Häberl and Loesov 2022, Häberl, Kashintseva, and Loesov 2022, and a forthcoming volume, Ṭuroyo: A Selection of Transcribed and Interlinearized Texts, Together with a Glossary and Etymological Notes.

Our informants

	Name	♂/♀	Age	Residence	Birthplace	Mother Tongue	Languages (ISO-639-3)
1	Malke be Yuḥḥi	♂	72	Bequsyone	Bequsyone	Ṭuroyo	kmr
2	Yusuf be Šamʕən Baḥḥo Uluišik	♂	68	Midyat	Midyat	Ṭuroyo	kmr, tur, ayp, deu
3	Yildəz Turker	♀	~48	Midyat	ʕƏrnəs	Ṭuroyo	kmr, tur, ayp
4	Nuʕman Išlehan	♂	82	Kfarze	Kfarze	Ṭuroyo
5	Farida Günduz	♀	73	Kfarze	Kfarze	Ṭuroyo	kmr
6	Šamʕən Flān	♂	38	Midən	Midən	Ṭuroyo	kmr, tur
7	Ilyas Iranli	♂	43	Midyat	Kfarze	Ṭuroyo	kmr, tur, ayp
8	Nisane Ergün	♀	84	Derqubbe	Bequsyone	Ṭuroyo	kmr
9	Ḥanna Dewo	♂	75	Midyat	Kfarze	Ṭuroyo
10	Išaye Be Šamika	♂	79	Bsorino	Bsorino	Ṭuroyo	kmr, tur, ayp
11	Musa Alkan	♂		Mzizaḥ		Ṭuroyo
12	Rumiya Dik	♀		Arkaḥ		Ṭuroyo
13	Laḥdo Dik	♂		Arkaḥ		Ṭuroyo
14	Afrem Aydin	♂		Mzizaḥ/Midyat	Mzizaḥ	Ṭuroyo
15	Özlam Ergav	♀		Midyat	Midyat	Ṭuroyo
16	Murat Be Jallo	♂		Mzizah		Ṭuroyo
17	Malfono Besim	♂		Bsorino		Ṭuroyo
18	Isa Be Galika	♂		Bsorino		Ṭuroyo
20	Shabo Be Makko	♂		Kfarze		Ṭuroyo
21	Fahima Ishlehan	♀		Kfarze		Ṭuroyo
22	Abgar Be Fatrus	♂		Kfarze		Ṭuroyo
23	Ṣaliba Gok	♂		Gütersloh	Badəbbe	Ṭuroyo
24	Gabriela Dik	♀	26	Arkaḥ	Arkaḥ	Ṭuroyo
25	Qašo Eliyo	♂		Arkaḥ	Arkaḥ	Ṭuroyo
26	Šleman Šašmaz	♂	36	Arkaḥ	Arkaḥ	Ṭuroyo
27	Malfono Isḥak	♂	45	Arkaḥ	Arkaḥ	Ṭuroyo	kmr, ayp, tur
28	Maryam be Muqsi Laḥdo	♀				Ṭuroyo
29	Ṣtayfo Be Mato	♂				Ṭuroyo
30	Ḥanne Be Kažže	♂				Ṭuroyo
31	Diana Dik	♀				Ṭuroyo
32	Samira Dik	♀				Ṭuroyo
33	Afrem Be Muqsi Laḥdo	♂				Ṭuroyo
34	Šefik Oktay	♂				Ṭuroyo
35	Nisane Oktay	♀				Ṭuroyo
36	Šmuni Flān	♀	65	Bequsyone	Bequsyone	Ṭuroyo
37	Ibrahim Amno	♂	83	Anhel	Anhel	Ṭuroyo	kmr, ayp
38	Anter Onar	♂	63	Midyat	Midyat	Ṭuroyo	kmr, ayp, tur