Product Code Database
Suret ( (2025). 9783110808742, De Gruyter Mouton. ISBN 9783110808742 refers to the varieties of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) spoken by , namely Assyrian people. (2025). 9781463216603, Gorgias Press. ISBN 9781463216603Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Northeastern Neo-Aramaic". Glottolog 2.2. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.Blench, 2006. The Afro-Asiatic Languages: Classification and Reference List The various NENA dialects descend from Old Aramaic, the lingua franca in the later phase of the Assyria, which slowly displaced the East Semitic Akkadian language beginning around the 10th century BC.Bae, C. Aramaic as a Lingua Franca During the Persian Empire (538-333 BCE). Journal of Universal Language. March 2004, 1-20. They have been further heavily influenced by Syriac language, the Middle Aramaic dialect of Edessa, after its adoption as an official Sacred language of the Syriac churches, but Suret is not a direct descendant of Classical Syriac.
Suret speakers are indigenous to Upper Mesopotamia, northwestern Iran, southeastern Anatolia and the northeastern Levant, which is a large region stretching from the plain of Urmia in northwestern Iran through to the Nineveh Plains, Erbil, Kirkuk and Duhok regions in northern Iraq, together with the northeastern regions of Syria and to south-central and southeastern Turkey.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. Instability throughout the Middle East over the past century has led to a worldwide diaspora of Suret speakers, with most speakers now living abroad in such places as North and South America, Australia, Europe and Russia.Assyrians After Assyria, Parpola Speakers of Suret and Turoyo language are ethnic Assyrians and are the descendants of the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia.The Fihrist (Catalog): A Tench Century Survey of Islamic Culture. Abu 'l Faraj Muhammad ibn Ishaq al Nadim. Great Books of the Islamic World, Kazi Publications. Translator: Bayard Dodge.From a lecture by J. A. Brinkman: "There is no reason to believe that there would be no racial or cultural continuity in Assyria, since there is no evidence that the population of Assyria was removed." Quoted in Efrem Yildiz's "The Assyrians" Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, 13.1, pp. 22, ref 24
SIL distinguishes between Chaldean and Assyrian as varieties of Suret on non-Linguistics grounds. Suret is mutually intelligible with some NENA dialects spoken by Jews, especially in the western part of its historical extent. Its mutual intelligibility with Turoyo is partial and asymmetrical, but more significant in written form.Tezel, Aziz (2003). Comparative Etymological Studies in the Western Neo-Syriac (Ṭūrōyo) Lexicon: with special reference to homonyms, related words and borrowings with cultural signification. Uppsala Universitet. .Khan 2008, pp. 6
Suret is a moderately-inflection, fusional language with a two-gender noun system and rather flexible word order.Khan 2008, pp. 6 There is some Akkadian influence on the language. In its native region, speakers may use Iranian, Turkic languages and Arabic loanwords, while diaspora communities may use loanwords borrowed from the languages of their respective countries. Suret is written from right-to-left and it uses the Madnḥāyā version of the Syriac alphabet.The Nestorians and their Rituals; George Percy Badger.A Short History of Syriac Christianity; W. Stewart McCullough. Suret, alongside other modern Aramaic languages, is now considered endangered, as newer generation of Assyrians tend to not acquire the full language, mainly due to emigration and acculturation into their new resident countries. However, emigration has also had another effect: the language has gained more global attention, with several initiatives to digitize and preserve it, and the number of people learning Syriac is considerably higher than before."
Introduced as the official language of the Assyria by Tiglath-Pileser III (745–727BCE), it became the language of commerce and trade, the Vernacular of Assyria in the late Iron Age and classical antiquity, Aramaic Documents of the Fifth Century B. C. by G. R. DriverThe British Survey, By British Society for International Understanding, 1968, page 3 and the lingua franca of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BCE), Neo-Babylonian Empire (605–539 BCE), the Achaemenid Empire (539–323 BCE), the Parthian Empire (247 BCE–224 AD) and the Sasanian Empire (224–651 AD). Following the Achaemenid conquest of Assyria under Darius I, the Aramaic language was adopted as the "vehicle for written communication between the different regions of the vast empire with its different peoples and languages". After the conquest of Assyria by the Seleucid Empire in the late 4th century BCE, Imperial Aramaic gradually lost its status as an imperial language, but continued to flourish alongside Ancient Greek. By the 1st century AD, Akkadian was extinct, though vocabulary and grammatical features still survive in modern NENA dialects.Kaufman, Stephen A. (1974),The Akkadian influences on Aramaic. University of Chicago Press The Neo-Aramaic languages evolved from Aramaic by the 13th century. p. 251 p. 457. There is evidence that the drive for the adoption of Syriac was led by missionaries. Much literary effort was put into the production of an authoritative translation of the Bible into Syriac, the Peshitta (ܦܫܝܛܬܐ, ). At the same time, Ephrem the Syrian was producing the most treasured collection of poetry and theology in the Classical Syriac language.
By the 3rd century AD, churches in Edessa in the kingdom of Osroene began to use Classical Syriac as the language of worship and it became the literary and liturgical language of many churches in the Fertile Crescent. Syriac was the common tongue of the region, where it was the native language of the Fertile Crescent, surrounding areas, as well as in parts of Eastern Arabia. It was the dominant language until 900 AD, till it was supplanted by Greek and later Arabic in a centuries-long process having begun in the Arab conquests. (1997). 9781575065083, Eisenbrauns. ISBN 9781575065083
The differences with the Church of the East led to the bitter Nestorian schism in the Syriac-speaking world. As a result of the schism as well as being split between living in the Byzantine Empire in the west and the Sasanian Empire in the east, Syrian-Aramaic developed distinctive Turoyo language and Eastern varieties. Although remaining a single language with a high level of comprehension between the varieties, the two employ distinctive variations in pronunciation and writing systems and, to a lesser degree, in vocabulary and grammar. During the course of the third and fourth centuries, the inhabitants of the region began to embrace Christianity. Because of theological differences, Syriac-speaking Christians bifurcated during the fifth century into the Church of the East, or East Syriac Rite, under the Sasanian Empire, and the Syriac Orthodox, or West Syriac Rite, under the Byzantine Empire. After this separation, the two groups developed distinct dialects differing primarily in the pronunciation and written symbolisation of .
The Mongol invasions of the Levant in the 13th century and the religiously motivated massacres of Assyrians by Timur further contributed to the rapid decline of the language. In many places outside of northern Mesopotamia, even in sacred language, the language was replaced by Arabic.Bird, Isabella, Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, including a summer in the Upper Karun region and a visit to the Nestorian rayahs, London: J. Murray, 1891, vol. ii, pp. 282 and 306 "Modern Syriac-Aramaic" is a term occasionally used to refer to the modern Neo-Aramaic languages spoken by Christians, including Suret. Even if they cannot be positively identified as the direct descendants of attested Middle Syriac, they must have developed from closely related dialects belonging to the same branch of Aramaic, and the varieties spoken in Christian communities have long co-existed with and been influenced by Middle Syriac as a liturgical and literary language. Moreover, the name "Syriac", when used with no qualification, generally refers to one specific dialect of Middle Aramaic but not to Old Aramaic or to the various present-day Eastern and Central Neo-Aramaic languages descended from it or from close relatives.
In 2004, the Constitution of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region recognized Syriac in article 7, section four, stating, "Syriac shall be the language of education and culture for those who speak it in addition to the Kurdish language." In 2005, the Constitution of Iraq recognised it as one of the "official languages in the administrative units in which they constitute density of population" in article 4, section four.
With the adoption of Aramaic language as the lingua franca of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–609BC), Old Aramaic was also adapted to Mesopotamian cuneiform. The last cuneiform scripts in Akkadian discovered thus far date from the 1st century AD.The Origin and Development of the Cuneiform System of Writing, Samuel Noah Kramer, Thirty Nine Firsts in Recorded History pp. 381–383 Various bronze lion-weights found in Nineveh featured both the Akkadian and Aramaic text etched on them, bearing the names of Assyrian kings, such as Shalmaneser III (858-824 B.C), Sargon II (721-705 B.C) and Sennacherib (704-681 B.C). Indication of contemporaneous existence of the two languages in 4th century B.C. is present in an Aramaic document from Uruk written in cuneiform. In Babylon, Akkadian writing vanished by 140 B.C, with the exclusion of a few priests who used it for religious matters. Though it still continued to be employed for astronomical texts up until the Common Era."State Archives of Assyria, Volume III: Court Poetry and Literary Miscellanea", by Alasdair Livingstone, Helsinki University Press.
The Syriac script is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language from the 1st century AD. It is one of the Semitic directly descending from the Aramaic alphabet and shares similarities with the Phoenician, Hebrew alphabet, Arabic alphabet and the traditional Mongolian script. The alphabet consists of 22 letters, all of which are consonants. It is a cursive script where some, but not all, letters connect within a word.Pennacchietti, Fabrizio A. (1997). "On the etymology of the Neo-Aramaic particle qam/kim; in Hebrew", M. Bar-Aher (ed.): Gideon Goldenberg Festschrift, Massorot, Stud Aramaic writing has been found as far north as Hadrian's Wall in Prehistoric Britain, in the form of inscriptions in Aramaic, made by Assyrian soldiers serving in the Roman legion in northern England during the 2ndcentury AD.
When Arabic gradually began to be the dominant spoken language in the Fertile Crescent after the 7th century AD, texts were often written in Arabic with the Syriac script. Malayalam was also written with Syriac script and was called Suriyani Malayalam. Such non-Syriac languages written in Syriac script are called Garshuni or Karshuni.
The Madnhāyā, or 'eastern', version formed as a form of shorthand developed from ʾEsṭrangēlā and progressed further as handwriting patterns changed. The Madnhāyā version also possesses optional vowel markings to help pronounce Syriac. Other names for the script include , 'conversational', often translated as "contemporary", reflecting its use in writing modern Neo-Aramaic.
The system involves placing a single dot underneath the letter to give its 'soft' variant and a dot above the letter to give its 'hard' variant (though, in modern usage, no mark at all is usually used to indicate the 'hard' value).
| +Consonant inventory |
| + Table of Chaldean Neo-Aramaic consonant phonemes |
Due to language contact, Suret may share similar grammatical features with Persian language and Kurdish in the way they employ the negative copula in its full form before the verbal constituent and also with the negated forms of the present perfect.8 Cf. M. Tomal, Studies in Neo-Aramaic Tenses, Kraków 2008, pp. 108 and 120.
| ptux ("open!") |
| patx- ( + k- / ki- present, bit- future, qam- past, transitive, definite object) ("opens") |
| ptix- (perfect participle, f. ptixta, m. ptixa, pl. ptixe) ("opened") |
| (bi-)ptaxa ("opening") |
Moreover, unlike many other languages, Suret has virtually no means of deriving words by adding prefixes or suffixes to words. Instead, they are formed according to a limited number of templates applied to roots.Solomon, Zomaya S. (1994). Basic sentence structure in Assyrian Aramaic, Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, VIII/1:83–107 Modern Assyrian, like Akkadian but unlike Arabic, has only "sound" plurals formed by means of a plural ending (i.e. no broken plurals formed by changing the word stem). As in all Semitic languages, some masculine nouns take the prototypically feminine plural ending ( -tā).
| +Iraqi Koine possessive suffixes ! colspan="2" | ! singular ! plural |
Although possessive suffixes are more convenient and common, they can be optional for some people and seldom used, especially among those with the Tyari and Barwari dialects, which take a more analytic approach regarding possession, just like English possessive determiners. The following are Periphrasis ways to express possession, using the word betā ("house") as a base (in Urmian/Iraqi Koine):
Although Suret, like all Semitic languages, is not a tonal language, a tonal stress is made on a plural possessive suffix - éh (i.e. dīy éh; "their") in the final vowel to pitch accent it from an unstressed - eh (i.e. dīyeh; "his"), which is a masculine singular possessive, with a standard stress pattern falling on the penult. The - eh used to denote a singular third person masculine possessive (e.g. bābeh, "his father"; aqleh, "his leg") is present in most of the traditional dialects in Hakkari and Nineveh Plains, but not for Urmian and some Iraqi Koine speakers, who instead use - ū for possessive "his" (e.g. bābū, "his father"; aqlū, "his leg"), whilst retaining the stress in - éh for "their".
This phenomenon however may not always be present, as some Hakkari speakers, especially those from Tyari and Barwar, would use analytic speech to denote possession. So, for instance, bābeh (literally, "father-his") would be uttered as bābā-id dīyeh (literally, "father-of his"). In Iraqi Koine and Urmian, the plural form and the third person plural possessive suffix of many words, such as wardeh and biyyeh ("flowers"/"eggs" and "their flower(s)"/"their eggs", respectively), would be were it not for the varying, distinctive stress on the penult or ultima.Fox, S. E., 1997, The Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Jilu, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz
In place of a definite article, Ancient Aramaic used the emphatic state, formed by the addition of the suffix: " -ā" for generally masculine words and " -t(h)ā" (if the word already ends in -ā) for feminine. The definite forms were pallāxā for "the (male) worker" and pallāxtā for "the (female) worker". Beginning even in the Classical Syriac era, when the prefixed preposition " d-" came into more popular use and replaced state Morphology for marking possession, the emphatic (definite) form of the word became dominant and the definite sense of the word merged with the indefinite sense so that pālāxā became "a/the (male) worker" and pālaxtā became "a/the (female) worker."
The root (ܫ-ܩ-ܠ) has the basic meaning of "taking", and the following are some words that can be formed from this root:
Both Modern Persian and Suret build the present perfect tense around the past/resultative participle in conjunct with the copula (though the placing and form of the copula unveil crucial differences). The more conservative Suret dialects lay the copula in its full shape before the verbal constituent. In the Iraqi and Iranian dialects, the previous construction is addressable with different types of the copula (e.g. deictic) but with the elemental copula only the cliticised form is permitted. Among conservative Urmian speakers, only the construction with the enclitic ordered after the verbal constituent is allowed. Due to language contact, the similarities between Kurdish and Modern Persian and the Urmian dialects become even more evident with their negated forms of present perfect, where they display close similarities.Cf. M. Tomal, Studies in Neo-Aramaic Tenses, Kraków 2008, pp. 108 and 120.
A recent feature of Suret is the usage of the infinitive instead of the present base for the expression of the present progressive, which is also united with the copula. Although the language has some other varieties of the copula precedent to the verbal constituent, the common construction is with the infinitive and the basic copula cliticsed to it. In the Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia, the symmetrical order of the constituents is with the present perfect tense. This structure of the NENA dialects is to be compared with the present progressive in Kurdish and Turkish language as well, where the enclitic follows the infinitive. Such construction is present in Kurdish, where it is frequently combined with the locative element "in, with", which is akin to the preposition bi- preceding the infinitive in Suret (as in "bi-ktawen" meaning 'I'm writing'). The similarities of the constituents and their alignment in the present progressive construction in Suret is clearly attributed to influence from the neighbouring languages, such as the use of the infinitive for this construction and the employment of the enclitic copula after the verbal base in all verbal constructions, which is due to the impinging of the Kurdish and Turkish speech.E. McCarus, op. cit., p. 619, Kapeliuk gives further examples, see O. Kapeliuk, The gerund and gerundial participle in Eastern Neo-Aramaic, in: "Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung" 1996, Vol. 51, p. 286.
The morphology and the valency of the verb, and the arrangement of the grammatical roles should be noticed when it comes to the similarities with Kurdish. Unlike Old Persian, Modern Persian made no distinction between Transitive verb and intransitive verbs, where it unspecialised the absolutive type of inflection. Different handling of inflection with transitive and intransitive verbs is also nonexistent in the NENA dialects. In contrast with Persian though, it was the ergative type that was generalised in NENA.O. Kapeliuk, Is Modern Hebrew the Only "Indo-Europeanized" Semitic Language? And What About Neo-Aramaic?, "Israel Oriental Studies" 1996, Vol. 16, pp. 59–70M. Chyet, Neo Aramaic and Kurdish. An Interdisciplinary Consideration of their Influence on Each Other, "Israel Oriental Studies" 1997, Vol. 15, pp. 219–252.
| + Persian and Suret verb tense comparison | ||
| Modern Persian | ||
| Suret |
Unique among the Semitic languages, the development of ergativity in Northeastern Neo-Aramaic dialects involved the departure of original Aramaic tensed forms.Nash, Lea. 1996. The Internal Ergative Subject Hypothesis. Proceedings of NELS 26: 195–210. Thereafter, the active participle became the root of the Suret imperfective, while the passive voice participle evolved into the Suret perfective.Alexiadou, Artemis. 2001. Functional Structure in Nominals: Nominalization and Ergativity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. The Extended-Ergative dialects, which include Iraqi Koine, Hakkari and Christian Urmian dialects, show the lowest state of ergativity and would mark unaccusative subjects and intransitive verbs in an ergative pattern.Hoberman, Robert. 1989. The Syntax and Semantics of Verb Morphology in Modern Aramaic: A Jewish Dialect of Iraqi Kurdistan. New Haven: American Oriental Society.
| + Ergativity patterns | |||
| he opened it | |||
| it opened | |||
| it got cut | |||
| it was ruined |
Suret has numerous words borrowed into its vocabulary directly from Akkadian, some of them also being borrowed into neighbouring Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. Several of these words are not attested in Classical Edessan Syriac, many of them being agriculture terms, being more likely to survive by being spoken in agrarian rural communities rather than the urban centres like Edessa. A few deviations in pronunciation between the Akkadian and the Assyrian Aramaic words are probably due to mistranslations of cuneiform signs which can have several readings. While Akkadian nouns generally end in " -u" in the nominative case, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic words nouns end with the vowel " -a" in their lemma form.Samuel A.B. Mercer, "Assyrian Grammar with Chrestomathy and Glossary" Frederick Ungar Publishing, New York, 1961
| +Akkadian and Suret vocabulary | ||||
| 𒌉𒌉𒇲 | very small, tiny | Compare Arabic daqīq () "fine, thin, little" | ||
| 𒂊𒄈𒌅 | egirtu | iggarṯa | letter, epistle | Also borrowed into Hebrew ʾiggéreṯ (), Turoyo/Surayt egarṯo. Compare Classical Mandaic engirta (ࡏࡍࡂࡉࡓࡕࡀ). |
| elulu | ullul | up, upwards | Classical Syriac lʕel, Western Neo-Aramaic elʕel, Turoyo/Surayt lalʕal. | |
| 𒋓 | išku | iškā | testicle | Cognate with Hebrew ʾéšeḵ (). |
| 𒀉 | gappu | gulpa | wing | Cognate with Hebrew ʾagaph (), Classical Syriac geppā, Turoyo/Surayt gefo. |
| gir-ba-an-nu | qurbana | offering, sacrifice | Cognate with Arabic qurbān (), borrowed into Hebrew as: qorban (). | |
| 𒄀𒅆𒅕𒊑 | gišru | gišra | bridge | borrowed into Classical Syriac gešrā (), Arabic ǧisr (), Hebrew géšer (), Western Neo-Aramaic ġešra, Turoyo/Surayt gešro. |
| hadutu | ḥḏuṯa | joy, happiness | Western Neo-Aramaic ḥḏawṯa. | |
| ittimalu | timmal | yesterday | borrowed into Hebrew as: etmol (), Turoyo/Surayt aṯmel. | |
| 𒌆𒁇𒌆 | kusītu | kosiṯa | hat, headgear | Compare Arabic kuswa (), borrowed into Hebrew as: ksut - a garment; a cover () & ksayah (כְּסָיָה) - a covering |
| kutallu | qḏala | neck | Arabic qaḏāl () "occiput", Western Neo-Aramaic qḏola, Turoyo/Surayt qḏolo. | |
| 𒈛 | massu'u, mesû | msaya | to clean, wash clothes | Classical Syriac mšiġ, Western Neo-Aramaic imšiġ, Turoyo/Surayt mašeġ. |
| 𒆳 | mātu | maṯa | village; homeland | Borrowed into Turoyo/Surayt as moṯo (homeland). |
| migru | myuqra | favourite, honourable | Borrowed into Turoyo/Surayt as miaqro. | |
| 𒈦𒂗𒆕 | muškēnu | miskena | poor, impoverished | Arabic miskīn (), borrowed into Hebrew as: (מִסְכֵּן), Western Neo-Aramaic miskina. |
| 𒇽𒉽נׇפׇּח | nakru | naḵraya | foreign(er), outlandish | Compare Arabic nakira (نَكِرَة) "unknown", Classical Syriac nūḵrāyā (), Hebrew noḵrî (), Western Neo-Aramaic nuḵray, Turoyo/Surayt nuḵroyo. Compare Classical Mandaic nukraia (ࡍࡅࡊࡓࡀࡉࡀ). |
| napahu | npaḥa | blow, exhale | Arabic nafaḵ (نَفَخ), Hebrew napah (), Classical Syriac nfaḥ, Western Neo-Aramaic infaḥ, Turoyo/Surayt nfoḥo. | |
| 𒉈𒋢𒌒 | našāgu | nšaqa | to kiss | Arabic našaq () "to snuff", Hebrew nšiquah (), Classical Syriac nšaq, Western Neo-Aramaic inšaq, Turoyo/Surayt nošaq. |
| 𒄩 | nunu | nuna | fish | Arabic nūn (), Turoyo/Surayt nuno. Compare Classical Mandaic nuna (ࡍࡅࡍࡀ). |
| paraku | praḥa | to fly, glide | Arabic farḵ () "chick", Hebrew parah (), Turoyo/Surayt foraš. | |
| 𒋻 | parāsu | praša | to separate, part | Arabic faraš (), Hebrew parash (), Turoyo/Surayt fošar. |
| 𒀭𒁇 | parzillu | prezla | iron, metal | Hebrew barzel () |
| 𒁔 | pašāru | pšara | to melt, dissolve | Hebrew hafšara () |
| qurbu | qurba | nearby | Arabic qurb (), Hebrew qirvah; qeruv & qarov, Western Neo-Aramaic qura, Turoyo/Surayt qariwo. | |
| 𒃲 | rabû | ra(b)ba | large, great (in quality or quantity) | Hebrew rav; rabu & harbeh, Western Neo-Aramaic rappa, Turoyo/Surayt rabo. Compare Mandaic rabbā (). |
| 𒋤 | rêqu | reḥqa | far, distant | Hebrew raḥoq (), Turoyo/Surayt raḥuqo. |
| sananu | sanyana | hater, rival | Hebrew soneh (), Western Neo-Aramaic sanyona. | |
| 𒄑𒃴 | simmiltu | si(m)malta, si(m)manta | ladder | Borrowed into Classical Syriac as sebbelṯā (), Western Neo-Aramaic semla. |
| 𒀲𒆳𒊏 | sīsû | susa | horse | Compare Arabic sīsī (سيسي) "pony", Hebrew sûs (), Western Neo-Aramaic susya, Turoyo/Surayt susyo. |
| 𒊭𒁀𒁉𒅎 | ša bābi | šḇaḇa | neighbour | Western Neo-Aramaic šboba. |
| 𒂄 | šahānu | šḥana | to warm, heat up | Arabic sāḵin (), Hebrew šahun (), Classical Syriac šḥen, Western Neo-Aramaic: išḥen, Turoyo/Surayt šoḥan. |
| 𒇽𒁁 | šalamtu | šla(d)da | body, corpse | Hebrew šeled (), Turoyo/Surayt šlado (corpse). |
| 𒌑 | šammu | samma | drug, poison | Arabic summ (), Hebrew sam (), Western Neo-Aramaic samma, Turoyo/Surayt samo. |
| šuptu | šopa | place, spot | ||
| 𒄭 | ṭābu | ṭaḇa | good, pleasant | Arabic ṭāb (), Hebrew ṭovah (), Western Neo-Aramaic ṭoba, Turoyo/Surayt ṭowo. Compare Classical Mandaic ṭaba (ࡈࡀࡁࡀ). |
| tapahu | tpaḥa | to pour out, spill | Arabic fāḵ (), compare the Hebrew cognate: to rise (e.g. rising flour) taphaḥ () | |
| tayartu | dyara | to return, come back | Arabic dār (), compare the Hebrew cognate: a tourist tayar (), Turoyo/Surayt doʕar. | |
| temuru | ṭmara | to bury | ||
| 𒂡 | zamāru | zmara | to sing | Arabic zammar (), Hebrew: a tune; a singing zimrah (), Turoyo/Surayt zomar. |
| 𒍪𒊻 | zuzu | zuze | money | Also borrowed into Hebrew zûz () via Aramaic. |
The Urmia dialect has become the prestige dialect of Suret after 1836, when that dialect was chosen by Justin Perkins, an American Presbyterianism missionary, for the creation of a standard literary dialect. A second standard dialect derived from General Urmian known as "Iraqi Koine", developed in the 20th century.
In 1852, Perkins's translation of the Bible into General Urmian was published by the American Bible Society with a parallel text of the Classical Syriac Peshitta.Odisho, Edward, 1988
During the First World War, many Assyrians living in the Ottoman Empire were Sayfo, and many of their descendants now live in Iraq. The relocation has led to the creation of this dialect. Iraqi Koine was developed in the Urban area areas of Iraq (i.e. Baghdad, Basra, Habbaniyah and Kirkuk), which became the meccas for the rural Assyrian population. By the end of the 1950s, vast number of Assyrians started to speak Iraqi Koine. Today, Iraqi Koine is the predominant use of communication between the majority of the Assyrians from Iraqi cities and it is also used as the standard dialect in music and formal speech.
Some modern Hakkari speakers from Iraq can switch accent reduction from their Hakkari dialects to Iraqi Koine when conversing with Assyrian speakers of other dialects. Some Syrian-Assyrians, who originate from Hakkari, may also speak or sing in Iraqi Koine. This is attributed to the growing exposure to Assyrian Standard-based literature, media and its use as a Sacred language language by the Church of the East, which is based in Iraq. Elements of original Ashiret dialects can still be observed in Iraqi Koine, especially in that of older speakers. Furthermore, Assyrian songs are generally sung in Iraqi Koine in order for them to be intelligible and have widespread recognition. To note, the emergence of Koine did not signify that the rest of the spoken dialects vanished. The Ashiret dialects are still active today and widely spoken in northern Iraq and northeastern Syria as some Assyrians remained in the rural areas and the fact that the first generation speakers who relocated in urban areas still maintained their native dialects.
Nearing the Iraqi-Turkey border, the Barwari and Tyari dialects are more "traditionally Assyrian" and would sound like those in the Hakkari province in Turkey. Furthermore, the Barwar and Tyari dialects are "transitional", acquiring both Assyrian and Chaldean phonetic features (though they do not use /ħ/). Gawar, Diz and Jilu are in the "centre" of the spectrum, which lie halfway between Tyari and Urmia, having features of both respective dialects, though still being distinct in their own manner.Odisho, Edward: The Sound System of Modern Assyrian (Neo-Aramaic) - Weisbaden, Harrassowitz, 1988
In Hakkari, going east (towards Iran), the Nochiya dialect would begin to sound distinct to the Tyari/Barwar dialects and more like the Urmian dialect in Urmia, West Azerbaijan province, containing a few Urmian features. The Urmian dialect, alongside Iraqi Koine, are considered to be "Standard Assyrian", though Iraqi Koine is more widespread and has thus become the more common standard dialect in recent times. Both Koine and Urmian share phonetic characteristics with the Nochiya dialect to some degree.
Because Assyrian, alongside Turoyo, is the most widely spoken variety of Syriac today, modern Syriac literature would therefore usually be written in those varieties.Sebastian P. Brock, Aaron Michael Butts, George Anton Kiraz & Lucas Van Rompay (eds.), Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage, Piscataway (NJ), Gorgias Press, 2011 The conversion of the Mongols to Islam began a period of retreat and hardship for Syriac Christianity and its adherents, although there still has been a continuous stream of Syriac literature in Upper Mesopotamia and the Levant from the 14th century through to the present day. This has included the flourishing of literature from the various colloquial Eastern Aramaic Neo-Aramaic languages still spoken by Assyrian people.
This Neo-Syriac literature bears a dual tradition: it continues the traditions of the Syriac literature of the past and it incorporates a converging stream of the less homogeneous spoken language. The first such flourishing of Neo-Syriac was the seventeenth century literature of the School of Alqosh, in northern Iraq.William Wright: A Short History of Syriac Literature, 1894, 1974 (reprint) This literature led to the establishment of Assyrian Aramaic as written literary languages.
In the nineteenth century, were established in Urmia, in northern Iran. This led to the establishment of the 'General Urmian' dialect of Assyrian Neo-Aramaic as the standard in much Neo-Syriac Assyrian literature up until the 20th century. The Urmia Bible, published in 1852 by Justin Perkins was based on the Peshitta, where it included a parallel translation in the Urmian dialect. The comparative ease of modern publishing methods has encouraged other colloquial Neo-Aramaic languages, like Turoyo, to begin to produce literature.
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