Research Groups:Neo-Aramaic Dialectology

[RG # 135] Neo-Aramaic Dialectology: Jews, Christians, and Mandeans

Sept. 1, 2012 - July 1, 2013

Organizer:

Steven Fassberg (The Hebrew University)
Simon Hopkins (The Hebrew University)
Hezy Mutzafy (Tel Aviv University)

Aramaic is an endangered language, more precisely, a group of languages, that is on the verge of extinction. First attested in inscriptions from Upper Mesopotamia, northern Syria, and northern Israel at the beginning of the first millenium B.C.E., Aramaic has been spoken uninterruptedly up to the present. A century ago Kurdistan (Iraqi, Iranian and Turkish) and Iranian Azerbaijan were home to Jewish and Christian speakers of Aramaic, who had lived in these regions for over two millennia.

Aramaic is still spoken today in three villages near Damascus (Ma'lula, Bax'a, and Jubb'adin) by Christians as well as Muslims (who converted over the past centuries from Christianity). Persecution and massacres have severely shrunk the already small native Aramaic-speaking population, and the surviving speakers have fled their original habitat and settled elsewhere, where their speech has been heavily influenced and gradually supplanted by other languages. Today, as a result, competent native speakers of most dialects are both scarce and elderly, and few of them live in a community where Aramaic is still used freely. Within a generation or so, almost all dialects of vernacular Aramaic will disappear.

This unfortunate state of affairs requires immediate action, and the goals of the research group are:

(1) To refine further the existing classifications of Neo-Aramaic dialects
(2) To exchange already collected but hitherto unpublished data in an effort to elucidate grammatical, lexical, and etymological problems
(3) To reconstruct in greater detail the historical depth of the Neo-Aramaic dialects
(4) To record additional unstudied dialects of Jewish Neo-Aramaic speakers in Israel

2012-2013 Research Groups 2012-2013

Members

Werner Arnold

FELLOW

University of Heidelberg

Werner Arnold is a professor of Semitic Studies at the Institute of Language and Culture of the Near East at the University of Heidelberg. HIs research interests are Modern Aramaic dialects, Arabic dialects, and the modern South Arabic languages.

Steven Fassberg

FELLOW

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Steven E. Fassberg, of the Department of Hebrew Language at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, holds the Caspar Levias Chair in Ancient Semitic Languages.

Simon Hopkins

FELLOW

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Simon Hopkins is a professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research interests are Arabic and Semitic philology.

Otto Jastrow

FELLOW

Tallinn University

Otto Jastrow is a professor of Arabic Studies at Tallinn University. His research interests are Arabic and Neo-Aramaic dialects (including Jewish Arabic dialects), of which he considered to be one of the world's foremost experts.

Geoffrey Khan

FELLOW

University of Cambridge

Geoffrey Khan is the Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Cambridge.

Hezy Mutzafi

FELLOW

Tel Aviv University

Hezy Mutzafi is a professor of Hebrew and Semitic studies in the Department of Hebrew Culture Studies at Tel Aviv University. His research interests are Neo-Aramaic dialectology and Semitic linguistics.