Assyrian Neo-Arymaic
Assyrian Neo-Aramaic
The loss of Language is a tragic thing for humanity. It is the genocide of a civilization and their subsequent culture. Language is an intangible, but intrinsic part of a person’s cultural heritage. As a language dies so too does the culture and its perception of the world. The Assyrian Neo-Aramaic language is an endangered language that has value as the language that started the largest religion to date. If this language were to go extinct, the language of the most influential prophet of all time would be lost and so would the way in which that person perceived the world.
The Assyrian Neo-Aramaic language can be traced as far back as close to 2000 B.C. It is known to be the language of Jesus Christ and has (as of 1994) 219,330 native speakers (ethnologue). The language is mostly spoken in the middle and near east areas, such as Georgia, Iran, Syria, and Armenia. The Writing system of Assyrian is alphabetic, and it has 30 characters as opposed to English’s 26. The language has 7 vowels and 23 “consonants” (Oshana). In addition, approximately 85 Percent of the words are written phonetically. The Assyrian language is basically the first of the Semitic Languages. There is an interesting facet in the phonology of this language. The gutturals that are found in other Aramaic languages are lost. The morphology on the verbs is interesting because there are four primary forms, four secondary forms, and two tertiary forms.
There is not much being done to “save” this language. This is due to the fact that even thought this language is endangered it is the language used for a religion and also due to the fact that the Christianity was originally written and spoken about in this language there will always be people in who will understand it. For example there are classes in many Ivy League schools that teach this language. In addition to this it is taught at the Vatican (this is because there are books from the bible that were originally written in
The loss of Language is a tragic thing for humanity. It is the genocide of a civilization and their subsequent culture. Language is an intangible, but intrinsic part of a person’s cultural heritage. As a language dies so too does the culture and its perception of the world. The Assyrian Neo-Aramaic language is an endangered language that has value as the language that started the largest religion to date. If this language were to go extinct, the language of the most influential prophet of all time would be lost and so would the way in which that person perceived the world.
The Assyrian Neo-Aramaic language can be traced as far back as close to 2000 B.C. It is known to be the language of Jesus Christ and has (as of 1994) 219,330 native speakers (ethnologue). The language is mostly spoken in the middle and near east areas, such as Georgia, Iran, Syria, and Armenia. The Writing system of Assyrian is alphabetic, and it has 30 characters as opposed to English’s 26. The language has 7 vowels and 23 “consonants” (Oshana). In addition, approximately 85 Percent of the words are written phonetically. The Assyrian language is basically the first of the Semitic Languages. There is an interesting facet in the phonology of this language. The gutturals that are found in other Aramaic languages are lost. The morphology on the verbs is interesting because there are four primary forms, four secondary forms, and two tertiary forms.
There is not much being done to “save” this language. This is due to the fact that even thought this language is endangered it is the language used for a religion and also due to the fact that the Christianity was originally written and spoken about in this language there will always be people in who will understand it. For example there are classes in many Ivy League schools that teach this language. In addition to this it is taught at the Vatican (this is because there are books from the bible that were originally written in