Bohtan New Aramaic Language
Bohtan Neo-Aramaic ܣܘܪܬ Sôreth | ||
---|---|---|
Spoken in |
Georgia , previously Russia (mainly in Gardabani village) | |
speaker | 1,000 (as of 1999) | |
Linguistic classification |
Afro-Asian |
|
Language codes | ||
ISO 639-3 |
bhn |
Bohtan New Aramaic is a modern Eastern New Aramaic language. It was originally spoken in the Bohtan plain in the Şırnak province in south-east Turkey , but today it is mainly spoken in south-east Georgia around the village of Gardabani near Rustavi .
Before the First World War , there were around 30,000 speakers of Bohtan New Aramaic in the Ottoman Empire on the Bohtan plain around the city of Cizre . They were mostly Assyrian Christians , their language a northern dialect of Chaldean-New Aramaic . With the genocide of the Syrian Christians in eastern Turkey, many speakers were killed or displaced; the survivors settled in Garbadani, 530 km away. Their descendants currently use Georgian or Russian rather than the traditional language.
In 1999, a study by Samuel Ethan Fox found that Bohtan New Aramaic retained many of the conservative properties of Chaldean and Assyrian New Aramaic , which disappeared in the standard dialects of the cities of Alqosh and Urmia , but also showed foreign innovations in other dialects.
literature
- Samuel Eithan Fox: A Neo-Aramaic dialect of Bohtan. In: W. Arnold, H. Bobzin (Ed.): “Talk to your servants in Aramaic, we understand!” 60 contributions to the Semitic Festschrift for Otto Jastrow on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2002, pp. 165-180.
- Wolfhart Heinrichs (Ed.): Studies in Neo-Aramaic. Scholars Pressm Atlanta, Georgia 1990, ISBN 1-55540-430-8 .
- Arthur John Maclean: 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 1895.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bohtan Neo-Aramaic reference to Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013)