User:Natreanne/Chaldean Neo-Aramaic

Changes are all those which are found in bold text.

Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, or simply Chaldean, is a Northeastern Neo-Aramaic language[3] spoken throughout a large region stretching from the Nineveh plains, in northern Iraq, together with parts of southeastern Turkey.

Chaldean Neo-Aramaic is closely related to Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, where it is considered a dialect of that language. Most Assyrians in Iraq, Iran and the Khabour River Valley in Syria speak either the Chaldean Neo-Aramaic or Assyrian Neo-Aramaic variety, two varieties of Suret. Despite the two terms seeming to indicate a separate religious or even ethnic identity, both dialects or languages and their native speakers originate from and are indigenous to the same Upper Mesopotamian region (what was Assyria between the 9th century BC and 7th century BC).[4][5][6]

Imperial Aramaic was adopted as the second language of the Neo-Assyrian Empire by Tiglath-Pileser III in the 8th century BC in account of the mostly Aramaic population in areas conquered west of the Euphrates. On the Western periphery of Assyria there had been widespread Aramean-Akkadian bilingualism at least since the mid-9th century BC. Aramaic would supplant Akkadian throughout the entire empire.[7]

Chaldean Neo-Aramaic is one of a number of modern Northeastern Aramaic languages spoken by Syriac Christians native to the northern region of Iraq from Kirkuk through the Nineveh plains, Irbil and Mosul to Dohuk, Urmia in northwestern Iran, northeastern Syria (particularly the Al Hasakah region) and in southeast Turkey, particularly Hakkari, Bohtan, Harran, Tur Abdin, Mardin and Diyarbakir. The Assyrian Christian dialects have been heavily influenced by Classical Syriac, the literary language of the Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church in antiquity. Therefore, Christian Neo-Aramaic has a dual heritage: literary Syriac and colloquial Neo-Assyrian Eastern Aramaic. The closely related dialects are often collectively called Soureth, or Syriac in Iraqi Arabic. According to Ethnologue, Chaldean may also be referenced by other names such as Kaldaya^[1] or in terms of a region-specific dialect such as Alqosh, Bartille, Dihok, and Mangesh among others^[2].

Jews and Mandeans speak different dialects of Aramaic that are often mutually unintelligible.

The Ethnologue identifies Chaldean Neo-Aramaic to be endangered whereby learning or using the language in childhood is no longer the standard meaning on the EGIDS scale it falls anywhere from level 6b to 9^[3]. UNESCO's Atlas of Languages lists Sureth as "definitely endangered"^[4].

Among other issues, this endangerment can be attributed to a history strife with conquest by other political, religious, or ethnic entities, Chaldeans have been persecuted, their villages have been razed on multiple occasions, and schools have been nationalized^[5]. Legislation in place from the Iraq Constitution of 2005 does not protect Chaldean specifically by name^[6] though English translations can be found to include Chaldean as a language^[7]. These are just some of the factors contributing to the continued endangerment of Chaldean Neo-Aramaic.

There have been documentation efforts made for Chaldean Neo-Aramaic specifically. These efforts include:

• A Description of Modern Chaldean by Solomon I. Sara – a grammar of Chaldean phonology, morphology, and syntax^[8]
• The Syntax of Chaldean Neo-Aramaic: An Examination of Word Order in the Alqoshi Dialect by Catrin Seepo and Michael Hamilton – a grammar of Alqoshi Chaldean syntax^[9]
• Aramaic (Assyrian/Syriac) Dictionary & Phrasebook by Nicholas Awde, Nineb Lamassu, and Nicholas Al-Jeloo – a dictionary for a variety of Aramaic languages^[1]
• Introductory Chaldean by Bp. Sarhad Y. Jammo and Fr. Andrew Younan – an introductory book on Chaldean^[10]
• Chaldean Grammar by Bp. Sarhad Y. Jammo and Fr. Andrew Younan – a pedagogical grammar of Chaldean^[11]
• Mango Online Chaldean Language Learning – a free online language learning program^[12]

Chaldean Neo-Aramaic and Assyrian Neo-Aramaic originate in the Nineveh Plains and Upper Mesopotamia, a region which was an integral part of ancient Assyria between the 9th century BC and 7th century BC. Chaldean (Assyrian) Neo-Aramaic bears a resemblance to the Assyrian tribal dialects of Tyari and Barwar in the Hakkari Province, although the Assyrian dialects do not use the pharyngeals /ħ/ and /ʕ/.

Loanwords of Arabic, Persian and Kurdish origin exist in the language, as with Assyrian.

The Chaldean dialects are generally characterised by the presence of the fricatives /θ/ (th) and /ð/ (dh) which correspond to /t/ and /d/, respectively, in other Assyrian dialects (excluding the Tyari dialect). However, the standard or educational form of Chaldean would realize the consonants /θ/ and /ð/ as /tˤ/.

Most Chaldean Neo-Aramaic varieties would use the phoneme of /f/, which corresponds to /p/ in most of Assyrian Neo-Aramaic dialects (excluding the Tyari dialect).

In some Chaldean dialects /r/ is realized as [ɹ]. In others, it is either a tap [ɾ] or a trill [r].

Unlike in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, the guttural sounds of [ʕ] and [ħ] are used predominantly in Chaldean varieties; this is a feature also seen in other Northeastern Neo-Aramaic languages.[8][9]

Chaldean Neo-Aramaic is written in the Madenhaya version of the Syriac alphabet, which is also used for classical Syriac. The School of Alqosh produced religious poetry in the colloquial Neo-Aramaic rather than classical Syriac in the 17th century prior to the founding of the Chaldean Catholic Church and the naming of the dialect as Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, and the Dominican Press in Mosul has produced a number of books in the language. Romanization of Syriac may be used to transliterate the Syriac script into Latin.