The Aramaic Language is Being Resurrected in Israel

Vatican Insider ^ | 9/24/11 | Marco Tosatti

[marshmallow]

Two television channels have been involved in initiatives to bring to life, once again, the language that Jesus and his contemporaries spoke. Today, it is spoken by 400 thousand people throughout the world

Two Israeli television channels are trying to see to it that Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus and his contemporaries in that region of the Roman Empire, will once again become a living language and not just be an almost extinct curiosity for scholars of Semitic languages to study. “Suroyo TV” and “Suryoyo TV” offer an endless supply of material for online discussion by fans so they can decide which is best. Among nouns that have the same meaning, there are variations of the term “Syriac” in Aramaic. The aficionados live in the Haifa zone, in Upper Galilee. There are probably others, but living in Syria, in the mountains south of Damascus, and in the small city of Maalula. It seems, however, that it is quite difficult for the latter to connect to the two Israeli channels.

These two channels are nevertheless still valuable: they prove that Aramaic is still living and breathing as a language, according to the inhabitants of Jish, one of the villages in the area. Aramaic is a Semitic language that is very close to Hebrew, and was once spread over the Fertile Crescent, the wide strip of Middle Eastern land that had its center between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, but whose cultural and linguistic borders stretch all the way to the Mediterranean. Over the centuries, the use of Aramaic gradually dried up and was replaced by the Arab language of conquerors who came up from the south; and today it is the language of choice for Christians in the Middle East, particularly when in terms of liturgical use. It is even studied.......

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks marshmallow. The Edicts of King Ashoka [Aramaic in 500 BC Central Asia To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[OldNewYork]

Very interesting, thanks for posting this. I met a Turkish girl once, of Circassian and Laz ancestry, and her family still spoke Aramaic, so glad to see it’s even healthier than I thought.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

We should all just learn Esperanto!

[bigheadfred]

of Circassian and Laz ancestry

Hittin' it the world over....

[OldNewYork]

Or Latin.

[OldNewYork]

Lazuri, to be more accurate - the people of Golden Fleece fame in what was then Colchis, of Jason and the Argonauts.

[AgThorn]

Aramaic is spoken by Iraqi Caldians as well.

[AgThorn]

Aramaic is spoken by Iraqi Caldians as well.

[Jack Hydrazine]

Time to say the kaddish!

[bigheadfred]

the people of Golden Fleece fame in what was then Colchis

until they emigrated to D.C.

(I like my version as well as the protagonist has achieved mythical proportions rivaling those of Jason)

[jjotto]

Aramaic is a group of related languages like the Romance languages of Europe. One branch is still spoken as an everyday language. Another branch is the language of the Talmud and studied in thousands of Jewish religious schools around the world. The famous Jewish ‘Kaddish’ prayer is in Aramaic.

[El Sordo]

Interesting indeed.

[Lady Lucky]

Sure, Aramaic is getting a big boost lately. So is Catalan. A few years ago Serbo-Croatian was hot.
Let’s get real. Twenty years from now, Russian will be almost as dead as Latin and Gaelic and Greek — and Catalan and Serbo-Croatian.
Aramaic hasn’t a snowball’s chance.
I predict that in 50 years, you’d better know English, Chinese, Arabic, or Spanish (and how to shut up in your assigned language!) The rest will be in the ash bin.

[tutstar]

bfl

[Dr. Sivana]

I predict that in 50 years, you’d better know English, Chinese, Arabic, or Spanish

I think you have to throw in French as the backup language, as it is at least a second language in large parts of the world that don't really speak the other four.

[hecht]

Any yeshiva trained Jew can speak aramaic

[Verginius Rufus]

I don't know if Aramaic has a large enough body of speakers to survive as a spoken language indefinitely, but Russian, Modern Greek, and what used to be called Serbo-Croatian won't disappear any time soon. Any language which is the official language of a country has a fighting chance to survive--in the case of Gaelic, it was probably too far gone when it started to get some protection. (I've heard people conversing in Gaelic, in Ireland, but they also spoke perfectly fluent English.)

"Serbo-Croatian" is the principal language of four countries--Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro. The speakers may call their language "Serbian," "Bosnian," "Croatian," or "Montenegrin," but they can understand each other as easily as Americans can understand English-speakers from England or Australia. There must be at least 17 million people in the four countries.

Part of the book of Daniel in the Bible is written in Aramaic.

[ari-freedom]

“Any yeshiva trained Jew can speak aramaic”

Many Jews know a lot of Aramaic words, phrases and grammar but it’s always mixed in with Hebrew and other languages and never used to buy groceries at the store, even in Bnei Brak. So the ‘hava amina’ (original assumption) is that nobody was speaking Aramaic as a living language, not that nobody uses Aramaic.

[Ciexyz]

The language of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Solzhenitsyn will live forever.