| Inter-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic | |
|---|---|
| לשניד נשןLišānîd Nošānlit. 'the language of our people',לשנא דידןLišānā Dîdān,lit. 'our language' | |
| Pronunciation | [liʃɑˈnidnoˈʃɑ̃] |
| Region | Jerusalem as well as some villages and towns around it, originally from eastern and northernIraq and SoutheasternTurkey. |
Native speakers | 3,500 (2018)[1] |
Afro-Asiatic
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | aij |
| Glottolog | lish1245 |
| ELP | Inter-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic |
Inter-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic,[2][3][4] orLishanid Noshan, is a modernJewish-Aramaic dialect, a variant ofNortheastern Neo-Aramaic. It was originally spoken inKurdistan Region of Iraq, in and aroundErbil between theGreat Zab andLittle Zab rivers, it was also spoken in Turkey in the city ofCizre and its environs and in theHakkari Mountains. Most speakers now live inIsrael.
Lishanid Noshan has 40phonemes. 34 of them areconsonants, and 6 of them arevowels.Laryngeals andpharyngeals originally found in Lishanid Noshan have not been preserved. InAramaic,*ʕ, a voiced pharyngeal fricative is prominent in words. However, it has weakened in Lishanid Noshan to /ʔ/ or zero.[5]
Regardinginterdental fricatives, there has been a shift seen with*t and*d.*h, the original unvoiced pharyngeal fricative, has fused with the velar fricative /x/ in Northeastern Neo-Aramaic dialects. This is not the case for Lishanid Noshan.*h can still be seen in some words such asdbh, which means "to slaughter."[5]
Wordstress often occurs on the final syllable of stems of nominals and verbs.[6]
| Labial | Dental /Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stops /affricates | Unvoiced | p | t | tʃ | k | q | ʔ | |
| Voiced | b | d | dʒ | g | ||||
| Unaspirated | (t˭) | (tʃ˭) | (k˭) | |||||
| Emphatic | tˤ (dˤ) | |||||||
| Fricatives | Unvoiced | f | s | ʃ | x | ħ | h | |
| Voiced | w | z | (ʒ) | ɣ | ʕ | |||
| Emphatic | sˤ (zˤ) | |||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ||||||
| Lateral | l (lˤ) | |||||||
| Rhotic | r | |||||||
| Approximant | w | j |
Subjects in Lishand Noshan often come before the verb when they are fullnominals. The referent of subject nominals in this canonical order can be identified from the prior discourse or through assumed shared information between the speakers. Sometimes, it can also be used when the referent of the subject nominal has not been entered into the discourse yet and is not identifiable by the hearer.[8]
Nominals that function as direct objects in verb clauses are normally positioned before the verb.[9]
In Lishanid Noshan,-ake is the definitearticle. According to Khan, this affix is another sign of how Kurdish dialects have influenced this language; the Kurdish dialects have-aka for the direct case and-akay in the oblique case. When-ake is added to a noun, the singular and plural endings-a and-e are taken off.[10]
Definiteness is expressed if the speaker assumes the hearer has background knowledge on the nominal being inserted into the conversation.[11]
Regarding negativecopular clauses, Lishanid Noshan differentiates constructions that use the negative present versus the negative past.
Negative present copula is often inserted before or after the predicate. This particular copula usually contains the main stress of the intonation group. This phenomenon can happen in the middle of a predicate phrase.
This particular type of copular comes before the predicate in Lishanid Noshan very often. The main stress is inserted either on the predicate phrase or onla, the negator in Lishanid Noshan. Subject nominals are seen either before or after the copula.
Interrogative clauses that can be answered with a yes or a no are differentiated from non-interrogative clauses solely by intonation. The yes-no type of interrogatives has an intonation pattern that rises in pitch where the main stress is; there is no drop in pitch in any of the syllables that come after the part where the main stress is.
Certain verbs in Lishanid Noshan mark their complement with the prepositionb-.