| Mlaḥsô | |
|---|---|
| Suryoyo, Surayt | |
| ܡܠܚܬܝܐ Mlaḥsô ܣܘܪܝܝܐ Suryô | |
| Native to | Turkey,Syria |
| Region | Originally two villages (Mlaḥsô and ˁAnşa) nearLice inDiyarbakır Province of southeasternTurkey, later alsoQamishli in northeasternSyria. |
| Extinct | 1999[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | lhs |
| Glottolog | mlah1239 |
| ELP | Mlaḥsô |
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Mlaḥsô orMlahsö (Classical Syriac:ܡܠܚܬܝܐ), sometimes referred to asSuryoyo orSurayt, is an extinct or dormantCentral Neo-Aramaic language. It was traditionally spoken in easternTurkey and later also in northeasternSyria by ethnicallyAssyrianSyriac Orthodox Christians.[2]
The Mlaḥsô language (Surayt of Mlaḥsô) is closely related to theSurayt of Turabdin but sufficiently different to be considered a separate language, with the syntax of the language having retained more features ofClassical Syriac than Turoyo.[3] It was spoken in the villages ofMlaḥsô (Turkish:Yünlüce,Kurdish:Mela), a village established by two monks from theTur Abdin mountain range, and in the village of ˁAnşa nearLice,Diyarbakır,Turkey.
The name of the village and the language is derived from the earlier Aramaic wordmālaḥtā, 'salt marsh'. The literary Syriac name for the language isMlaḥthoyo. The native speakers of Mlaḥsô referred to their language simply asSuryô, or Syriac.[4]
According to the oral tradition of the people of Mlaḥsô, their village was founded several centuries ago by two brothers fromMidyat. The tradition recounts that the brothers had a dream in which they were instructed to leave Midyat and build a church at a location that would be revealed to them. Following this vision, they eventually arrived in Mlaḥsô and constructed the church of Mar Smuni. This church remained in existence for centuries until 1915–1916, when most of the inhabitants of Mlaḥsô were massacred during the events of that period.[5]
Linguistic evidence supports the notion that the Mlaḥsô language andTuroyo were once part of a common linguistic unit before diverging into distinct languages. This suggests that while both languages share a common origin, they must have separated several centuries ago, each developing along an independent trajectory.[6]
The language was still spoken by a handful of people in the 1970s. Thelast fluent native speaker of Mlaḥsô, Ibrahim Ḥanna, died in 1999 inQamishli.[7] His daughters, Munira inQamishli, Shamiram in Lebanon, and son Dr. Isḥaq Ibrahim in Germany are the only speakers left with some limited native proficiency of the language. Recordings of Ibrahim Ḥanna speaking the language are available onHeidelberg University's Semitic Sound Archive which were done by Otto Jastrow, a prominent German semiticist who is credited as the modern "discoverer" of the language and published the first modern research papers on the existence of Mlaḥsô and its linguistic features.
On 3 May 2009, a historical event in the history of the Mlaḥsô Surayt language took place. TheSuroyo TV television station aired the program seriesDore w yawmotho, which was about the village Mlaḥsô (and the Tur Abdin village Tamarze). Dr. Isḥaq Ibrahim, the son of Ibrahim Ḥanna, was a guest and spoke in the Mlaḥsô language with his sisters Shamiram in Lebanon and Munira inQamishli live on the phone. Otto Jastrow was also interviewed regarding his expertise on Mlaḥsô.Assyrians from Tur Abdin and those present at the show were able to hear the language spoken live for the first time at the event.
The extinction of Mlaḥsô can be attributed to the small amount of original speakers of the language, and them being limited to two isolated villages, resulting in a disproportionate loss of speakers during theAssyrian genocide compared to Turoyo and other variants of Neo-Aramaic.
Mlahsô is phonologically less conservative than Turoyo. This is particularly noticeable in the use ofs andz for classicalθ andð. The classicalv has been retained though, while it has collapsed intow in Turoyo. Also sometimesy (IPA /j/) replacesġ. Mlaḥsô also renders the combination of vowel plusy as a single, fronted vowel rather than adiphthong or a glide.
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palato-alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyn- geal | Glottal | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | emphatic | plain | ||||||||||||||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ||||||||||||||||||
| Plosive | p | b | t | d | tˤ | k | ɡ | q | ʔ | |||||||||||
| Affricate | tʃ | dʒ | ||||||||||||||||||
| Fricative | f | v | sˤ | s | z | ʃ | ʒ | x | ɣ | ħ | ʕ | h | ||||||||
| Approximant | w | l | j | |||||||||||||||||
| Trill | r | |||||||||||||||||||
Mlahsô has the following set of vowels:
Mlaḥsô is moreconservative than Turoyo in grammar and vocabulary, using classical Syriac words and constructions while also preserving the original Aramaic form.[8]
| English | Mlaḥsô |
|---|---|
| person | nṓšo |
| father | avó |
| paternal uncle | dozó |
| trouble | renyó |
| donkey | ḥmṓrō |
| one | ḥā |
| door | tár'ṓ |
| goat | ḗzō |
| great, big | rābṓ |
| house | baytṓ |
| ten | 'esrṓ |
| grapes | 'envḗ |
| mouth | pēmṓ |
| morning | safrṓ |
| three | tlōsō |
| sleep | šensṓ |
| hand | īzṓ |
| seven | šav'ṓ |
| today | yōmā́n |
| in, into | lġāv |
| brother | āḥṓ |
| why | lmūn |
| what | mūn |
| much, many, very | sāy |
| town | mzītṓ |
| cock | toġó |
| English | Mlaḥsô |
|---|---|
| They sleep | dōmxī́ |
| I wash | māsī́ġno |
| He loved | rhī́mle |
| She gave | hī́vla |
| I sold | zābḗnli |
| He demanded | tlī́ble |
| He stole | gnī́vle |
| His house | baytā́v |
| His place | duksā́v |
| From him | mēnā́v |
| English | Mlaḥsô |
|---|---|
| Where is my hen? | eyko-yo talġuntézi |
Ibrahim Ḥanna was the last speaker of the Mlaḥso language, as the village was destroyed in 1915 during the Armenian genocide. He died in 1999 in Qāmišli in Syria
Ethno-linguistic group(s) indigenous to theMiddle East; also known as Syriac-Arameans or Chaldeans | |||||||||
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