Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) is a grouping of related dialects ofNeo-Aramaic spoken beforeWorld War I as a vernacular language by Jews andAssyrian Christians between theTigris andLake Urmia, stretching north toLake Van and southwards toMosul andKirkuk. As a result of theAssyrian genocide, Christian speakers were forced out of the area that is now Turkey and in the early 1950s mostJewish speakers moved to Israel. TheKurdish-Turkish conflict resulted in further dislocations of speaker populations.[1][2] As of the 1990s, the NENA group had an estimated number of fluent speakers among theAssyrians just below 500,000, spread throughout the Middle East and theAssyrian diaspora. In 2007, linguistGeoffrey Khan wrote that many dialects were nearing extinction with fluent speakers difficult to find.[1]
The NENA languages contain a large number of loanwords and some grammatical features from the extinctEast SemiticAkkadian language ofMesopotamia (the original language of the Assyrians) and also in more modern times from their surrounding languages:Kurdish,Arabic,Persian,Azerbaijani andTurkish language. These languages are spoken by both Jews and Christian Assyrians from the area. Each variety of NENA is clearly Jewish or Assyrian.
However, not all varieties of one or other religious groups are intelligible with all others of the group. Likewise, in some places Jews and Assyrian Christians from the same locale speak mutually unintelligible varieties of Aramaic, where in other places their language is quite similar. The differences can be explained by the fact that NENA communities gradually became isolated into small groups spread over a wide area, and some had to be highly mobile due to various ethnic and religious persecutions.
The influence of classical Aramaic varieties –Syriac on Christian varieties andTargumic on Jewish communities – gives a dual heritage that further distinguishes language by faith. Many of the Jewish speakers of NENA varieties, theKurdish Jews, now live inIsrael, where Neo-Aramaic isendangered by the dominance ofModern Hebrew. Many Christian NENA speakers, who usually areAssyrian, are indiaspora inNorth America,Europe,Australia, theCaucasus and elsewhere, although indigenous communities remain in northernIraq, south eastTurkey, north eastSyria and north westIran, an area roughly comprising what had been ancientAssyria.[4]
^abcKhan, G. (1 January 2007). "The North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic Dialects".Journal of Semitic Studies.52 (1):1–20.doi:10.1093/jss/fgl034.
^Bird, Isabella,Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, including a summer in the Upper Karun region and a visit to the Nestorian rayahs, London: J. Murray, 1891, vol. ii, pp. 282 and 306
^Lewis, M. Paul; Gary F. Simons; Charles D. Fennig, eds. (2015)."Assyrian Neo-Aramaic".Ethnologue: Languages of the World (18th ed.). Dallas, Texas: SIL International.
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Mutzafi, Hezy (2005). "Etymological Notes on North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic".Aramaic Studies.3 (1):83–107.doi:10.1177/1477835105053516.
Mutzafi, Hezy (2006). "On the Etymology of Some Enigmatic Words in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic".Aramaic Studies.4 (1):83–99.doi:10.1177/1477835106066037.
