Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia

Lishán Didán
לשן דידן Lišān Didān, לשנן Lišānān
Pronunciation	[liˈʃan diˈdan] [liˈʃanan]
Native to	Israel, United States; originally Iran, Turkey; briefly Azerbaijan, Georgia (country)
Region	Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, New York, Los Angeles; originally from Iranian Azerbaijan
Native speakers	4,500 (2001)
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Northwest Semitic Aramaic Eastern Aramaic Northeastern Lishán Didán
Language codes
ISO 639-3	trg
Glottolog	lish1246
ELP	Jewish Azerbaijani Neo-Aramaic

The Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia, a dialect of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic, was originally spoken by Jews in Urmia and surrounding areas of Iranian Azerbaijan from Salmas to Solduz and into what is now Yüksekova, Hakkâri and Başkale, Van Province in eastern Turkey. Most speakers now live in Israel.

The Names of the Language

Lishan Didan is often referred to by scholars as Jewish (Persian) Azerbaijani Neo-Aramaic. Its speakers lived in Northern Iran in the cities and townships of Northern Iranian Azerbaijan, notably Urmia (briefly: Rezaiyeh), Salmas (also: Shahpur), and Naghade (also: Solduz).

Lishan Didan (pronunciation: [li:ˈʃan di:ˈdan]) literally translates to "our language" (morphological gloss: tongue-∅ GEN.1PL.EX). The name of the language exhibits clusivity marking: a more exact translation of "Lishan Didan" would be "our language, but not yours." When one speaker of the language is speaking to another, they may refer to the language using inclusive marking "Lishanan" (pronunciation: [liˈʃa:nan]), which can be translated as "our language, including yours" (morphological gloss: tongue-∅-1PL.IN). This distinction may be unique among the Neo-Aramaic Languages.

Similarly, speakers of the language often refer to themselves/their community as "Nash Didan" (pronunciation: naʃ di:ˈdan), meaning "our people."

The term targum is often used to describe Lishan Didan, as it is a traditional and common term for many Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects. When members of the Nash Didan communities of Urmia and Naghade immigrated to Israel in the 1950s, some referred to themselves as Edat haTargum ("The Community of the Targum") in Hebrew. This is in reference to the Nash Didan identity closely aligning with the long history of Aramaic Targum in Judaism. In addition to speaking a variety of Aramaic, Nash Didan have religious practices such as maintaining of the custom of meturgeman (targumic recitation: public recitation of a translation of the weekly Torah Reading into vernacular Aramaic) in the synagogue, and the age-old practice of using targumim to teach Biblical Hebrew. Due largely to these pracitces, some Nash Didan Jews had such a solid foundation of the Hebrew Language, they did not require ulpan classes upon immigration to Israel.

The language's ISO code is trg, stemming from the word targum.

Rahel speaking Jewish Neo-Aramaic (Lishan Didan)

History

Various Neo-Aramaic dialects were spoken across a wide area from Lake Urmia to Lake Van (in Turkey), down to the plain of Mosul (in Iraq) and back across to Sanandaj (in Iran again). This cluster of languages can be split into a few categories based upon location and religion (Christian or Jewish). The Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia belongs to the Northeastern cluster of Jewish Neo-Aramaic.

There are two major dialect clusters of The Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia. The northern cluster of dialects centered on Urmia and Salmas in West Azerbaijan province of Iran, and extended into the Jewish villages of Van Province, Turkey. The southern cluster of dialects was focused on the town of Mahabad and villages just south of Lake Urmia. The dialects of the two clusters are intelligible to one another, and most of the differences are due to receiving loanwords from different languages: Standard Persian, Kurdish and Turkish languages especially.

The Nash Didan community

The history of Jews in this region goes back millenia. According to Nash Didan tradition, the Jewish community of Urmia dates back to the Babylonian Exile, when they were forcibly relocated from The Kingdom of Judah to Mesopotamia. Archeological evidence (including bronze, silver, and gold artifacts with Jewish iconography) points to Jewish settlement in the Urmia region as early as the 8th century BCE. This tradition further dictates that Nash Didan Jews did not return to Israel after the declaration issued by the emperor Cyrus II of Persia, after he conquered the region and ushered in the Second Temple period. Rather, they remained in the region under the Achaemenid Empire.

Many of the Jews of Urmia worked as peddlers in the cloth trade, while others were jewelers or goldsmiths. The degree of education for the boys was primary school, with only some advancing their Jewish schooling in a Talmud yeshiva. Some of these students earned their livelihood by making talismans and amulets. There was also a small girls yeshiva with only twenty pupils. The last head of the girls yeshiva was known as Rəbbi Hawa. The use of the title Rəbbi for female religious leaders is exceedingly rare in Jewish communities of the time. The existence of a girls yeshiva itself was unheard of in that time -- at times, it may even have been the only one in the entire Middle East.

There were two main synagogues in Urmia, one large one and one smaller one. The large synagogue was called the synagogue of Sheikh Abdulla. The main synagogue shows strong influence of Qajar-era art and architecture. Sometime in 1900s, a decision was to restore and renovate the synagogue, resulting in new paint covering the Hebrew and Aramaic calligraphy on the walls. It likely had a similar appearance to the calligraphy on the walls of the Tomb of Esther and Mordekhai in Hamedan. Today, the synagogues are abandoned and in disarray. The main synagogue is preserved by the Iranian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts, who protected the site after a gang of illegal diggers attempted to loot the synagogue in 2021.

Kalimiyan Synagogue, Urmia, 2010

This region has long suffered instability. The Ottoman and Persian Empires often used tensions between Assyrians, Azeris, Kurds, and Armenians to fight proxy wars in the region. By 1918, due to the assassination of Shimun XIX Benyamin, Patriarch of the Church of the East as part of the Assyrian Genocide, and the invasion of the Ottoman forces, many Jews were uprooted from their homes and fled. Some Jews temporarily relocated to Tbilisi. The upheavals in their traditional region after World War I and the founding of the State of Israel led most Nash Didan to settle near Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and small villages in various parts of the country. Due to persecution and relocation, Neo-Aramaic began to be replaced by the speech of younger generations by Modern Hebrew.

However, not all Jews went to Israel. Beginning in the early 1900s, some came to the United States, forming a community in Chicago. Others stayed in Iran until after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, eventually moving to New York, Los Angeles, and other places in the United States, joining existing Persian Jewish communities. A few moved to Tehran, and remain there into the 21st century.

Most native speakers speak Hebrew, English, or Farsi to their children now. Fewer than 5000 people are known to speak Lishan Didan, most of whom are older adults in their sixties. The language faces extinction in the next few decades, largely due to the lack of a centralized community. While most native speakers are in Israel, the use of Lishan Didan in the United States is comparatively strong since many of them left Iran at least 30 years later.

The use of the internet, such as Facebook groups, has helped to keep the language in use. Institutions such as Wikitongues, the Jewish Language Project, the Endangered Language Alliance, and the Lishana Institute in Israel are working to document the language before it goes extinct. The Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages offers a class on a different dialect, but will maybe one day include Lishan Didan. However, despite these efforts, the language is rapidly dying, and more still needs to be done to keep the language from extinction.

Related Neo-Aramaic Languages

Related Languages

Lishan Didan is often confused with a similar language Inter-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic which is sometimes referred to as "Lishana Didan."

Another language is called Manuscript Barzani or Barzani Jewish Neo-Aramaic. Manuscript Barzani was spoken in a community in Iraqi Kurdistan of the Rewanduz/Arbel region. This language is also called targum, as it follows distinct translation techniques used by Targum Onkelos and Targum Jonathan. Many members of the Barzani family were rabbis and Torah scholars. The rabbis would travel around Kurdistan to set up and maintain yeshivas in the towns of Barzan, Aqra, Mosul, and Amediya. Much literature (commentaries on religious text, poetry, prayers, ritual instructions) has been compiled and published by the members of the Barzani family and their community. One of the most famous members of the Barzani family is Tanna'it Asenath Barzani, perhaps the first female rabbinical figure in modern Jewish history.

Intelligibility

Lishan DIdan, at the northeastern extreme of the area in which Neo-Aramaic is spoken, is somewhat intelligible with Trans-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic (spoken further south, in Iranian Kurdistan) and Inter-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic (formerly spoken around Kirkuk, Iraq).

However, the local Christian Neo-Aramaic dialects of Suret Neo-Aramaic are only mildly mutually intelligible: Christian and Jewish communities living side by side developed completely different variants of Aramaic that had more in common with their coreligionists living further away than with their neighbors. The topography in many of the dialects of Neo-Aramaic is so distinct that small villages, (like the town of Arodhin which consisted of two Jewish families), had their own dialect.

Jewish Neo-Aramaic varieties were by-and-large more similar to each other than to the dialects of their Christian neighbors, but there may be evidence for a small amount of sprachbrunding. It was generally far more likely for Jews to assimilate into Assyrian communities than vice-versa, but the effect it had via language contact is unclear. On a lingusitic level, Jewish langauges often persist as a means of identity marking though Situational code-switching, and as such often develop in ways that intentionally stymy mutual intelligibility. The Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia in particular is sometimes described as asymmetrically intelligibile to other varieties of Neo-Aramaic (i.e. it is easier for speakers of these dialects to understand other dialects than for speakers of other dialects to understand these).

The Christian Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Urmia

Main article: Christian Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia

An Assyrian community settled in Urmia after the local Kurds and Turkish army forced them to flee their homes. Over ten thousand people died en route to Urmia. After additional trouble in Urmia, the Assyrian community left and settled in Ba‘quba near Baghdad. In the early 1930s some moved to Syria and lived near the Euphratic Khabur between al-Hasakah and Ras_al-Ayn.

Unlike the Assyrians who mainly lived in villages surrounding Urmia, Jews have historically lived in the city proper, largely due to social pressure, both internal (community structure) and external (e.g. antisemitism). Legally prohibited from certain kinds of work like farming, many Jews clustered in the city. However, there were a small number of villages in which Jews and Assyrians mixed. In general, the communities' had separate histories, and their languages show a remarkable amount of divergence.

The following displays examples of divergence in phonology, morphology, and lexicon between the Jewish and Assyrian Urmia dialects.

Jewish Urmia	Assyrian Urmia
belà	béta	'house'
zorá	súra	'small'
-u	-e	'their'
-ilet	-iwət	2ms copula
mqy	hmzm	'to speak'
kwś	ˤsly	'to descend'

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal		m	n
Plosive/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t	tʃ	k	q	ʔ
	voiced	b	d	dʒ	ɡ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s	ʃ	x		h
	voiced	w	z	ʒ	ɣ
Approximant			l	j
Rhotic			r

Most dialects feature a weakening of historically emphatic consonants. This dialect features suprasegmental emphasis (either pharyngealization or velarization) in historically emphatic contexts. For example, xəlta [xɯ̽lˁtˁɑ] (= "mistake") was likely originally xəlṭa [xəltˁa] (or some variation on that phonology). This word contrasts with xəlta [xɪltʰɑ] (= "eaten" (3fs)) only in suprasegmental emphasis, forming a minimal pair (the aspiration and vowel fronting are likely conditioned on the presence of emphasis). In the traditional orthography, words were often spelled using the historical spellings if known by the writer. xəlta may have been written חִלְטָא.

Sometimes these consonants can be realized differently:

• /q/ is often realized as [ɢ ~ ʁ] between a vowel/sonant and a vowel
• /w/ is realized as [β ~ v ~ w]
• /h/ is realized as [ɦ] in intervocalic and post-vocalic positions
• /n/ is realized as [ŋ] before /k/, /g/, and /q/
• /r/ is realized as [ɾ] in non-velarized words, and [r] in velarized words
• /b/, /d/, and /g/ tend to be devoiced when near voiceless consonants

Vowels

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e	ə	o
Open			ɑ

Some vowels are realized in many different ways:

• /a/ is realized as
  • [a] most commonly in non-velarized words
  • [ɑ] when
    • in the vicinity of back and labial consonants in stressed syllables
    • in pretonic open syllables
    • at the end of a word
    • in velarized words
  • [ʌ] when, for non-velarized words
    • in unstressed closed syllables
    • in open syllables that do not immediately precede the stress
  • [ɔ] when in the sequence /aø/ (sometimes)
  • [ɒ] when, for velarized words
    • in unstressed closed syllables
    • in open syllables that do not immediately precede the stress
• /ə/ is realized as
  • [ɪ ~ ə] in non-velarized words
  • [ɯ] in velarized words
• /o/ is realized as
  • [ø] in non-velarized words
  • [o] in velarized words
• /u/ is realized as
  • [y] in non-velarized words
    • [ʏ] in unstressed closed syllables
  • [u] in velarized words
    • [ʊ] in unstressed closed syllables
• /i/ and /e/ are realized with lowered onglides and/or offglides in velarized words

All Vowel Realizations

	Front		Central	Back
	Unrounded	Rounded		Unrounded	Rounded
Close	i	y		ɯ	u
Near-Close	ɪ	ʏ		ʊ
Mid	e	ø	ə		o
Open-Mid				ʌ	ɔ
Open	a			ɑ	ɒ

Orthography [WIP]

Lishan Didan is usually written using Jabali, an alphabet very similar to Rashi script, and very closely related to the traditional scripts of Judeo-Persian, Bukhori, and Judeo-Arabic. Most writing in the language is non-standard: there is no "official" way to spell words. Each author will spell words in their own way, often highly phonetically. Despite this, many writers across the various Jewish Neo-Aramaic languages spell things very similarly, suggesting that there are informal guidelines that are mostly followed. Additionally words that have been loaned from biblical Hebrew

The following represents an attempt to generalize the ways Lishan Didan is written, but it should be noted that it does not represent a universal truth. Real-world examples may vary in how closely they adhere to these rules.

Consonants

	Alaf	Bet		Gamal			Dalat	He	Waw	Zayin		Het		Tet	Yod	Kaf
Jabali											()2
Hebrew	א	ב	(בֿ)1	ג	ע׳ / גֿ	ג׳	ד	ה	ו	ז	ז׳	ח	ח׳, ה	ט	י	כ ך	(כֿ) (ךֿ)
IPA	∅, (ʔ)	b	w	ɡ	ɣ	dʒ	d	h	w	z	ʒ	x, χ	h, (ħ)3	tˁ	j	k	x
Latin	(')	b	w	g	ǧ / gh	j	d	h	w	z	ž / zh	x / kh	h / (ḥ)	t / (ṭ)	y	k	x / kh
	Lamad	Mem	Nun	Samakh	Ayin	Pe		Sadi		Qof	Resh	Shin		Taw
Jabali									()2				()4
Hebrew	ל	מ	נ	ס	ע	פ ף	פֿ ףֿ	צ	צ׳	ק	ר	שׁ	שׂ	ת	(תֿ) / (ת׳)5
IPA	l	m	n	s	ʔ, ∅, (ʕ)	p	f	sˁ	tʃ	q	r	ʃ	s	t	(θ)
Latin	l	m	n	s	'	p	f	s / (ṣ)	č / ch	q	r	š / sh	s	t	θ / th

¹The letter Bet when spirantized (בֿ) is sometimes preserved when the author is familiar with the archaic spelling, especially if it is in a word that is from Biblical Hebrew (for example, the name יוכבד). However, (ו) is preferred for this sound in most cases.

²The sounds [tʃ] (Modern Hebrew: צ׳) and [ʒ] (Modern Hebrew: ז׳) are often simply written as a gimel with a dot on top, the same way as [dʒ] (Modern Hebrew: ג׳). Due to the influence of Persian and modern Hebrew, some people use צ and ז with three dots on top instead.

³The letter Het (ח׳) is used to represent the historical sound [ħ], in addition to its standard pronunciation [x~χ]. Due to the careful guarding of the pronunciation of Liturgical Hebrew, some Nash Didan will pronounce words loaned from Biblical Hebrew this way (ħ). Usually, however, it is pronounced [h], and the entire word is pronounced with suprasegmental emphasis. Very rarely, words loaned from Arabic will also be written this way. See Examples table for examples.

⁴The letter Sin is rarely used. Again, it is only used in words loaned from Biblical Hebrew (and maybe Farsi, though this is less common) when the author is familiar with the archaic spelling. See Examples table for examples.

⁵In most dialects of Neo-Aramaic, including these, [θ] (Modern Hebrew: ת׳) is now pronounced either [l] or [t], and written with ל or ת respectively. This is also the case for [ð] (Modern Hebrew: ד׳) → [l] (ל) or [d] (ד). For example, the word bela [belɑ] meaning "house" was originally betha [beθɑ]; it is now written בֵילָא (compare to Hebrew cognate bayit / בית). Whether the letter became an [l] or simply underwent stopping in a specific word varies from dialect to dialect.

Nuqte (Niqqud) & Vowels

	Dagesh	Qamas		Patah		Sere	Hiriq		Shwa	Holam	Shuruq
Jabali
Hebrew	( ּ)	( ָ)1	(א ָ)2	(א ַ)2	( ַ)	י ֵ	( ִ)	י ִ	( ְ)	וֹ	וּ
Latin	the consonant appears twice	a	a		a	e	ə, (ı)3	i, y	∅	o	u
IPA	:	ɔ, ɒ, ɑ	ɑ		a	e	ɪ, ɯ	i	∅	ø, o	y, u

¹Qamas is not used by all writers of Lishan Didan. Some elect to only use Patah since nearly all words do not phonemically distinguish between [a] and [ɑ]. However, in loanwords from Biblical Hebrew and Farsi, the qamas sound [ɔ ~ ɒ] is sometimes preserved. For example, in the name "Haman" (from Maghillat Ester) is pronounced [hɔˈmɔn ~ hɒˈmɒn] and written הָמָן. In other cases, the loanword may instead trigger suprasegmental emphasis (often the case for loans from Farsi). For example, the word "zəndan" (meaning "prison") is pronounced [zənˈdˁɑnˁ], but may written either זִנְדַן or זִנְדָן.

²If a word ends in an "a," it will always end with an Alef (א). The vowel will also always be pronounced [ɑ]. The penultimate consonant will either have a Qamas or a Patah, entirely based on the author's preference.

³Some authors, due to the influence of Azeri Turkish, may prefer to use the Turkish dotless i instead of shwa for [ə]

Rare Vowels

The vowels Holam (without Waw), Qubbus, Sere (without Yod), Shwa (when used to represent [ə]), and Sere (without a Yod following it) are very rarely used. Sometimes when writing loanwords from Biblical Hebrew, an author may choose to use the archaic spelling if known. This is the only regular use of these vowels.

	Sere	Segol	Shwa	Holam	Qubbus
Jabali
Hebrew	( ֵ)	( ֶ)	( ְ)	( ֹ)	( ֻ)
Latin	e	e	ə	o	u
IPA	e	e / ɛ	ɪ, ɯ	ø, o	y, u

Examples

Letter	Sound	Jabali	Hebrew	Latin	IPA	English Translation
	b		בַרָא	bara	[ˈbaɾɑ]	later (temporally), behind (spatially)
	w		יוֹכַבֵד	yoxawed / yokhawed	[yoxɑ:ˈβˁedˁ]	Yokheved (name)
	ʔ, (ʕ)		שִמְעוֹן	šəm'on	[ʃɪmˈʔon]	Shimon (name)
	∅		אַרְעָא	ara	[a:ˈɾɑ]	land

Comparisons

Below is a general comparison of different Neo-Aramaic dialect differences in phonology:

Ancient Aramaic	A. A. pronunciation	Zāxō	Dehōk	ʿAmadiya	Urmia	Irbil
ידאֿ "hand"	ʾ īḏa	ʾ īza	ʾ īḏa	ʾ īda	īda	īla
ביתאֿ "house"	bēṯa	bēsa	bēṯa	bēṯa	bēla	bēla

Reflexes

As a trans-Zab dialect, Jewish Salamas *ḏ has a reflex l like the Irbil dialect above. Examples are:

Jewish Salamas	English
nəqlá	'thin'
rqül	'dance'

The reflex for Jewish Salamas of *ṯ is l like the Urmia and Irbil dialects above. Examples are:

Jewish Salamas	English
malá	'village'
ksilá	'hat'
sahlül(ġ)á	'testimony'

Suprasegmental Emphasis

Jewish Salamas lost the trait of word emphasis. This is the only Neo-Aramaic dialect that has completely lost this trait. Below is a comparison of Jewish Salamas and Christian Salamas suprasegmental emphasis.

Jewish Salamas	Christian Salamas	English
amrá	amra	'wool'
bəzzá	bezza	'hole'
susəltá	susiya	'plait, pigtail'

Verbs

Urmia, like other Neo-Aramaic dialects, exhibits complex verbal morphology that allows for fine-grained expression of mood, tense, and aspect.

qat ́Ә́l	he kills
qatolé	he is killing
qat ́Ә́lwa	he used to kill
qatolá-wele	he was killing
qt ́Ә́lle	he killed
qt ́Ә́lwale	he had killed
qtilé	he has killed
qtilá-wele	he had killed

Literature

Though few Neo-Aramaic dialects have written literature, educational and religious documents in Urmia were published and widely distributed in Urmia and the Kurdish mountains on both Persian and Turkish territory. Several newspapers were also published in the language. Most of this literature has been lost. However, at least one poem has been preserved, from the 1909 issue of the Syriac newspaper Kokba. The poem is the last literary survival of a classical Sugita, a type of Syriac poetry which often has three characteristic features:

1. initial stanzas provide the setting
2. the body of the poem is often dialogue between two characters
3. it is usually in acrostic form (optional. The poem presented here excludes this.)

Last literary survival of a classical Sugita, a type of Syriac poetry

The poem evidences borrowing and words from Turkish, Persian, Kurdish, Arabic, and some Greek origins.

See also

• Christian Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia
• Jewish languages
• Aramaic alphabet

Bibliography

• Heinrichs, Wolfhart (ed.) (1990). Studies in Neo-Aramaic. Scholars Press: Atlanta, Georgia. ISBN 1-55540-430-8.
• Mahir Ünsal Eriş, Kürt Yahudileri - Din, Dil, Tarih, (Kurdish Jews) In Turkish, Kalan Publishing, Ankara, 2006
• Maclean, Arthur John (1895). Grammar of the dialects of vernacular Syriac: as spoken by the Eastern Syrians of Kurdistan, north-west Persia, and the Plain of Mosul: with notices of the vernacular of the Jews of Azerbaijan and of Zakhu near Mosul. Cambridge University Press, London.

External links

• The Nash Didan site (Hebrew) and Hebrew - Lishan Didan translator.
• Hebrew - Lishan Didan translator in the Nash Didan site