Lishán Didán


Lishán Didán is a modern Jewish Aramaic language, often called Neo-Aramaic or Judeo-Aramaic. It was originally spoken in Iranian Azerbaijan, in the region of Lake Urmia, from Salmas to Mahabad. Most speakers now live in Israel.
The name Lishán Didán means 'our language'; other variations are Lishanán, 'our-language', and Lishanid Nash Didán, 'the language of our selves'. As this causes some confusion with similarly named languages, scholarly sources tend simply to use a more descriptive name, like Persian Azerbaijani Jewish Neo-Aramaic.
To distinguish it from other dialects of Jewish Neo-Aramaic, Lishán Didán is sometimes called Lakhlokhi -to-you or Galihalu, demonstrating a difference of prepositions and pronominal suffixes. Lishán Didán is written in the Hebrew alphabet. Spelling tends to be highly phonetic, and elided letters are not written.

History

Various Neo-Aramaic dialects were spoken across a wide area from Lake Urmia to Lake Van, down to the plain of Mosul and back across to Sanandaj.
There are two major dialect clusters of Lishán Didán. The northern cluster of dialects centered on Urmia and Salmas in West Azerbaijan, and extended into the Jewish villages of the Turkish province of Van. 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: Persian, Kurdish and Turkish languages especially.
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 a small girls school with only twenty pupils. There were two main synagogues in Urmia, one large one and one smaller one. The large synagogue was called the synagogue of Sheikh Abdulla.
By 1918, due to the assassination of the Patriarch of the Church of the East and the invasion of the Ottoman forces, many Jews were uprooted from their homes and fled. The Jews settled in Tbilisi or much later emigrated to Israel. The upheavals in their traditional region after the First World War and the founding of the State of Israel led most Azerbaijani Jews to settle in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and small villages in various parts of the country.Due to persecution and relocation, Lishán Didán began to be replaced by the speech of younger generations by Modern Hebrew.
Most native Lishan Didan speakers speak Hebrew to their children now. Fewer than 5,000 people are known to speak Lishán Didan, and most of them are older adults in their sixties who speak Hebrew as well. The language faces extinction in the next few decades.

Jewish Neo-Aramaic

There are five main languages of Neo-Aramaic.
  1. Jewish Azerbaijani Neo-Aramaic
  2. Trans-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic: Also referred to as Hulaula, located in Iranian Kurdistan.
  3. Inter-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic: Located between Greater Zab and Lesser Zab in the Erbil and the Sulaymaniyah regions.
  4. Central Jewish Neo-Aramaic: Located in upper Greater Zab and Erbil as well.
  5. Lishana Deni: Located in Northern Mosul.

    Geographical Distribution

Jewish Languages

Lishan Didan is called 'Jewish Azerbaijani Neo-Aramaic' by most scholars. Its speakers lived in Northern Iran in the townships of Northern Iranian Azerbaijan. Lishan Didan, translated as 'our language' is often confused with a similar language called Lishanid Noshan. The term targum is often used to describe the two different languages called Lishan Didan, as it is a traditional and common term for the Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects.
Another Lishan Didan 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. Most of the men of the Barzani family were rabbis and Torah scholars. The rabbis would travel around Kurdistan to set up and maintain Yeshiva's in the towns of Barzan, Aqra, Mosul, and Amediya. Much literature has been compiled and published by the members of the Barzani family and their community.
*h has been retained in some words in Barzani Jewish Neo-Aramaic and other communities near Kurdistan. The following displays *h retention.
*h
ghk'to laugh'
dbh'to slaughter'
rhm'to pity'
mhq'to erase'
htm'to sign'

This is different from the Jewish Urmia language as this dialect has the voiceless glottal /h/ while Barzani Jewish Neo-Aramaic has regular pharyngealization with the voiced pharyngeal /ʕ/.

Assyrian Dialects

Another 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 Khabur river between Hassake and Ras el Ain.
The following displays examples of divergence in phonology, morphology, and lexicon between the Jewish and Assyrian Urmia dialects.
Jewish UrmiaAssyrian Urmia
belàbéta'house'
zorásúra'small'
-u-e'their'
-ilet-iwət2ms copula
mqyhmzm'to speak'
kwśˤsly'to descend'

Intelligibility

Lishán Didán, at the northeastern extreme end of this area, is somewhat intelligible with the Jewish Neo-Aramaic languages of Hulaula and Lishanid Noshan.
However, the local Christian Neo-Aramaic dialects of Assyrian 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,, had their own dialect.

Phonology

Below is a general comparison of different Neo-Aramaic dialect differences in phonology:
Ancient AramaicZāxōDehōkʿAmadiyaUrmiaIrbil
ידאֿ "hand"ʾ īzaʾ īḏaʾ īdaīdaīla
ביתאֿ "house"bēsabēṯabēṯabēlabēla

Reflexes

As a trans-Zab dialect, Jewish Salamas *ḏ has a reflex l. Examples are:
The reflex for Jewish Salamas of *ṯ is l. Examples are:
Jewish SalamasEnglish
malá'village'
ksilá'hat'
sahlülá'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 SalamasChristian SalamasEnglish
amrá+amra'wool'
bəzzá+bezza'hole'
susəltá+susiya'plait, pigtail'