The Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Qaraqosh.

• Author: Sabar, Yona
• Position: Book Review

The Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Qaraqosh. By GEOFFREY KHAN. Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics, vol. 36. Leiden: BRILL, 2002. Pp. xxiv + 750. $208.

All of the Neo-Aramaic dialects have been used predominantly for everyday speech. A couple of the major dialects have some written texts, mostly of a religious nature. Therefore, the study of Neo-Aramaic dialects depends almost exclusively on oral texts directly recorded from speakers of the dialects. For a variety of reasons, especially migration to the larger urban centers in the Middle East or, increasingly, to the West (Europe, America, Australia, etc.), the dialects and their speakers are becoming an "extinct species." Therefore, Neo-Aramaic scholarship is quite fortunate to have this volume on a very little-known Christian Neo-Aramaic dialect of Qaraqosh (near Mosul, northern Iraq), following the author's fine and very comprehensive study, A Grammar of Neo-Aramaic, the Dialect of the Jews of Arbel (Leiden, 1999).

This hefty volume begins with an historical survey (pp. 1-21) of Qaraqosh ("Black Bird" in Turkish, probably so named by the Ottomans), whose residents, almost all Christians, call it Baghdeda(!) [

There is no established tradition of composing literature in this dialect. Occasionally some songs and other popular material have been written down, but in Arabic script, since most of the laity are unable to read the Syriac alphabet.

The residents call the dialect Sureth ("Syriac"), or more commonly, haditan "our language." Khan's translation (p. 9) "colloquial language," and explanation that it has an "(Arabic) adverbial accusative ending," seem unlikely to me. Any lay speaker, such as a Jew from Zakho, when asked which language he spoke, would usually respond blisanan "in our language." Using an Arabic name for the language, as well as the use of Arabic script (see above), are only two aspects of the larger picture, such as the overwhelming influence of Arabic at present as never before, especially among the younger educated generation, separating them from the older ones. On the other hand, Kurdish influence seems to have had a much lesser effect, e.g., roxa "soul, self" (

The dialect has some other conservative features, such as maintaining the fricative interdentals (beta, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] "house," "hand"). In morphology, for example, it maintains a form closer to the old imperative forms of [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]: qatil, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], compared to the more common, in other dialects, maqtil, mqatil, with m-prefix, influenced by the participial forms (see further below). Other archaic features are [TEXT NOT...