Mlahsô language
| Mlahsô | |
|---|---|
| ܡܠܚܬܝܐ Mlaḥsô, ܣܘܪܝܝܐ Suryô | |
| Native to | Syria, Turkey |
| Region | Qamishli in northeastern Syria, two villages in Diyarbakır Province of southeastern Turkey |
| Extinct | with the death of Ibrahim Ḥanna in 1998 |
| Language family | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | lhs |
Mlaḥsô (Syriac: ܡܠܚܬܝܐ) is a Modern West Syriac language, a dialect of Aramaic. It was traditionally spoken in eastern Turkey and north-eastern Syria by members of the Assyrian/Syriac people.
The Ṣurayt of Mlaḥsô is closely related to the Ṣurayt of Turabdin. It was spoken in the villages of Mlaḥsô and ˁAnsha near Lice, Diyarbakır, Turkey. The name of the village and the language comes from the Syriac word melḥo, 'salt'. The literary Syriac name for the language is Mlaḥthoyo. The native speakers of Mlaḥsô referred to their language simply as Suryô, or Syriac.
The last speaker of Mlaḥsô, Ibrahim Ḥanna, died in 1998 in Qamishli. His daughters, Munira in Qamishlo, Shamiram in Lebanon, and son Dr. Isḥaq in Germany are the only left who can speak the language, but they have no one to converse with.
Mlaḥsô is more conservative than Turoyo in grammar and vocabulary, using classical Syriac words and constructions. However, it is phonologically less conservative than Turoyo. This is particularly noticeable in the use of s for classical θ and y (IPA /j/) for ġ. Mlaḥsô renders the combination of vowel plus y as a single, fronted vowel rather than a diphthong or a glide.
In 3th of May 2009, a historical event in the history of the Mlaḥsô Ṣurayt language took place. This day, the Suroyo TV program series Dore w yawmotho was about the village Mlaḥsô (& Tamarze). Dr. Isḥaq Ibrahim was a guest and spoke in the Ṣurayt of Mlaḥso with his siblings (sister Shamiram in Lebanon, and a sister Munira in Qamishlo) on phone live. Turabdin Assyrians/Syriacs viewers and those present at the show could for the first time ever in modern time hear the language live.
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- Jastrow, Otto (1994). Der neuaramäische Dialekt von Mlaḥsô. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ISBN 3-447-03498-X.
External links[edit]
- Suroyo TV 2009-05-03 Dore w yawmotho - Mlaḥso & Tamarze
- Ethnologue report for Mlahsô
- Semitisches Tonarchiv: Dokumentgruppe "Aramäisch/Mlahsô" (text in German)
|
|||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
