| Eastern Aramaic | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution | Fertile Crescent (Iraq, northwestern Iran, northern & eastern Syria, Southeastern Anatolia), Eastern Arabia[1][2] |
| Linguistic classification | Afro-Asiatic
|
| Subdivisions | |
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | east2680 |
Eastern Aramaic refers to a group of dialects[8] that evolved historically from the varieties of Aramaic spoken in the core territories of Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq, southeastern Turkey and parts of northeastern Syria) and further expanded into northern Syria,[9][10] eastern Arabia[11][12] and northwestern Iran. This is in contrast to the Western Aramaic varieties found predominantly in the southern Levant, encompassing most parts of modern western Syria and Palestine region. Most speakers are Assyrians, although there is a minority of Mizrahi Jews and Mandaeans who also speak modern varieties of Eastern Aramaic.[13]
The Syriac writers of Qatar themselves produced some of the best and most sophisticated writing to be found in all Syriac literature of the seventh century, but they have not received the scholarly attention that they deserve in the last half century. This volume seeks to redress this underdevelopment by setting the standard for further research in the sub-field of Beth Qatraye studies.
While the East Aramaic Palmyrene language seamlessly supplanted Imperial Aramaic as the language of Palmyra, likely in the second century BCE.…
…Palmyrene was a continuation of Official Aramaic and a close reflection of the spoken language of the Palmyrene region, with eastern Aramaic features….
Sie ist sonst erst wesentlich später in ostaramäischen Dialekten (etwa im Palmyrenischen) bezeugt.
…Palmyrene Aramaic has preserved many old Aramaic features; on the other hand, it also shows isoglosses with the eastern dialects…
It may be akin to the Eastern Aramaic dialect component in Palmyrene, but the regional element there is often eclipsed by the strong presence of an older literary tradition and defies exact dialectal classification (Gzella 2015a: 250-3).
It may just demonstrate that in the course of the evolution of the Aramaic dialects it removed itself from Western Aramaic to a lesser extent than the other Eastern dialects.
Antioch was a major city and the capital of the Syriac-speaking region. From Antioch, the rest of the Syriac-speaking provinces received the Christian message,…
On market days and festivals, Syriac-speaking peasants flocked to Antioch, which indicates that there was lively interaction between Syriac-speaking and Greek-speaking Syrians, thus allowing Antiochene inhabitants to continue to hear Syriac. Furthermore, adding to the general picture, it is thought that the Syriac Peshitta might have been used by Chrysostom (Krupp 1991:75). Based on this, three points can be summarized. (i) The linguistic milieu of Antioch was bilingualism in Aramaic and Greek. (ii) There may have been many bilinguals among both upper-status and lower-status Syrians. (iii) The inhabitants' competence in speaking Greek depends on their social status and, by and large, it is appropriate to assume that upper-status inhabitants spoke Greek as their matrix languages while lower-status inhabitants spoke Aramaic as their matrix languages.
The Persian location and character of the Metropolitan proved to be a source of friction between the Syriac-speaking Christians of Beth Qatraye who naturally looked to their co-linguists back in Mesopotamia.
He was born in the region of Beth Qatraye in Eastern Arabia, a mixed Syriac- and Arabic-speaking region…
The Neo-Aramaic dialects are clearly closely related to the written forms of Aramaic of earlier periods. The Neo-Aramaic subgroups can be correlated broadly with dialectal divisions that are reflected in pre-modern written Aramaic sources from the first millennium CE onwards particularly during Late Antiquity, which are sometimes referred to collectively as 'Middle Aramaic' or 'Late (Antique) Aramaic'. Central Neo-Aramaic, North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic and Neo-Mandaic are related to the eastern branch of premodern Aramaic, e.g. Classical Syriac, Classical Mandaic and Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, whereas Western Neo-Aramaic is related to the western branch, e.g. Jewish and Christian Palestinian Aramaic and Samaritan Aramaic. No Neo-Aramaic subgroup, however, could be considered a direct descendent of the attested forms of the literary pre-modern Aramaic varieties.
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