Northeastern Neo-Aramaic

"NENA" redirects here. For other uses, see Nena (disambiguation).
Northeastern Neo-Aramaic
NENA
Geographic
distribution		Traditionally spoken northeast to the plain of Urmia in Iran, southeast to the plain of Mosul in Iraq, southwest to Al-Hasakah Governorate in Syria and as northwest as Tur Abdin in Turkey. Diaspora speakers in North America, Europe and Israel (the Jewish dialects).
Linguistic classificationAfro-Asiatic
Subdivisions
Language codes
Glottolognort3241

Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) is a grouping of related dialects of Neo-Aramaic spoken before World War I as a vernacular language by Jews and Assyrian Christians between the Tigris and Lake Urmia, stretching north to Lake Van and southwards to Mosul and Kirkuk. As a result of the Assyrian genocide, Christian speakers were forced out of the area that is now Turkey and in the early 1950s most Jewish speakers moved to Israel. The Kurdish-Turkish conflict resulted in further dislocations of speaker populations.[1][2] As of the 1990s, the NENA group had an estimated number of fluent speakers among the Assyrians just below 500,000, spread throughout the Middle East and the Assyrian diaspora. In 2007, linguist Geoffrey Khan wrote that many dialects were nearing extinction with fluent speakers difficult to find.[1]

The other branches of Neo-Aramaic are Western Neo-Aramaic, Central Neo-Aramaic (Turoyo and Mlahso), and Mandaic.[1] Some linguists classify NENA as well as Turoyo and Mlahso as a single dialect continuum.[3]

  1. ^ a b c Khan, G. (1 January 2007). "The North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic Dialects". Journal of Semitic Studies. 52 (1): 1–20. doi:10.1093/jss/fgl034.
  2. ^ Bird, Isabella, Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, including a summer in the Upper Karun region and a visit to the Nestorian rayahs, London: J. Murray, 1891, vol. ii, pp. 282 and 306
  3. ^ Kim, Ronald (2008). ""Stammbaum" or Continuum? The Subgrouping of Modern Aramaic Dialects Reconsidered". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 128 (3): 505–531. ISSN 0003-0279. JSTOR 25608409.