The North Eastern Neo-Aramaic Dialects

Project start date: 2004-10

Project end date: 2009-09

The North Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialects (generally known as the NENA dialects) form a very diverse group of Aramaic dialects that were spoken until modern times in Northern Iraq, North West Iran and South Eastern Turkey by Christian and Jewish communities. These are among the last remaining living vestiges of the Aramaic language, which was one of the major languages of the region in antiquity. The construction of the database is taking place at the Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies of Cambridge University within the framework of a five year project. One of the main objectives of the project is to produce sketches of the individual dialects according to a fixed questionnaire format and make these sketches available to the public through this website. It will be possible to make comparative searches across the dialects and to create customized electronic map displays of the distribution of linguistic features. The website will also contain audio recordings of the dialects. The sketches of each dialect are being prepared on the basis of fieldwork carried out by a team of researchers. Because many speakers of NENA dialects have been forced to emigrate, most of the dialects are now in danger of extinction. It is therefore an urgent task for Semitic philology to study and document the dialects while competent speakers can still be located.