Mlaḥsô language

Not to be confused with the Turoyo language, also called Suryoyo.

Mlaḥsô
Suryoyo, Surayt
ܡܠܚܬܝܐ Mlaḥsô, ܣܘܪܝܝܐ Suryô
Native to	Turkey, Syria
Region	Originally two villages (Mlaḥsô/Yünlüce/Mela and ˁAnşa) near Lice in Diyarbakır Province of southeastern Turkey, later also Qamishli in northeastern Syria.
Extinct	1999
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Northwest Semitic Aramaic Eastern Aramaic Central Neo-Aramaic Mlaḥsô
Language codes
ISO 639-3	lhs
Glottolog	mlah1239
ELP	Mlaḥsô

Mlaḥsô or Mlahsö (Classical Syriac: ܡܠܚܬܝܐ), sometimes referred to as Suryoyo or Surayt, is an extinct or dormant Central Neo-Aramaic language. It was traditionally spoken in eastern Turkey and later also in northeastern Syria by Syriac Orthodox Christians.

The Mlaḥsô language (Surayt of Mlaḥsô) is closely related to the Surayt of Turabdin but sufficiently different to be considered a separate language, with the syntax of the language having retained more features of Classical Syriac than Turoyo. It was spoken in the villages of Mlaḥsô (Turkish: Yünlüce, Kurdish: Mela), a village established by two monks from the Tur Abdin mountain range, and in the village of ˁAnşa near Lice, Diyarbakır, Turkey.

Etymology

The name of the village and the language is derived from the earlier Aramaic word mālaḥtā, 'salt marsh'. The literary Syriac name for the language is Mlaḥthoyo. The native speakers of Mlaḥsô referred to their language simply as Suryô, or Syriac.

History and distribution

The language was still spoken by a handful of people in the 1970s. The last fluent native speaker of Mlaḥsô, Ibrahim Ḥanna, died in 1999 in Qamishli. His daughters, Munira in Qamishli, Shamiram in Lebanon, and son Dr. Isḥaq Ibrahim in Germany are the only speakers left with some limited native proficiency of the language. Recordings of Ibrahim Ḥanna speaking the language are available on Heidelberg University's Semitic Sound Archive which were done by Otto Jastrow, a prominent German semiticist who is credited as the modern "discoverer" of the language and published the first modern research papers on the existence of Mlaḥsô and its linguistic features.

On 3 May 2009, a historical event in the history of the Mlaḥsô Surayt language took place. The Suroyo TV television station aired the program series Dore w yawmotho, which was about the village Mlaḥsô (and the Tur Abdin village Tamarze). Dr. Isḥaq Ibrahim, the son of Ibrahim Ḥanna, was a guest and spoke in the Mlaḥsô language with his sisters Shamiram in Lebanon and Munira in Qamishli live on the phone. Otto Jastrow was also interviewed regarding his expertise on Mlaḥsô. Assyrians from Tur Abdin and those present at the show were able to hear the language spoken live for the first time at the event.

The extinction of Mlaḥsô can be attributed to the small amount of original speakers of the language, and them being limited to two isolated villages, resulting in a disproportionate loss of speakers during the Assyrian genocide compared to Turoyo and other variants of Neo-Aramaic.

Phonology

Mlahsô is phonologically less conservative than Turoyo. This is particularly noticeable in the use of s and z for classical θ and ð. The classical v has been retained though, while it has collapsed into w in Turoyo. Also sometimes y (IPA /j/) replaces ġ. Mlaḥsô also renders the combination of vowel plus y as a single, fronted vowel rather than a diphthong or a glide.

Consonants

	Labial		Dental			Alveolar			Palato-alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Uvular		Pharyn- geal		Glottal
			plain		emphatic		plain
Nasal		m						n
Plosive	p	b	t	d	tˤ								k	ɡ	q				ʔ
Affricate									tʃ	dʒ
Fricative	f	v			sˤ		s	z	ʃ	ʒ			x	ɣ			ħ	ʕ	h
Approximant		w	l									j
Trill			r

Vowels

Mlahsô has the following set of vowels:

• Close front unrounded vowel – /i/
• Close-mid front unrounded vowel – /e/
• Open front unrounded vowel – /a/
• Open back rounded vowel – /ɒ/
• Close back rounded vowel – /u/

Morphology

Mlaḥsô is more conservative than Turoyo in grammar and vocabulary, using classical Syriac words and constructions while also preserving the original Aramaic form.

Vocabulary

English	Mlaḥsô
person	nṓšo
father	avó
paternal uncle	dozó
trouble	renyó
donkey	ḥmṓrō
one	ḥā
door	tár'ṓ
goat	ḗzō
great, big	rābṓ
house	baytṓ
ten	'esrṓ
grapes	'envḗ
mouth	pēmṓ
morning	safrṓ
three	tlōsō
sleep	šensṓ
hand	īzṓ
seven	šav'ṓ
today	yōmā́n
in, into	lġāv
brother	āḥṓ
why	lmūn
what	mūn
much, many, very	sāy
town	mzītṓ
cock	toġó

Example phrases

English	Mlaḥsô
They sleep	dōmxī́
I wash	māsī́ġno
He loved	rhī́mle
She gave	hī́vla
I sold	zābḗnli
He demanded	tlī́ble
He stole	gnī́vle
His house	baytā́v
His place	duksā́v
From him	mēnā́v

Example sentences

English	Mlaḥsô
Where is my hen?	eyko-yo talġuntézi

See also

• Surayt of Turabdin
• Syriac language
• Assyrian people

References

• Jastrow, Otto (1994). Der neuaramäische Dialekt von Mlaḥsô. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ISBN 3-447-03498-X.

Further reading

• Goldenberg, Gideon. 2000. "Early Neo-Aramaic and Present-day Dialectical Diversity." In Journal of Semitic Studies XLV/1, 69-86. Jerusalem.
• Hoberman, Robert D. 1988. "The History of the Modern Aramaic Pronouns and Pronominal Suffixes." In Journal of the American Oriental Society 108, no. 4, 557-575. American Oriental Society.
• Jastrow, Otto. 1997. "16. The Neo-Aramaic Languages." In The Semitic Languages, edited by Robert Hetzron, 334–377. New York: Routledge.
• Jastrow, Otto. 1996. "Passive Formation in Turoyo and Mlahso." In Israel Oriental Studies XVI: Studies in Modern Semitic Languages, edited by Shlomo Izre’el, 49–57. Leiden: Brill.
• Jastrow, Otto. 1994. Der neuaramäische Dialekt von Mlaḥsô. Semitica Viva 14. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz
• Khan, Geoffrey. 1999. "The Neo-Aramaic Dialect Spoken by Jews from the Region of Arbel (Iraqi Kurdistan)." In Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 62, no. 2, 213-225.
• Khan, Geoffrey. 2003. "Some Remarks on Linguistic and Lexical Change in the North Eastern Neo-Aramaic Dialects." In Aramaic Studies 1, no. 2, 179-190.
• Mutzafi, Hezy. 2006. "On the Etymology of Some Enigmatic Words in northeastern Neo-Aramaic." In Aramaic Studies 4, no. 1, 83-99.

External links

• Suroyo TV 2009-05-03 Dore w yawmotho - Mlaḥso & Tamarze
• Semitisches Tonarchiv: Dokumentgruppe "Aramäisch/Mlahsô" (text in German)
• Endangered Languages Project - Mlahso