Aramaic influence on Levantine and Mesopotamian Arabic?
- Thread starter Etain
- Start date
Yeah, it does have an influence. Being from the UAE, one would consider it "Arab Arab" so whenever I hear Syrian Arabic, it sounds different to our Arabic. It sounds closer to my great grandma's Aramaic (Jub'addin), it has the same tone to it. I think we understand each other because we have a lot of Levantine people in the gulf and Levantine TV is quite popular in the Mid East as well as Aramaic being close to Arabic. If you compare this to the North African countries like Morroco, I also can't understand their Arabic! It's like 90% gibberish to me, it's because it's a mixture of their original language (amazigh/Berber) and Arabic and it still maintains the Berber tone.
In the UAE and Bahrain, we use a lot of Aramaic words in our dialect
e.g:
- We use "marhaba" which is One way of saying hello in Aramaic where mar = God and haba = love.
We still use salam or Hala but marhaba is the most used one.
- We use "tanbal" which means fat in Aramaic. In Arabic it is "sameen".
- My specific dialect in the UAE so not all UAE-Ians say this, we use "bloota" for country/home instead of "belad".
And much more. It's because we have Nabatean origins and they were Arabs (most agree on that) that spoke Aramaic-Arabic mixed, something like that. The Nabateans were quite mysterious and very little is known about them.
e.g:
- We use "marhaba" which is One way of saying hello in Aramaic where mar = God and haba = love.
We still use salam or Hala but marhaba is the most used one.
- We use "tanbal" which means fat in Aramaic. In Arabic it is "sameen".
- My specific dialect in the UAE so not all UAE-Ians say this, we use "bloota" for country/home instead of "belad".
And much more. It's because we have Nabatean origins and they were Arabs (most agree on that) that spoke Aramaic-Arabic mixed, something like that. The Nabateans were quite mysterious and very little is known about them.
Etain said:
Aramaic has a large impact on Levantine Arabic. I can't source exactly what I mean, but it has to do with morphology, not just vocabulary. That's why it generally sounds "softer" to the ear, than for example Gulf or Egyptian Arabic. Similarly, Mesopotamian Arabic has Syriac influence and just like how NENA(modern Assyrian) is an Aramaic with an Akkadian substratum, so to is Levantine Arabic with an Aramaic one. Honestly, North African, Egyptian, and Levantine Arabic can all be considered independent languages. They are more different than Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, which are classified as separate languages. Meanwhile, Lebanese is farther away from Standard Arabic than Maltese, yet it's not considered its own language. Things are politically motivated sometimes.
mrzurnaci said:
Everyone who knows a little history or linguistics would acknowledge that Hebrew and Arabic are sister languages being derived from the mother language, Aramaic. We say Arabic has been standardised while Aramaic hasn't, for instance, when the Quran came out, classical Arabic wasn't written the way it is written today (with accents) however, it was spoken the way it was spoken today. Then during the reign of someone I forgot who but I think (Osman Ibn Aafan) he started using accents on the Arabic script so that everyone can read it easily. If he didn't do that, then it would've been hard to maintain Arabic as a standardised language. So, everyone would have been reading Arabic differently and adding colloquial terms to it. I hope that makes sense? I explained it quite poorly, lol. I'll try to find a copy of the Quran before the accents (it looked like similar the Aramaic script more than nowadays Classical Arabic ) and after the accents to show you an example.
1) The two lists included many Christian terms e.g: Names (Thomas, Maryam, yeshua (Arab Christians say that whilst Arab Muslims use eissa) and Christian figures (priest meaning qadees). So, naturally the words would have be Aramaic rather than Arabic.
2) The list shows more words common to Arabic dialects rather than the standard/classical Arabic we are being taught in school. For instance, Mar (Like I previously said Marhaba and we don't solely use mar on its own), dinar (Kuwait, Iraq and Bahrain only. That would be naturally expected since Kuwait and Iraq are geographically Mesopotamia whilst Bahrain is Nabatean) and so on.
3) The Classical Arabic words from the Aramaic list: toot, ajar, nabee, malkot, matraka, fusha, sefa, sultan, talmeeth, deftar.
The Classical Arabic words from the Syriac list: Qandel, Quran, Rezq,salah
So, we can easily see that Aramaic is the mother of our language.
Etain said:
Saudi Arabia (middle to South) uses pure Arabic. Their dialect is Classical Arabic but in a harsher manner for instance, gahewa (dialect) instead of qahwa (classical) (we pronounce it this way too) but anyhow, the vocabulary is Classical Arabic yet pronounced heavily.
Northern Saudis can sound (50% Levantine and 50% gulf) whilst people from Jeddah sound Egyptian.
mrzurnaci
Active member
Neon said:
wrong, these are the Classical Syriac entries for "fat"
fat
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The one that's related with Arabic is "Shumana" which is available in Arabic as "sameen"
Shumana is likely a relic from the old Aramaic verb-root Sh-M-N meaning to become ripe or fat.
Cascade
Well-known member
STOP with the "in Syriac it's this..." asseveration. It's rather humiliating that you keep on doing this, considering that many Assyrians don't speak Classical Syriac. Every Assyrian I know says "treesa/trista". For the umpteenth time, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic is not Classical Syriac, just the same way a dog is not a wolf.mrzurnaci said:
I thought Shumana was "naughty" or "rude". Some Assyrians use it for badly mannered kids.
mrzurnaci
Active member
Neon said:
and for the umpteenth damn time, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic formed out of uneducated village/ghetto dialects...
Classical Syriac is the language of the educated. Do I even need to reiterate that those who know Classical Sureth can understand all dialects to a good degree?
Not only that but Classical has a more developed vocabulary compared to Assyrian Neo-Aramaic...
How many times I've found Kurdish, Persian, Arabic, and Turkish words in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic that have a classical syriac equivalent? We don't use them because we don't know them... THINK...
Cascade
Well-known member
Didn't you just say that you'll stop calling ANA dialects "ghetto"? Anyway, it was our "ghetto" ways that helped us survive as a group. Otherwise we would've been Kurdified or Arabized. Better to speak pseudo-Syriac than Arabic or Kurdish, no? I thought you'd be cognizant of this...mrzurnaci said:
Yes, Classical Syriac is educated and rather prestigious. Not gonna disagree with that. But if someone's gonna ask me what that word is in Assyrian, of course I'm going to use the modern "bastardized" usage of it, which would be the commonly used form. Odds are, the average Assyrian wouldn't know the Syriac variant of many words (and you know this). If you have told me the Syriac word for "fat" and I go to say it in front of other Assyrians do you think they'd know what that word was? Highly doubt it. So THINK of this...
Same way modern English has a lot of French and Latin words nowadays, when it was virtually Germanic 600 years ago. That's how languages evolve. Some for the better, some for the worse. There's nothing that you can do about it.
Look, I actually do *agree* that Syriac words should be MORE dispersed in the language. For instance, I'm really pissed at the fact that we use "spy" for good, as it's a Kurdish word. Now should I use the actual Syriac for it? I wish, but I don't think other Assyrians would understand it. That's my sole point here.
I hope you catch my drift on the whole ANA/Syriac issue.
mrzurnaci
Active member
Neon said:
tawdi means "thank you" it comes from the root T-W-D meaning to give thanks or to be thankful.
Why would I bother Assyrians who can't read Syriac when I could just educate the younger generations with Classical Syriac?
Also, with my Sureth projects, I'm officially using the mandaic alphabet to be the official Syriac numerals. That way, we don't have to use the indo-Arabic numerals or the Arabic numerals used by the west (like 1234567890)