{"id":216,"date":"2009-06-25T09:38:42","date_gmt":"2009-06-25T09:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/?p=216"},"modified":"2009-06-11T21:15:57","modified_gmt":"2009-06-11T21:15:57","slug":"aramaic-making-a-comeback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/25\/aramaic-making-a-comeback\/","title":{"rendered":"Aramaic &#8211; making a comeback?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mountlebanon.org\/images\/aramaic.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/aramaic-script1-208x300.jpg\" alt=\"Aramaic script\" title=\"Aramaic script\" width=\"208\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-223\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/aramaic-script1-208x300.jpg 208w, http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/aramaic-script1.jpg 283w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 208px) 100vw, 208px\" \/><\/a>First, a confession. I did not think that anyone still spoke <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Aramaic_language\">Aramaic<\/a>, the language scholars say was spoken by Jesus. Sure, I\u2019d heard that the controversial movie <em><a href=\"http:\/\/uk.imdb.com\/title\/tt0335345\/\">The Passion of the Christ<\/a><\/em> was mostly in Aramaic, but it never connected in my brain that anyone would still actually speak it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2009\/apr\/14\/aramaic-revival-syria\">This article<\/a>, however, proved me wrong. The world\u2019s oldest living tongue, Aramaic is listed by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unesco.org.\">Unesco<\/a> (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) as an endangered language and as such efforts are being made to preserve and promote it. <\/p>\n<p>With similarities to both Arabic and Hebrew, Aramaic is spoken mostly in the Middle East, principally in a few villages north of Damascus, Syria, in the form of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ethnologue.org\/show_language.asp?code=amw\">Western Neo-Aramaic<\/a>. The Syrian government has set up the Aramaic Language Academy in one of the villages to assist in the continuation of the language.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Linguistic experts say that Syria is doing well in fostering this part of its heritage. \u201cAramaic is actually pretty healthy in Maaloula,\u201d said Professor Geoffrey Kahn, who teaches semitic philology at Cambridge University. \u201cIt\u2019s the eastern Aramaic dialects in Turkey, Iraq and Iran that are really endangered.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Listen to the Lord&#8217;s Prayer being spoken in Aramaic <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=36GYBTzJyAU\">here<\/a>. And for more articles on Aramaic, see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aramnahrin.org\/English\/Aramaic_In_Danger.htm\">here<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First, a confession. I did not think that anyone still spoke Aramaic, the language scholars say was spoken by Jesus. Sure, I\u2019d heard that the controversial movie The Passion of the Christ was mostly in Aramaic, but it never connected in my brain that anyone would still actually speak it. This article, however, proved me [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92,15],"tags":[97,92,96,98,51,94,93,95],"class_list":["post-216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aramaic","category-education","tag-arabic","tag-aramaic","tag-endangered","tag-hebrew","tag-language","tag-lords-prayer","tag-syria","tag-unesco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":219,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions\/219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}