Aramaic on Foreign Correspondent

Last night’s Foreign Correspndent featured a short report about the Amaraic language of the village of Malula, Syria.

The story goes that Aramaic was the language of Jesus and was spoken in a fairly large region of the Middle East, until the 7th and 8th centuries when Arabic spread with Islam. Aramaic speakers – both Christian and Muslim – were apparently persecuted by Arabic-speaking Muslims and anyone who dared speak Aramaic would have their tongue cut out.

As a result, Aramaic was soon restricted to Malula, and survives today with a community of about 5,000 people, split down the middle into Christian and Muslim, but who live in complete harmony with each other. Even the head of the local Coptic church reckons that the Muslims speak better, more traditional Aramaic than the Christians do.

Aramaic is of course the language made famous recently by Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, except that according to a Malula shepherd, a Muslim who has seen the film a dozen times, the Aramaic is ‘broken’ and they apparently speak too slow¹.

The video of the report is up already, so if you have a spare ten minutes and are interested in this language, which sounds fantastic by the way, take a look.

In keeping with the theme of accurate depictions of languages in films, I wonder if anyone knows whether the Mayan language in another of Gibson’s epics, that monstrosity Apocalypto, is at all accurate. I doubt it to be honest, as the film isn’t even consistent as to their location. At one point they’re in Guiana, at another they’re in Yucatec, and later on they’re in Brazil. ↩

4 Responses to “ Aramaic on Foreign Correspondent ”

Comments:

Peter Austin says:
October 30th, 2008 at 3:49 am

The situation is rather more complicated than your blog or the summary of the Foreign Correspondent report suggests. It is important to distinguish so-called “Neo-Aramaic”, the modern spoken language, from “Classical Aramaic” the liturgical language. Neo-Aramaic has many dialects, Western and Eastern, and is not only spoken in Syria but also in northern Iraq and in Iran. Sabah Aldihisi, a Mandean from Iraq, is working with us in the Endangered Languages Academic Programme at SOAS recording Mandean rituals in the liturgical language, along with the spoken language. He has done fieldwork in Syria and Sweden, as well as London, and plans research in Iran later this year.

There is a sizeable Aramaic speaking community in Sydney, Australia – you don’t have to go all the way to Malula to hear Aramaic spoken.

jangari says:
October 30th, 2008 at 1:15 pm

Thanks for the clarifications, Peter. Incidentally, I did see on the IMDb entry for The Passion that the language was listed as Assyrian Neo-Aramaic.

I probably shouldn’t have assumed that the linguistic situation was as simple as Matt Brown thought it was. But then, we’re supposed to trust journalists, right? I guess he in turn trusted the Malula locals’ insistence that they, and only they, speak this ‘ancient tongue’ (that’s certainly I phrase I could live without).

Paul says:
November 28th, 2008 at 3:56 pm

Great Documentary.

The original form of Aramaic is also most apparent, according to many scholars, in the Syriac language of today.

Peter is correct. You could just visit the Syriac Orthodox Church in Lidcombe Sydney and find some of the decendants right there at your door step.

Good work

Lameen says:
January 11th, 2009 at 7:43 pm

Interesting post. A few points
* The local church isn’t Coptic, though there are both Catholic and Orthodox churches there.
* “anyone who dared speak Aramaic would have their tongue cut out” – a ridiculous claim. Aramaic remained the main language of the countryside for centuries, and unusually extensive Aramaic influence can be traced in the dialects and placenames of the whole area around Maalula.
* The Muslims of Maalula only converted a couple of centuries ago, following a dispute with their bishop about fasting.