A Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Kurdistan
Georg Krotkoff
American Oriental Society
General information. The presentation of new materials in a linguistic field in which all publications to date still fit very easily on the top of a single desk hardly needs an elaborate justification. Especially in the case of the Neo-Aramaic (henceforward NA) dialects, however, the preservation of all authentic recorded texts is imperative in view of the many factors which, in the course of this century, have decimated and dispersed these communities and endangered their very existence. Just as is the case with so many material remains from antiquity, the past hundred years have seen more destruction of minority societies than the preceding millennium—a millennium during which these societies managed to preserve their religious and linguistic identity in spite of the vicissitudes of Near Eastern history.
The texts contained in this book were recorded during the first half of 1959 in Baghdad from the mouth of a twenty-five year old Chaldean by the name of Shabo, a native of the village Aradhin in Iraqi Kurdistan. The village is situated some ten miles west of Amadia, and in 1959 its southern end could be reached by a partially paved road which branched north from the highway connecting ...
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