PRESERVING SAMARITAN ARABIC:

Feature: Preserving Samaritan speech

By Uwe Siemon-Netto
UPI Religion Editor
From the Life & Mind Desk
Published 5/9/2003 12:17 PM
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WASHINGTON, May 9 (UPI) -- The Samaritans, arguably the people with the best press in the New Testament, have a big problem: Not only have they shrunk to a minuscule community, but their language is threatened with extinction.

To preserve Samaritan Arabic for eternity, the Semitic languages department of Heidelberg University in Germany has recorded and archived a text spoken by a prominent member of this ethnic group. One text can now be heard in the department's Web site (semarch.uni-hd.de). The speaker is Benyamim Tsedaka, publisher of the magazine "A.B. -- The Samaritan News."

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The Samaritans go back to the time period of this blog and their liturgy is still in Aramaic, but their spoken language is now Arabic.