In the Syrian desert, the language of Jesus lives onIndeed. More power to them.
By Brooke Anderson
Catholic News Service
MAALOULA, Syria (CNS) -- Aramaic, the language of Jesus that flourished in villages thousands of years ago, is being kept alive in the Syrian desert, about an hour's drive from Damascus.
Today, Aramaic is spoken in Maaloula, an ancient mountainous town with two historic monasteries, Catholic and Orthodox, both built into the cliffs.
Georgette Halabi, a tour guide at St. Serge Melkite Catholic convent in Maaloula, grew up speaking Aramaic.
"I don't write it," she said. "But I want to learn."
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In the summer of 2007, the language went through something of a renaissance in Maaloula when the town, with the encouragement of the Syrian government, opened the Aramaic Language Institute. The program teaches written Aramaic to students of all ages, particularly children, and is affiliated with the University of Damascus.
"I've been studying since the school opened," said 11-year-old Murshed Diab, as he played with his friends on a hot summer evening after classes. "It's useful. They teach us songs in Aramaic."
His sister, Bushra Diab, 13, added: "People here don't speak Arabic. It's Aramaic. They teach us the alphabet, and I'm already starting to learn complex grammar."
The two siblings began singing an Aramaic song they learned in school, and their playmates quickly joined in.
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A group of scholars from Germany started studying Aramaic in Maaloula about 20 years ago, when the language had begun to die.
"The Germans opened our eyes and showed us we had something special," Rihan said. "A lot of Arabic had entered the language, and it (Aramaic) had almost died. It was resuscitated."
Now, Maaloula's relatively new Aramaic Committee is trying to gather information on the language from the town's elders to create a modern Aramaic dictionary. But Rihan said he hoped this was only the beginning.
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Background here. This article is much more upbeat than the NYT piece in April. And here's a post noting the founding of the Aramaic Institute in 2004.
