Syrian villagers keep Jesus' language aliveThere's also a list of Aramaic words and phrases, presumably in the Maaloula dialect, at the end of the article.
Brooke Anderson, [San Francisco] Chronicle Foreign Service
(08-11) 17:06 PDT Maaloula, Syria -- Marian Shanees had never seen the letters of her native language of Aramaic. Now, a new program in Maaloula, one of the few places where Aramaic is still spoken, will change that.
"This is the first time I'm seeing my alphabet," said 7-year-old Marian, who started learning the language in early July at the Aramaic Language Institute. "I'm really happy to be studying the language of my ancestors."
Aramaic was the language spoken by Jesus and a Semitic tribe thousands of years ago. Today, it is still spoken in three Syrian villages, Jabaadeen, Serkha and Maaloula - all within an hour's bus ride of the Syrian capital of Damascus.
In the summer of 2007, the institute, in affiliation with the University of Damascus, opened its doors in Maaloula, the main town where Aramaic is spoken. Now, children and adults who grew up speaking the language can learn to read and write it.
[...]
Right 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.
Elias Tajara, 60-year-old former math teacher, is in his second summer teaching Aramaic. For Tajara, who remembers a time when the entire town spoke Aramaic fluently, teaching his native language is more important than math because "it's the language of our forefathers."
[...]
Background here.
