The world's top experts in endangered languages meet at UNESCO

(http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=10176&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html)

Paris – As the linguistic diversity of the planet shrinks at an unprecedented rate, to the point that most of the world's languages may be replaced by a few dominant languages by the end of the 21st century, the top experts in this field, from the scientific community and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), are to meet at UNESCO from March 10 to 12.

Date Added: 06-03-2003 2:14 pm

"Safeguarding of Endangered Languages" is the title of the International Expert Meeting on the UNESCO programme that will seek to identify the means to combat the phenomenon of linguistic decline and to establish UNESCO's specific role in the actions to be taken.

The meeting will be opened by UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura, who says that "the preservation of languages, which are a vector of humanity’s intangible heritage, is a priority for the Organization." He adds: "As the guardian of cultural diversity, UNESCO must reinforce its action to encourage governments to fight against the decline of thousands of languages. This in no way means weakening dominant languages, but rather to build truly multicultural societies in which nobody feels excluded."

The Director-General's speech will be followed by the screening of nine short films produced by Discovery Communications Inc. in partnership with UNESCO and the UN Works programme. These short films, which highlight the stories of speakers of endangered languages, were shot in Scotland, Sweden, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Argentina and India, and were distributed during International Mother Language Day on February 21.

Some 40 high-level linguists will be present at the March 10-12 meeting, including Michael Krauss (United States), Herbert Chimhundu (Zimbabwe), Margarita Lukina (Russia), Sun Hongkai (China), Lachman Khubchandani (India), Eithne Carlin (The Netherlands), Tapani Salminen (Finland), Joseph Palacio (Belize), Bruna Franchetto (Brazil) and David Crystal (United Kingdom), who will open the debates with a speech entitled, "Crossing the Great Divide: Language Endangerment and Public Awareness".

Vigdis Finnbogadottir, former President to Iceland and UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Languages, as well as representatives of NGOs such as Terralingua, SIL International and the European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages (EBLUL), among others, will also attend.

"About 97% of the world’s people speak about 4% of the world’s languages; and conversely, about 96% of the world’s languages are spoken by about 3% of the world’s people. Most of the world’s language heterogeneity, then, is under the stewardship of a very small number of people; at least 50% of the world’s nearly six thousand languages are losing speakers. Even languages with many thousands of speakers are no longer being acquired by children. We estimate that about 90% of the world’s languages may be replaced by dominant languages by the end of the 21st century."

This evaluation is from the UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages, made up of a dozen specialists who wrote the working document for the meeting entitled "Language Vitality and Endangerment". The participants will give updates on the state of linguistic research, linguistic diversity in different regions of the world, and solutions on how to fight the decline of many languages.

They will propose courses of action that could underpin UNESCO's future programme aimed at safeguarding endangered languages. As an organization committed to protecting cultural diversity and the intangible heritage of humanity, UNESCO can play a key role in encouraging and helping member states to preserve and revitalize languages under threat, should the communities concerned so wish.

According to the preliminary proposals from the Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages, five types of measures can contribute to this goal: training teachers and produce teaching materials; establish local language research centres; implement linguistic policies promoting diversity; develop language courses; and improve the living conditions of communities speaking endangered languages.

The language of Jesus is dying out

(http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/03/24/055115.php)

March 24, 2003
James Russell

The modern world is encroaching upon the village at a rapid pace, and no longer can Maalula be considered remote. A paved highway whisks commuters to Damascus in 45 minutes. Satellite dishes beam programs from around the world - none of them in Aramaic - into local living rooms. Job opportunities are scarce, and the younger generation is moving away, to the cities and overseas, taking with them what may turn out to be the last memories of this ancient language.

Within a few decades at most, Maalulans believe, Aramaic will have passed into history.

"In 10 or 20 years, it will be dead. The children don't speak it anymore, and all the young people are moving to Damascus," said Maria Hadi, 30, who grew up speaking Aramaic but moved to the city to attend high school and has forgotten the language of her childhood

Maalula is the last place where they still speak Aramaic as that Christ fellow would've spoken it two thousand years ago, and only about two thousand people still speak it fluently.

In Jesus movie, some see hope for a dying tongue

Gibson's film features dialogue in Aramaic, which few still speak

(http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/02/22/jesus.language.ap/)

Sunday, February 22, 2004 Posted: 6:21 PM EST (2321 GMT)

JERUSALEM (AP) -- An ancient, dying language gets a new life on American movie screens this week.

Some linguists, who fear the language spoken by Jesus could vanish within a few decades, hope for a boost from Mel Gibson's new film, "The Passion of the Christ," opening Wednesday in U.S. theaters. The dialogue is entirely in Aramaic and Latin.

Among the few places in the world where Aramaic is still familiar is a small Syrian Orthodox church in Jerusalem, though even here it is little more than an echo these days.

A church elder laments that he has few people to speak to in Aramaic besides the monks. Parts of the liturgy have to be said in Arabic. A nun who sings the Lord's Prayer says the words are just about the only ones she can recite in Aramaic.

Aramaic was once the lingua franca of the Middle East and parts of Asia. Today, the Syrian Orthodox community in Jerusalem offers Aramaic summer school classes, but there is little interest and fewer than half the 600 members speak the language.

"Maybe the new generation will wake up and continue," said Sami Barsoum, 69, a community leader and fluent Aramaic speaker.

Just a half-million people around the world, mostly Christians, still speak Aramaic at home.

"Undoubtedly, Aramaic is in danger of disappearing," said Moshe Bar-Asher, president of the Academy of the Hebrew Language in Jerusalem.

Aramaic is one of the few languages that has been spoken continuously for thousands of years. It first appeared in written records around the 10th century B.C., though it was likely spoken earlier.

It is a Semitic language and has similarities with Hebrew and Arabic. Carpenter, for instance, is "nagouro" in Aramaic, "nagar" in Hebrew and "najar" in Arabic.

Aramaic reached its widest influence when it was adopted by the Persian empire about 500 B.C. Written in a 22-letter alphabet -- similar in form to Hebrew -- it was a relatively simple language, and scribes and intellectuals helped spread it in a largely illiterate world, Bar-Asher said.

Aramaic texts have turned up as far apart as India and Egypt. Jews returning from exile in Babylon around 500 B.C. helped spread the language to the eastern Mediterranean, where it largely supplanted Hebrew.

Scholars believe Jesus might have known Hebrew -- which by that time was reserved mainly for use in synagogues and by upper classes -- and some Greek, but Aramaic was the language of his native Galilee.

The New Testament records Jesus' last words on the cross in Aramaic: "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" The Gospel of Mark, most likely written in Greek, adds, "... which means, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' "

Michael Sokoloff, a professor of Hebrew and Semitic languages at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, Israel, said it is believed that parts of the Gospels were originally written in Aramaic, but only Greek writings have been found.

Aramaic was largely replaced by Arabic during the Islamic conquest of the 7th century.

Today, a few people speak it in parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, India, Europe, Australia and some U.S. cities, including Chicago, Illinois.

In Syria, once the core of indigenous Christian Aramaic speakers, the language is still heard among 10,000 people in three villages perched on cliff sides in the Qalamoun Mountains north of Damascus.

But it is dwindling as the older generation dies, said George Rizkallah, a 63-year-old retired Syrian teacher. Rizkallah has appealed to the Syrian government and international organizations to help save the language.

A few thousand Israelis who emigrated from other Middle East countries still speak Aramaic, but few pass it on to their children.

However, the Talmud and other Jewish religious texts are written in Aramaic. It appears in the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, and in Israeli marriage and divorce contracts.

Sokoloff, the Semitic languages professor, is helping write an Aramaic dictionary.

Gibson's film, depicting Christ's final hours, uses subtitles. The script was translated into first-century Aramaic for the Jewish characters and "street Latin" for the Roman characters by the Rev. William Fulco, director of ancient Mediterranean studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California.

Fears that Aramaic language disappearing

(http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2004/s1058616.htm)

AM Archive - Thursday, 4 March , 2004  08:24:00

Reporter: Mark Willacy

TONY EASTLEY: Linguists are warning that one of the world's oldest languages is in danger of dying out. Believed to be about 2,500 years old, Aramaic was the language spoken by Jesus.

Middle East Correspondent Mark Willacy reports from Jerusalem.

(Sound of prayers in Aramaic)

MARK WILLACY: In the Syrian Orthodox church of Saint Mark's in Jerusalem's Old City, a handful of worshippers sing and pray in Aramaic.

Sami Barsoum is the leader of the community in Jerusalem, and a proud Aramaic speaker.

SAMI BARSOUM: My mother, my father they speak the language at home, but in the street, no. So with my community, with my priest or my bishop they speak the language.

MARK WILLACY: Aramaic is believed to have appeared more than 25 centuries ago in Mesopotamia or what's known now as Iraq. It quickly spread, and Aramaic texts have been found as far afield as Egypt and India.

And the President of Jerusalem's Academy of Hebrew Language, Moshe Bar-Asher, says Aramaic was the tongue of Jesus Christ and his disciples.

MOSHE BAR-ASHER: We some have quotations in the gospels. If Jesus say "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" – "My God, my God, why you leave me?" And it's written in Aramaic.

MARK WILLACY: Aramaic was largely replaced by Arabic during the Islamic conquest of the Middle East 14 centuries ago. Very few communities in the Middle East still speak the language on the streets. Three villages in Syria still do.

But linguist Moshe Bar-Asher fears that Aramaic is slowly disappearing.

MOSHE BAR-ASHER: In the Middle East probably the death of Aramaic, it's not a far away phenomenon.

(Sound of prayers in Aramaic)

MARK WILLACY: In his small tailor shop in Jerusalem's Old City Sami Barsoum recites the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic.

SAMI BARSOUM: This is what Jesus himself, he prayed this.

MARK WILLACY: Despite the fact that Aramaic is being overtaken by Hebrew and Arabic, Sami Barsoum believes the Aramaic language will survive.

SAMI BARSOUM: How come, how I speak the language if it's dying? They used to slate from Greek to Aramaic and to Arabic. So it will not die.

TONY EASTLEY: Jerusalem tailor, Sami Barsoum, with Mark Willacy.

Syria launches program to save Aramaic language

(http://www.abc.net.au/correspondents/content/2004/s1226140.htm)

Correspondents Report - Sunday, 24 October , 2004 

Reporter: Mark Willacy

HAMISH ROBERTSON: In Syria, the government has launched a program to save one of the world's oldest and most important languages from dying out.

Aramaic is believed to have been first spoken in ancient Mesopotamia about 3000 years ago. And scholars say it was the language spoken by Jesus Christ. But it's now only spoken in three villages in central Syria and even these communities need help to pass it on to their children.

Our Middle East correspondent Mark Willacy compiled this report in the village of Ma'aloula in central Syria.

(Sound of Church bells)

MARK WILLACY: Sunday morning in the Qalamoun mountains north of Damascus, and church bells summon the Christian community to mass. In the hilltop village of Ma'aloula the service is performed in a mix of Arabic and Aramaic.

In the church of Saint Serge, Father Toufic Eid recites the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic.

TOUFIC EID: In fact Aramaic was the language of all this area here and Jesus spoke in Aramaic. And this language remained in these villages, Ma'aloula, Jebadin (phonetic) and Sarqa (phonetic).

MARK WILLACY: Outside the church Joseph Sharbit and his friend Mike Khoury are discussing the looming fig harvest in Aramaic. I ask Joseph about the future for this ancient language.

"I am very much afraid this language will disappear," he says. "But at least now there is a new institute here in Ma'aloula to teach it to our children so we can keep it alive," he tells me.

His friend Mike Khoury explains that Aramaic is the oldest language in the Middle East.

"It existed in Damascus 1,000 years before Jesus Christ," he says in Aramaic. "It's now only spoken in three villages, but the new government institute is trying to keep it going. We're very proud of it," he says.

About ten per cent of Syria's population is Christian, and for them Aramaic is a direct link to Jesus Christ.

"The language is over 3,000 years old," says Joseph Sharbit. "And in this village we are making an effort to pass it on to the next generation," he says.

This is Mark Willacy in Ma'aloula village, central Syria, for Correspondents Report.

HAMISH ROBERTSON: An extraordinary linguistic survival into the 21st century.

Gibson Had a Passion for Aramaic

(http://www.family.org/cforum/feature/a0033464.cfm)

August 27, 2004

Filmmaker's quest for authenticity led to the onscreen revival of a long-dead language.

One of Mel Gibson's earliest decisions as director of "The Passion of the Christ" was to have the Jesus of his film speak the same language that the historical Jesus spoke 2,000 years ago. That language is Aramaic, an ancient Semitic tongue closely related to Hebrew that today is considered by some linguists to be a "dead language," still used in dialects by only a small number of people in remote parts of the Middle East.

Once, however, Aramaic was the lingua franca of its time, the language of education and trade spoken the world over, rather like English is today. By the 8th century B.C., the Aramaic tongue was widely in use from Egypt to Asia Major to Pakistan and was the main language of the great empires of Assyria, Babylon and later the Chaldean Empire and the Imperial government of Mesopotamia. The language also spread to Palestine, supplanting Hebrew as the main tongue some time between 721 and 500 B.C. Much of Jewish law was formed, debated and transmitted in Aramaic, and it was the language that formed the basis of the Talmud.

Jesus would have spoken and written what is now known as Western Aramaic, which was the dialect of the Jews during his lifetime. After his death, early Christians wrote portions of Scripture in Aramaic, spreading the stories of Jesus' life and messages in that language across many lands.

As the historical language of expressing religious ideas, Aramaic is a common thread that ties together both Judaism and Christianity. Professor Franz Rosenthal wrote in the "Journal of Near Eastern Studies": "In my view, the history of Aramaic represents the purest triumph of the human spirit as embodied in language (which is the mind's most direct form of physical expression) . . . (It was) powerfully active in the promulgation of spiritual matters." For Gibson, too, there was something ineffably powerful about hearing Christ's words spoken in their original language.

But to bring Aramaic to life on the modern motion picture screen was going to be an enormous challenge. After all, how do you create a film in a lost 1st century tongue in the middle of the 21st century?

Gibson sought the help of Father William Fulco, chair of Mediterranean Studies at Loyal Marymount University and one the world's foremost experts on the Aramaic language and classical Semitic cultures. Fulco translated the script for "The Passion of the Christ" entirely into 1st Century Aramaic for the Jewish characters and "street Latin" for the Roman characters, drawing on his extensive linguistic and cultural knowledge. After translating the script, Fulco served as an on-set dialogue coach and remained "on call" to the production, providing last-minute translations and consultations.

To further authenticate the language, Gibson also consulted native speakers of Aramaic dialects to get a sense of how the language sounds to the ear. The beauty of hearing this dying language spoken aloud, he recalls, was very moving.

Ultimately, the entire international cast of "The Passion of the Christ" had to learn portions of Aramaic — most doing so phonetically — becoming perhaps one of the largest groups of artists ever to take on an ancient tongue en masse. For Gibson, the film's "foreign language" had another benefit: learning Aramaic became a uniting factor among a cast made up of many languages, cultures and backgrounds.

"To bring a cast from all over the world to one place and have them all learn this one language gave them a sense of common ground, of what they share and of connections that transcend language," he says.

It also compelled the cast to look more deeply into their physical and emotional resources above and beyond the use of words.

"Speaking in Aramaic required something different from the actors," observes Gibson, "because they had to compensate for the usual clarity of their own native language. It brought out a different level of performance. In a sense, it became good old-fashioned filmmaking because we were so committed to telling the story with pure imagery and expressiveness as much as anything else".

Aramaic, The Language Jesus Spoke

(http://1stholistic.com/Prayer/A2004/hol_aramaic-the-language.htm)

By Associated Press

Source: Haaretz Daily: 23/02/2004; Submitted by: Shaji Varghese, New Jersey

At a small Jerusalem church, Aramaic, the ancient language that Jesus spoke, is little more than an echo these days. An elder from the Syrian Orthodox congregation laments that he's got few people to speak to in Aramaic besides the monks. Parts of the liturgy have to be done in Arabic. And a nun who sings the Lord's Prayer says the words are just about the only ones she's able to recite in Aramaic.

Some say spoken Aramaic may vanish in just a few decades.
Linguists hope for a boost from Mel Gibson's new film "The Passion of the Christ," performed entirely in Aramaic and Latin.

Just a half million people, most of them Christians living in pockets of the Middle East, Europe and the United States, still converse at home in Aramaic, once the lingua franca of the Middle East and parts of Asia.

"Undoubtedly, Aramaic is in danger of disappearing," said Moshe Bar-Asher, president of the Academy of Hebrew Language in Jerusalem.

Aramaic is one of the few languages that has been spoken continuously for thousands of years. It first appeared in written records around the 10th century B.C. though it was likely already being spoken earlier.

Aramaic is a Semitic language and has similarities with Hebrew and Arabic. Water is "moyeh" in Aramaic, "maim" in Hebrew and "miye" in Arabic. Carpenter is "nagouro" in Aramaic, "nagar" in Hebrew and "najar" in Arabic.

The most popular theory on its origin says the language was first spoken by nomads called Arameans, who migrated from the barren Arabian peninsula to the lush farmlands of Mesopotamia and finally settled around Damascus, modern Syria's capital, in the 13th century B.C.

Aramaic became a common language for much of the Middle East and parts of Asia, reaching its widest influence when it was adopted by the Persian empire around 500 B.C. It was a relatively simple language, with just 22 letters, and a community of scribes and intellectuals helped spread it in a largely illiterate world, said Bar-Asher.

Texts in Aramaic have been found in places as distant from each other as in India and Egypt. Jews returning from exile in Babylon around 500 B.C. helped spread the language to the eastern Mediterranean, where it largely supplanted Hebrew.

Scholars think Jesus might have known Hebrew - which by that time was reserved mainly for use in synagogues and spoken by upper classes - and some Greek, but Aramaic was the language of his native Galilee.

The New Testament records Jesus' last words on the cross in Aramaic: "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" St. Mark, most likely writing in Greek, adds, "... which means, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"' (Mark 15:34).

Michael Sokoloff, a professor of Hebrew and Semitic languages at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, said it is believed that parts of the Gospels were originally written in Aramaic, but that only Greek writings have ever been found.

Aramaic was largely replaced by Arabic during the Arab and Islamic conquest of the 7th century.

Today, Aramaic is spoken at home by about 500,000 people - mainly Syrian Orthodox and other Christians - in parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, India, Europe, Australia and a few cities in the United States, including Chicago.

In Syria, once the core of indigenous Christian Aramaic speakers, the language is still heard in three villages perched on cliff sides north of Damascus in the Qalamoun Mountains.

About 10,000 people in those villages speak the language, said George Rizkallah, a 63-year-old retired Syrian teacher. But the numbers are dwindling fast. Church services are in Arabic, elderly Aramaic speakers are dying and young people are moving away in search of jobs.

Rizkallah has appealed to the Syrian government and international organizations to help preserve and spread the language.

A few thousand Israelis who immigrated from other parts of the Middle East still speak Aramaic, but are largely not passing it on to their children. Most Jews who learn the language study it only to read the Talmud, a book of Jewish law, and other religious texts written in Aramaic.

Part of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, is recited in Aramaic, and marriage and divorce contracts in Israel are until today often written in the language.

Sokoloff, the professor of Semitic languages, is helping write a comprehensive Aramaic dictionary. He said it will take years because of the large amounts of literature to comb through. He noted that a similar project for another ancient language, Akkadian, has been ongoing since the 1920s.

Source: Haaretz Daily: 23/02/2004; Submitted by: Shaji Varghese, New Jersey