Ebook: The Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Bohtan

Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009 - 189 pp.
ISBN: 978-1-60724-133-1In the early nineteenth century, Western scholars became aware of the existence of a population of Aramaic speakers living in the mountains of South-East Anatolia and the neighboring plains of Urmia and Mosul. It quickly became clear that the dialects spoken by this population, made up mostly of Christians, with a significant number of Jews as well, were very diverse. Through much of their range, the speakers of Aramaic were a minority, their villages sprinkled among those of speakers of other languages: Kurdish in the mountains, Azeri Turkish around Urmia, and Arabic in the plain of Mosul.
All of these languages, but especially Kurdish, have had influence on the modern dialects of Aramaic spoken in this area, which are now referred to as North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic, commonly abbreviated to NENA.