Modern Aramaic-English/English-Modern Aramaic Dictionary & Phrasebook
Assyrian/Syriac
About the book
Modern Aramaic, also called Assyrian, is still a living language, and Nicholas Awde's dictionary and phrasebook is built for using it. Spoken today by Assyrian communities in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, and by emigres in Europe, Australia and the US, the language is recognised worldwide as the one used by Christ and the Apostles. It has several dialects, chief among them Swadaya in the east and Turoyo in the west. The book covers both dialects, showing where they differ, and presents them in a romanised form that is easy to read, so that learners can make themselves understood.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb endorsed it as a practical way for Levantines to learn their ancestral language as it is actually spoken, without first mastering grammar and the hard-to-read Syriac scripts.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Flaneur)
There is no way we Levantines can learn the language of our ancestors in an organic way except via nerds insisting on 1) grammar, 2) writing in one of the unwieldy Syriac scripts that one cannot even read on a computer screen without dowloading strange fonts. But Aramaic is still spoken, let us take advantage of it, and figure out how to say "I want to eat mjaddara" rather than memorize poetry by some dead author. Aramaic isn't a dead language and it is the shame Levantines study Arabic instead of our own heritage.
This book in the Latin alphabet makes both Swadaya and Turoyo alive and easy to read, with all manner of real-world expressions. One can use it to supplement scholarly studies, or just to figure out how modern people speak our ancient language. There are Arabic influences, but the distance between the spoken language and, say, Bar Hebraeus is quite narrow.
I would suggest the authors expand the dictionary. It would be the only one in the latin script.
Most excellent, except for very few and small mistakes. "Debo" in Turoyo is not wolf, but bear.
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