Dialects

By the modern era, Jews had preserved Aramaic in many unique forms. In the western part of the Kurdistan region, Jews from Zakho and Amedi spoke forms of Jewish Neo-Aramaic like Lishana Deni, which is quite similar to the dialect of their Christian neighbors. Lishanid Noshan, another dialect spoken around the city of Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, displays phonetic changes unusual in the western dialects. Speakers of these dialects were largely displaced after World War II, along with the vast majority of Jews throughout Iraq in the 20th century.

In the Northeast of the Jewish Neo-Aramaic speaking region, Jews from Urmia and its surrounding areas spoke a version of the language more influenced by the Turkish and Azeri of their Iranian Azerbaijan surroundings than by the Kurdish influences to the west and south. This dialect, known as Lishan Didan (“our language”), has been recorded extensively in the music of Nissan Aviv, including in his Lishan Didan version of Yerushalayim Shel Zahav. The dialect of Urmia, whose Jews call themselves “Nash Didan” (“our people”), is quite different from the Christian Neo-Aramaic of Urmia and has more influence from Turkic languages than other dialects. Many speakers were displaced from southeastern Turkey around World War I, and many more left during and after the Iranian Revolution.

Further south and east, in Iranian Kurdistan, Jews from Sanandaj, Bijar, Saqqez, Kerend, and the surrounding areas speak a dialect known as Hulaulá (“Jewish”) or Lishana Noshan (“our language”). This dialect is particularly affected by phonetic changes and is less intelligible with western Jewish dialects and quite unintelligible with all Christian dialects. The Jewish dialect with the most living speakers, due in large part to the later emigration of communities in Iran, Hulaulá has deep influences from the literary Gorani dialect of Kurdish, and from the local dialect of Sorani Kurdish. During the 20th century, due to language policies and the integration of these Jews into Tehran and into other countries, Hulaulá was also significantly influenced by Persian, especially Jewish Persian. This can be seen in the loss of many verbs that exist in other dialects, replaced in Hulaulá with Indo-Iranian compound verbs that reflect their Persian and Kurdish equivalents, but with Aramaic vocabularies transposed on them. Other Persian and Kurdish influences on some dialects of Jewish Neo-Aramaic include the loss of gendered pronouns.

Besides this mixed vocabulary and grammar, Hulaulá displays unique phonetic changes that render it difficult or incomprehensible to speakers of other Aramaic dialects. Hulaulá represents the easternmost frontier of native Semitic-speaking Jews, beyond which local populations spoke Judeo-Median and Persian dialects.

Phonetically, Jewish varieties of Neo-Aramaic have unusual changes. For example, while the th/dh/t/d sounds are often expressed with a “z” or “s” sound in western dialects, eastern dialects express them as an “L” sound. For example, the Aramaic word for “hand”, ida, remains ida in most western dialects and in Lishan Didan, but is iza in Zakho and ila in Erbil and in Hulaulá. The word for house, beta, is besa in Zakho, and in many Christian dialects, but becomes bela in Lishan Didan, Lishanid Noshan, and Hulaulá.