Languages of Syria
Languages of Syria | |
---|---|
Syrian Sign Language | |
Keyboard layout |
Arabic is the official language of Syria and is the most widely spoken language in the country.[1][2] Several modern Arabic dialects are used in everyday life, most notably Levantine in the west and Mesopotamian
According to The Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, in addition to Arabic, the following languages are spoken in the country, in order of the number of speakers:
Historically, Aramaic was the lingua franca of the region before the advent of Arabic and is still spoken among Assyrians, and Classical Syriac is still used as the liturgical language of various Syriac Christian denominations. Most remarkably, Western Neo-Aramaic is still spoken in the village of Maaloula as well as two neighboring villages, 56 kilometres (35 mi) northeast of Damascus.
Arabic
Lebanese is similar especially to the southern Syrian dialects, though it has more influence from Palestinian Arabic.
Due to Syria's long history of multiculturalism and foreign imperialism, Syrian Arabic exhibits a vocabulary stratum that includes word borrowings from Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian, Syriac, English, French and Persian.
Other forms of Arabic natively spoken in Syria include:
- the dialect spoken in the Jabal al-Druze (Jabal al-Arab) mountains;
- the eastern dialect group (Al-Raqqah, and Deir ez-Zor), part of Mesopotamian Arabic(rarely called "North Syrian Arabic");
- Shawi Arabic, spoken by sheep-rearing Bedouin;[9]
- Najdi Arabic, spoken by the Rwala tribe.[10]
Non-indigenous dialects of Arabic, most notably those of Iraq and Palestine, are frequently used within their respective refugee diasporas, especially in Damascus.
Kurdish
Kurdish (specifically Kurmanji) is the second most spoken language in Syria.[1] It is spoken particularly in the northeast and northwest of the country within the Kurdish minority.[2]
Turkish
Moreover, Syrian Arabic dialects have borrowed many loanwords from Turkish, particularly during Ottoman rule.[1]
Aramaic
Four dialects of
Circassian
Circassian languages are spoken in some villages south of Aleppo, as well as in the Homs area and on the Golan Heights.[1] In particular, Kabardian is spoken by the Circassian minority.[2]
Chechen
The Chechen language is spoken by the Chechen minority in two villages on the Khabur River.[2]
Armenian
The
Greek
There is also a small number of Greek speakers in Syria. The Greek language is spoken in Al-Hamidiyah by Cretan Muslims.[1] Their demand to be allowed to teach Greek in their schools has been rejected by the State with the argument that they are Muslims.[1]
Foreign languages
English and French are also spoken by Syrian citizens, mostly in urban centers and among the educated.[2]
References
- ^ ISBN 978-90-04-14476-7
- ^ ISBN 1615303294
- OCLC 965157532.
- ISBN 978-91-8009-803-8.
- ^ "apc | ISO 639-3". iso639-3.sil.org. Retrieved 2023-09-29.
- ^ "Arabic, Levantine | Ethnologue Free". Ethnologue (Free All). Retrieved 2023-09-29.
- ^ Abu Kwaik, Kathrein; Saad, Motaz K.; Chatzikyriakidis, Stergios; Dobnik, Simon (2018). "Shami: A Corpus of Levantine Arabic Dialects". Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2018). LREC. Miyazaki: European Language Resources Association (ELRA). pp. 3645, 3647. Archived from the original on 12 July 2021. Retrieved 17 July 2021.
- S2CID 219568845.
- ^ Younes, Igor; Herin, Bruno (2016-01-01). "Šāwi Arabic". Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Online Edition.
- ^ O'Hara, J. (2022). The Arabic dialect of the Rwala tribe, based on the ethnographic records of Alois Musil (http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text thesis). University of Oxford.
{{cite thesis}}
: External link in
(help)|degree=
- ^ https://www.aymennjawad.org/2020/01/the-village-of-bakha-in-qalamoun-interview