Western Neo-Aramaic The Dialect of Ma‘lūla
Вернер Арнольд (Университет Heidelbderg) werner.arnold@ori.uni-heidelberg.de
Western Neo-Aramaic is spoken only in three villages in Syria near the Lebanese border in the Qalamūn mountains. The most famous village is Ma‘lūla. All other Neo-Aramaic languages belong to the Eastern Neo-Aramaic language group.
Western Neo-Aramaic has preserved the old verbal system which has been replaced in Eastern Aramaic by a new verbal system that developed mainly out of the old participles. The old imperfect is used to express the subjunctive in WNA yiḳṭul “he shall kill”.
Western Neo-Aramaic has some features in common with Turoyo. In both languages theold long vowel ā has shifted to ō.Both languages have preserved old ḥ and x and thephoneme p is replaced by f.
In other respect Western Neo-Aramaicis different from Ṭuroyo and from all other Eastern Neo-Aramaic languages. The old voiced plosive Begadkephat consonants b, g, and d arereplaced by the corresponding voiceless consonants. The fricative pronunciation of theBegadkephat consonants g, d, k, p and t was extended to word initial position.
