Turoyo Neo-Aramaic in northern New Jersey

In: International journal of the sociology of language: IJSL, Volume 2016, Issue 237

Abstract

AbstractTuroyo, an endangered Neo-Aramaic language that originated in the area of Tur Abdin in southeastern Turkey and had not been written prior to this century, is spoken today by around 50,000 people scattered worldwide. Spurred on by persecution, Turoyo-speaking immigrants began to arrive in the US as early as the late 1890s. We focus our study on a northern New Jersey community in which Turoyo is spoken. This tight-knit community, whose religious and social center is the Mor Gabriel Syriac Orthodox Church, is made up of around 200 families. The community is working hard to pass the language on to their children through speaking Turoyo in the home and in church, and also through programs including a specially created Sunday school curriculum, a weekly Aramaic school, and a summer day camp. However, despite the community's best efforts, language shift is taking place. We use a sociolinguistic approach involving sociolinguistic methods and interviews to show that family, social networks, and religion influence who is most likely to be a proficient speaker of Turoyo in this community, but that identity is the one sociolinguistic variable that can best account for the variety of cases in which language shift is taking place.