Modern Aramaic-English/English-Modern Aramaic Dictionary & Phrasebook: Assyrian/Syriac Paperback – Illustrated, June 1, 2007

As described in the title, the book is a combination dictionary and phrasebook which covers two contemporary spoken Aramaic dialects, the Turoyo dialect from the Tur-Abdin area of Turkey, and the Mesopotamian-Lake Urmia Swadaya ('colloquial') dialect originally based in Northern Iraq and adjacent areas of Iran. The two dialects seem to be markedly different from one another, but luckily some of the differences fall into regular patterns (for 'hello' Turoyo says "shlomo" and Swadaya says "shlama"). The authors do a good job of integrating the two dialects in the book.There is a readable, short, historical overview of the sometimes tragic experiences of the language's speakers, generally known as Assyrians or Chaldeans, and a helpful grammar summary that helps you make mores sense of the questions and answers you read in the phrasebook sections. The grammar summary would be more helpful if it had a table showing the full conjugations of half a dozen key verbs and a few sentences explaining the overall pattern (the grammar summary in the Lonely Planet Amharic book is a good example of what I think is ideal).The striking thing about the phrasebook sections are the number of phrases related to war: "Please show me the minefields" is one of the sentences that caught my attention. I suppose this is a sad commentary on the experiences of people in Iraqi Kurdistan in recent times. I wonder whether a major part of the book's intended audience is the military (I had assumed it would have been mainly the Assyrian-Chaldean ethnic community and some curious individuals interested in Semitic languages, like myself).I wish, in addition to an expanded grammar section, there was more use of the Eastern or "Nestorian" version of the Syriac script. The authors did present it in a short section, for which I'm grateful, but I would have liked some short texts in the script, as well (perhaps in the dictionary section), even just three of four examples of printed modern Aramaic. I suppose when the script is used the temptation arises to use the classical Syriac form of a word instead of the modern colloquial.All in all, a fascinating and valuable book. I hope a recorded version is next.

This small book is the best (and only) publication available for those who would like to acquire some spoken Aramaic without struggling through the process of learning the Syriac/Hebrew alphabet. It accomodates the needs of diverse learners because it covers simultaneously the two leading Aramaic modern dialects. It also dispenses with the need for profound grammar study and memorization since its focus is on practical and rapid verbal communication. The entire book is transliterated leaving the student only with the task of studying and memorizing the sentences and or/vocabulary he/she thinks will be needed most.This is not a book designed to make a person "fluent" in any of the Aramaic modern dialects, but it enables a diligent sutudent to function on the level of basic communcation; it also enables a person who likes to get deeper into modern Aramaic to have a good starting point. The price of this book is very reasonable and the authors are to be commended for the effort they made to allow persons access to this fascinating language.

EXCELLENT

This is a useful dictionary of two varieties of an important living Semitic language. It has lots of words, all written Romanized, so one does not need to learn any native alphabet to read them. But the 3 alphabets are presented too. One problem with the dictionary is the nouns do not have the gender shown, so that makes it harder to create new sentences. But the phrasebook section has plenty of sentences. There is also some cultural information, and especially a good section on the history of the Assyrians. They sure had some tragic centuries, persecuted by pagans, Zoroastrians, Catholics, then Muslims, in particular the genocides by Tamerlane, and then during WWI, I knew about the Armenian genocide but now I see the Ottomans massacred Assyrians too, almost a million. Though not all the info is reliable, the book claims king Abgar corresponded with Jesus himself, but modern scholars think Abgar's letter and Jesus's reply are fake, not from first century. Another error is the claim that Jews of Jesus's time spoke Aramaic, not Hebrew, but in reality a few still spoke Hebrew as their native language and learned Aramaic as a second language. But other info seems reliable from what I have found elsewhere.

I am really impressed with this and would recommend to all those who want to learn and keep the Aramaic dialect from dying.