Turoyo language

Turoyo (), also referred to as Surayt (), or modern Suryoyo (), is a Central Neo-Aramaic language traditionally spoken by the Syriac Christian community in the Tur Abdin region located in southeastern Turkey and in northeastern Syria. Turoyo speakers are mostly adherents of the Syriac Orthodox Church. Originally spoken and exclusive to Tur Abdin, it is now majority spoken in the diaspora. It is classified as a vulnerable language. Most speakers use the Classical Syriac language for literature and worship. Its closest relatives are Mlaḥsô and western varieties of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic like Suret. Turoyo is not mutually intelligible with Western Neo-Aramaic, having been separated for over a thousand years.

Etymology

Term comes from the word ', meaning 'mountain', thus designating a specific Neo-Aramaic language of the mountain region of Tur Abdin in southeastern part of modern Turkey (hence Turabdinian Aramaic). Other, more general names for the language are ' or '.

The term Surayt is commonly used by its speakers, as a general designation for their language, modern or historical. It is also used by the recent EU funded programme to revitalize the language, in preference to ', since Surayt is a historical name for the language used by its speakers, while Turoyo is a more academic name for the language used to distinguish it from other Neo-Aramaic languages, and Classical Syriac. However, especially in the diaspora, the language is frequently called Surayt, Suryoyo (or Surayt, Sŭryoyo or Süryoyo depending on dialect), meaning "Syriac" in general. Since it has developed as one of western variants of the Syriac language, Turoyo is sometimes also referred to as Western Neo-Syriac.

History

Turoyo has evolved from the Eastern Aramaic colloquial varieties that have been spoken in Tur Abdin and the surrounding plain for more than a thousand years since the initial introduction of Aramaic to the region. However, it has also been influenced by Classical Syriac, which itself was the variety of the Eastern Middle Aramaic spoken farther west, in the city of Edessa, today known as Urfa. Due to the proximity of Tur Abdin to Edessa, and the closeness of their parent languages, meant that Turoyo bears a greater similarity to Classical Syriac than do Northeastern Neo-Aramaic varieties.

The homeland of Turoyo is the Tur Abdin region in southeastern Turkey. This region is a traditional stronghold of Syriac Orthodox Christians. The Turoyo-speaking population prior to the Sayfo largely adhered to the Syriac Orthodox Church. In 1970, it was estimated that there were 20,000 Turoyo-speakers still living in the area, however, they gradually migrated to Western Europe and elsewhere in the world. The Turoyo-speaking diaspora is now estimated at . In the diaspora communities, Turoyo is usually a second language which is supplemented by more mainstream languages. The language is considered endangered by UNESCO, but efforts are still made by Turoyo-speaking communities to sustain the language through use in homelife, school programs to teach Turoyo on the weekends, and summer day camps.

Until recently, Turoyo was a spoken vernacular and was never written down: Kthobonoyo (Classical Syriac) was the written language. In the 1880s, various attempts were made, with the encouragement of western missionaries, to write Turoyo in the Syriac alphabet, in the Serto and in Estrangelo script used for West-Syriac Kthobhonoyo. One of the first comprehensive studies of the language was published in 1881, by orientalists Eugen Prym and Albert Socin, who classified it as a Neo-Aramaic dialect.

However, with upheaval in their homeland through the twentieth century, many Turoyo speakers have emigrated around the world (particularly to Syria, Lebanon, Sweden and Germany). The Swedish government's education policy, that every child be educated in his or her first language, led to the commissioning of teaching materials in Turoyo. Yusuf Ishaq thus developed an alphabet for Turoyo based on the Latin script. Silas Üzel also created a separate Latin alphabet for Turoyo in Germany.

A series of reading books and workbooks that introduce Ishaq's alphabet are called , or "Come, Let's Read!" This project has also produced a Swedish-Turoyo dictionary of 4500 entries: the Svensk-turabdinskt Lexikon: Leksiqon Swedoyo-Suryoyo. Another old teacher, writer and translator of Turoyo is Yuhanun Üzel (1934-2023) who in 2009 finished the translation of the Peshitta Bible in Turoyo, with Benjamin Bar Shabo and Yakup Bilgic, in Serto (West-Syriac) and Latin script, a foundation for the "Aramaic-Syriac language". A team of AI researchers completed the first translation model for Turoyo in 2023.

Dialects

Turoyo has borrowed some words from Arabic, Kurdish, Armenian, and Ottoman Turkish. The main dialect of Turoyo is that of Midyat (Mëḏyoyo), in the east of Turkey's Mardin Province. Every village have distinctive dialects (Midwoyo, Kfarzoyo, `Iwarnoyo, Nihloyo, and Izloyo, respectively). All Turoyo dialects are mutually intelligible with each other. There is a dialectal split between the town of Midyat and the villages, with only slight differences between the individual villages. A closely related language or dialect, Mlaḥsô, spoken in two villages in Diyarbakır, is now deemed extinct.

Alphabet

Turoyo is written both in Latin and Syriac (Serto) characters. The orthography below was the outcome of the International Surayt Conference held at the University of Cambridge (27–30 August 2015).

{|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

|+ Consonants

!scope="row"| Latin letter

| '

| B b

| V v

| G g

| Ġ ġ

| J j

| D d

| Ḏ ḏ

| H h

| W w

| Z z

| Ž ž

| Ḥ ḥ

| Ṭ ṭ

| Ḍ ḍ

| Y y

!scope="row"| Syriac letter

|style="font-size:150%"|

!scope="row"| Pronunciation

| [], ∅

| []

|colspan="17" style="background:#FFF;border-left:hidden;border-right:hidden;padding:2px"|

!scope="row"| Latin letter

| K k

| X x

| L l

| M m

| N n

| S s

| C c

| P p

| F f

| Ṣ ṣ

| Q q

| R r

| Š š

| Č č

| T t

| Ṯ ṯ

!scope="row"| Syriac letter

|style="font-size:150%"|

!scope="row"| Pronunciation

| []

{|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

|+ Vowels

!scope="row"|Latin letter

| A a

| Ä ä

| E e

| Ë ë

| O o

|rowspan="3" style="background:#FFF;border-top:hidden;border-bottom:hidden;padding:2px"|

| Y/I y/i

| W/U w/u

!scope="row"| Syriac vowel mark <br />(or mater lectionis)

|style="font-size:150%"|

!scope="row"|Pronunciation

| []

| []/[]

Attempts to write down Turoyo have begun since the 16th century, with Jewish Neo-Aramaic adaptions and translations of Biblical texts, commentaries, as well as hagiographic stories, books, and folktales in Christian dialects. The East Syriac Bishop Mar Yohannan working with American missionary Rev. Justin Perkins also tried to write the vernacular version of religious texts, culminating in the production of school-cards in 1836.

In 1970s Germany, members of the Aramean evangelical movement (Aramäische Freie Christengemeinde) used Turoyo to write short texts and songs. The Syriac evangelical movement has also published over 300 Turoyo hymns in a compedium named Kole Ruhonoye in 2012, as well as translating the four gospels with Mark and John being published so far.