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Jamie (K)
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 #48 (permalink) Fri Jan 20, 2006 13:56 pm What is your mother tongue? |
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Hello Jamie (K),
I wonder if you could tell us a bit more about Chaldean or Assyrian. How come you can speak this archaic language, which I'd have thought would have fallen into disuse? (I need an 'ashamed' Emoticon here, but couldn't find one) |
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Conchita
Language Coach
Joined: 26 Dec 2005
Posts: 2826
Location: Madrid, Spain
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| #49 (permalink) Sat Jan 28, 2006 6:34 am What is your mother tongue? |
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| Conchita wrote: |
Hello Jamie (K),
I wonder if you could tell us a bit more about Chaldean or Assyrian. How come you can speak this archaic language, which I'd have thought would have fallen into disuse? (I need an 'ashamed' Emoticon here, but couldn't find one) |
Chaldean and Assyrian are basically Neo-Aramaic. In other words, they're the descendants of the language Christ spoke. They're still spoken by Catholics and some Orthodox Christians in Iraq and Syria. Many, MANY of them have escaped from Iraq and have settled in various other countries, in the US particularly in Detroit and San Diego. (Practically every small grocery store in the Detroit metropolis of 4.5 million people is owned by Chaldeans.) Some of them also live in Spain, because one of my students has a sister who got married over there not long ago, and I had a Spanish student who'd come here with the Chaldean wife he met back home.
I know some words and sentences in this language because I taught one of those classes of sweet old ladies who come every day for years and never learn anything. (Most of them could not read in any language, and so we had to teach them completely from scratch.) Also, I date a Chaldean woman off and on (even though I'm not crazy about those cultures where the family is always in your face; I prefer my own culture, where people are cold to each other, get angry and don't talk for 20 years 
One of the interesting things is that I went with her family to see The Passion of the Christ. They understood the dialogue about as well as the modern-day Americans and the British understand Shakespeare, which means they got the drift of it but couldn't get every word. The movie was so real to her father that he kept yelling at the Romans from his seat.
But that Chaldean language is all over the place now, although it dies pretty quickly in the US, because most Chaldean immigrants here tend to lose their loyalty to their homeland (though not their culture) very quickly and become 10,000 percent loyal Americans. |
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Jamie (K)
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