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Christians of Iraq
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Therefore Jews call their script 'ketuv Ashuri'; Assyrian script Gabriel Afram
Sweden
Translated from Swedish by Hikmet EgoThe Assyrian language is one of the oldest among the Semitic languages. On the plains of esopotamia, where it once was born at the shores of the Tigris and the Euphrates, the premier civilization of the world arose. The art of writing that was invented here founded the basis of many other alphabets in the world.
The Assyrian language has different denominations: Syrian, Syriac, Chaldean, Aramaic and in Sweden also the corrupted name "Syrianska", consequently different names for one single language. Nameswhich create confusion internally and outside of our people. Personally I choose to call the language Assyrian, based on the following reasons. The denomination Aramaic is widely used by theologians and clergy, although it is, as I see it, based on illogical conclusions.
To begin with, every nation is usually proud of its own language and never accepts to forgo its national identity, if anything, the other way round. The mighty nations have always forced their language upon the weaker ones. The Arabic language is such an example. Although Arabic belongs to the Semitic family of languages, the Arabs did not accept Assyrian which dominated the region. Another example is Russian, which pushed away the domestic languages in the former Soviet Union. The same thing happened with the languages of the indigenous peoples of North and South America and Australia. Many other similar examples could be presented here.
Why the Assyrians would have acted unlike other nations is hard for me to understand. Therefore I advocate that the name Syrian cannot be synonymous to, nor be a branch of Aramaic, as some claim. Our language has for centuries been called Syrian (Assyrian) and not Aramaic. The name Syrian has neither in speech nor in writing any resemblance with the name Aramaic.
The Chaldean bishop Thoma Audo wrote in his foreword to Simto d-le?ono suryoyo (Mosul 1896) on page 9 the following:"The names suroyo and suryoyo are according to famous teachers, among them the well-known French author Renan, a construction of the Greeks." To facilitate the pronunciation of the word a?uroyo or a?uroyo the Greeks changed the flat, dental, fricative consonant ? in a?uroyo to s and the flat palato-fricative alveolar consonant ? in a?uroyo also to the above mentioned consonant, since the latter was missing in the Greek alphabet. For simplicity and to avoid Greek negation, the initial a, which would have meant "not Assyrian", was removed and hence the name Syria and Syrian was created.
I would like to draw the reader's attention to the quotation above. After the Assyrian Association of Sweden printed and released the second edition of Audo's dictionary, bishop Isa Cicek released an own version of the dictionary in the Netherlands. By arbitrarily removing the quotation above, he committed a crime against the copyright.
The Jews, who are closely related to the Assyrians both ethnically and linguistically with regard to the origins of Abraham, call their script "Assyrian script".
In his book "Hebrew Grammar", edited and published by E. Rödiger, translated to Swedish by A. F. Wimmercranz and Arvid Sundberg and published in Uppsala 1849, the author Wilhelm Gesenius wrote the following on page 15 in the first chapter about letters and their vocal significance: "The letter characters currently used by the Hebrews, with which the Old Testament's manuscripts are written, usually called Quadratic script, also Assyrian script, are not the original ones." If the Jews already in old times well knew about the Aramaic language but still call their script Assyrian and not Aramaic, there is every reason to question the term"Aramaic script" for the Assyrian script. The term used by the Jews refutes all statements about the extinction of the Assyrian script.
Secondly, the history books do not indicate any political, military or scientific Aramaic greatness. How this linguistic conquest could take place without the necessary means of power for such a development seems incomprehensible to me. Therefore I advocate that the term "Syrian" does not have anything to do with the term Aramaic.
The Jews, who are the descendants of Abraham, who originally came to Palestine from Ur of the "Chaldeans", situated in today's Iraq, via Harran in today's Turkey, or more accurately Jabal Horan, which lies between Israel and Damascus, thus the heartland of the Arameans, do not call their script Chaldean nor Aramaic. They call it Assyrian.
The Hebrew-Aramaic and Assyrian alphabets consist of the same number of consonants and share also the same names. The letter characters originate in an ancient pictography. According to this ancient pictography the names of the letters indicate different Semitic nouns, e.g. the letter "Beth" means "house" and has once depicted a house etc. (See introduction course on page 18 of Swedish - Assyrian Dictionary, under heading "Names of the Letters"). This ancient pictography is an Assyrian invention and not an Aramaic one, therefore the Jews call their script"Assyrian".
The truth is that the consonants t, which is plosive, meaning a hard pronunciation, and it's soft counterpart, the fricative ?, or s and ?, are dialectic variations and often replace each other in Semitic languages, e.g. the adjective O?manoyo in Assyrian becomes Ottoman or Osmansk in Swedish. Or the figure three is tlo?o in Assyrian and ?ala? in Arabic, while the Jews call the same figure ?alo?. The above example demonstrates clearly how the consonants change form and sound differently. Therefore I claim that the term Syrian, which is a translation of the term Suryoyo, is an abbreviation of Assyrian and nothing else.
The conclusion is: If the Jews, whether rightly or wrongly, call their script "Assyrian", then more than anyone else the Assyrians have the right to call their script or language Assyrian.
What concerns the denomination"Chaldean", the term was used to designate astrologers in ancient Babylon. Indications for this are found in the Old Testament, Audo's dictionary and many encyclopedias, including Focus, fourth revised edition (1979).
The term is thus not the denomination of a nation, as it is claimed by some people today, but a product and a result of ecclesiastical conflicts.
Western Assyrian text of the article
Originally published as preface to the famous Assyrian-Swedish dictionary by Malfono Gabriel Afram.
© EasternStar News Agency