The opening of the school indicates a more relaxed attitude by the regime, writes Ian Blackin Maaloula
ILYANA BARQIL wears skinny jeans, boots and a fur-lined jacket, handy for keeping out the cold in the Qalamoun mountains north of Damascus. She likes TV quiz shows and American films and enjoys swimming. But this thoroughly modern Syrian teenager is also learning Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus.
Ilyana (15) is part of a big effort to preserve and revive the world’s oldest living tongue. Last November she started classes at the newly established Aramaic Language Academy in the picturesque village of Maaloula, where the residents speak more or less the same language as Galileans did 2,000 years ago.
“My father speaks Aramaic but my mother doesn’t as she’s from Lebanon,” Ilyana says. “I want to be fluent. I don’t know too much about the Aramaic language but I do know it’s ancient.”
Aramaic is a Semitic tongue related to Hebrew and Arabic and was once the day-to-day language of parts of modern-day Syria and Israel. Christ’s lament on the cross – “Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani?” (my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?) – was uttered in Aramaic. The long decline of the language accelerated as the region opened up in the 1920s when the French colonial authorities built a road from Damascus to Aleppo. Television and the internet, and youngsters leaving to work, reduced the number of speakers.
Recognised by Unesco as a “definitely endangered” language, Aramaic is spoken by just 7,000 people in Maaloula, and about 8,000 in two nearby villages.
But things are looking up, particularly since the University of Damascus founded its language academy, with government help. The facility has modern premises, a bank of PCs, new textbooks, a teaching staff of six and 85 students at three levels.
“When I was at school over 30 years ago we were not allowed to speak Aramaic,” says Mukhail Bkheil, standing behind the counter in Abu George’s souvenir shop in Maaloula’s main square. “Now, thanks to President Assad we even have an institute teaching it.”
Syria being Syria, there are political sensitivities, not least because “Arabisation” was a key feature of government education policy after the Baath party came to power in the 1960s.
“In Syria there are a lot of minority groups – Circassians, Armenians, Kurds and Assyrians – so it’s a big decision to allow the teaching of other languages in government schools,” says Imad Reihan, a pillar of the Aramaic academy.
“But the government is interested in promoting the Aramaic language because it goes back so deep into Syria’s history.”
Reihan and colleagues were delighted recently when a Unesco team visited, and they are now hoping for funds to allow them to collate the vanishing words into proper dictionaries.
Improbably, Aramaic was given a boost by a Hollywood film - Mel Gibson's controversial Passion of the Christ, which was released in 2004 before the academy was set up.
Observers say the opening of the school indicates a more relaxed attitude by the regime. Considering the bitter enmity between Syria and Israel, which dispute sovereignty over the Golan Heights – declared an Israeli occupied territory by the UN – it is striking that Aramaic letters are so similar to the Hebrew of rabbinical texts – one reason, perhaps, why the only Aramaic sign in Maaloula is on the academy. “Otherwise people might think some buildings were Israeli settlements,” jokes one visitor from Damascus.
Linguists say Syria is doing well in fostering this heritage. “Aramaic is actually pretty healthy in Maaloula,” said Prof Geoffrey Kahn, who teaches Semitic philology at Cambridge University. “It’s the eastern Aramaic dialects in Turkey, Iraq and Iran that are really endangered.”
– (Guardian Service)