The Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Betanure, which has hitherto remained unattested, is among the rarest and most seriously endangered varieties of Aramaic spoken at the present time. One of the most archaizing Jewish Neo-Aramaic varieties and a member of the Lishana Deni dialect cluster of northernmost Iraq, the dialect is currently spoken in Israel by no more than three dozen elderly people, of whom only a small minority are pro'cient speakers. The grammatical description of the dialect is synchronic, but it includes etymological and historical comments as well as several paragraphs dealing with diachronic processes. The large and variegated corpus of texts, based on narratives furnished by the last two superb speakers of the dialect, comprises, inter alia, descriptions of the village of Betanure and its history, the fauna and ?ora of the region, agriculture and other occupations of the Jewish villagers, customs and traditions, legends, folktales, anecdotes and amusing stories. The glossary is extensively etymological and offers much comparative data drawn from numerous Neo-Aramaic varieties, apart from recourse to Classical Aramaic lexical data.

This book combines in-depth grammatical analysis with dialectology and typology. It presents important features of Jewish Neo-Aramaic from Dohok (Iraqi Kurdistan), a previously undocumented dialect that is now on the verge of extinction. The first Neo-Aramaic grammar to offer data glossing, this book is accessible for and highly relevant to Semitists, language typologists and historical linguists. It focuses especially on phonology, verbal morphosyntax and syntax. The monograph also highlights features that characterise the wider lišana deni dialect group, which is the most widespread Jewish Neo-Aramaic today. The book leverages the staggering microvariation persisting within North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic to reconstruct the grammaticalisation of some key Neo-Aramaic constructions. It also includes a text sample of prime historiographic value (Jews of Iraq during the Second World War).

Revised thesis (doctoral), - Tel Aviv University, 2000.

Being direct descendants of the Aramaic spoken by the Jews in antiquity, the still spoken Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects of Kurdistan deserve special and vivid interest. Geoffrey Khan’s A Grammar of Neo-Aramaic is a unique record of one of these dialects, now on the verge of extinction. This volume, the result of extensive fieldwork, contains a description of the dialect spoken by the Jews from the region of Arbel (Iraqi Kurdistan), together with a transcription of recorded texts and a glossary. The grammar consists of sections on phonology, morphology and syntax, preceded by an introductory chapter examining the position of this dialect in relation to the other known Neo-Aramaic dialects. The transcribed texts record folktales and accounts of customs, traditions and experiences of the Jews of Kurdistan.

This volume contains a detailed grammatical description of the spoken Aramaic dialect of the Jewish communities in the towns of Sulemaniyya and Ḥalabja in North Eastern Iraq. It also includes a transcription of oral texts recorded in the dialect. The grammar is based on extensive fieldwork carried out among native speakers. It consists of sections on phonology, morphology and syntax. There is also a study of semantic fields in the lexicon of the dialect and full glossaries of lexical items. This Aramaic dialect, which belongs to the North Eastern Neo-Aramaic group, has never been described before. The Jewish communities left Sulemaniyya and Ḥalabja in the 1950s and the dialect is now on the verge of extinction.

In 1951, the secluded Neo-Aramaic-speaking Jewish community of Zakho migrated collectively to Israel. It carried with it its unique language, culture and customs, many of which bore resemblance to those found in classical rabbinic literature. Like others in Kurdistan, for example, the Jews of Zakho retained a vibrant tradition of creating and performing songs based on embellishing biblical stories with Aggadic traditions. Despite the recent growth of scholarly interest into Neo-Aramaic communities, however, studies have to this point almost exclusively focused on the linguistic analysis of their critically endangered dialects and little attention has been paid to the sociological, historical and literary analysis of the cultural output of the diverse and isolated Neo-Aramaic communities of Kurdistan. In this innovative book, Oz Aloni seeks to redress this balance. Aloni focuses on three genres of the Zakho community’s oral heritage: the proverb, the enriched biblical narrative and the folktale. Each chapter draws on the author's own fieldwork among members of the Zakho community now living in Jerusalem. He examines the proverb in its performative context, the rewritten biblical narrative of Ruth, Naomi and King David, and a folktale with the unusual theme of magical gender transformation. Insightfully breaking down these examples with analysis drawn from a variety of conceptual fields, Aloni succeeds in his mission to put the speakers of the language and their culture on equal footing with their speech. The Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have kindly supported the publication of this volume

"Based on Sabar's 2002 Jewish Neo-Aramaic dictionary, this dictionary serves a functional purpose for readers and scholars who would like to know the Neo-Aramaic vocabulary. It does not include grammatical or semantic details but does include the origin of the words, be it native Old Aramaic, and, in the case of loanwords, the original lending language, Arabic, Kurdish, Persian, Turkish, etc"--