Lishan Didan – Our language

Summary

Lishan Didan, meaning “our language”, is the name associated with the Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia and the surrounding region. It belongs to the group of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic dialects and was for generations the mother tongue and everyday language of Jewish communities in northwestern Iran and neighboring areas. ¹

Lishan Didan was not merely a language used for prayer or religious study. For the Jews of Urmia and the surrounding settlements, it was the language of everyday life: it was spoken at home, among family members, with neighbors and friends, in commerce, and in ordinary social life. Through it, stories, songs, proverbs, blessings, customs, and memories were passed from one generation to the next.

The most important center of this linguistic region was Urmia, but Jewish Neo-Aramaic was not limited to the city itself. Jewish communities speaking related dialects existed in Salmas and other settlements in northwestern Iran, as well as across the border in the region of Van, Başkale, and Gawar in present-day eastern Turkey. ²

Lishan Didan belongs to the family of Modern Eastern Aramaic. It is not the ancient Aramaic of the Bible, Talmud, or ancient inscriptions, but a living spoken language that developed over many centuries. Like any living language, it changed over time and was influenced by the languages spoken in its surroundings.

The Jews of Urmia lived in a multilingual environment. Alongside Lishan Didan, Persian, Azerbaijani, Kurdish, Turkish, and other Aramaic dialects were spoken in the region. Linguistic research has identified particularly significant influence from Azerbaijani and other Turkic languages on the Jewish Aramaic of Urmia. ³

Most of the life of Lishan Didan took place orally. It did not develop a single standardized written form. When it was written, Hebrew letters were commonly used, and spelling could vary from one text to another.

The name Lishan Didan itself expresses the close connection between language and communal identity. “Lishan” means language or tongue, while “Didan” means our — hence, “our language”. Members of the community also used the expression Nash Didan, meaning “our people”, to refer to themselves. ⁴

During the twentieth century, the Jewish communities of Urmia and the wider Van–Urmia region experienced major upheavals. World War I, violence and displacement in the region, and later migration away from the historic communities disrupted communal and linguistic continuity. Historical research on the Jews of Van and Urmia shows that before World War I the region was connected by networks of family, commercial, religious, and linguistic ties that crossed the border between the Ottoman Empire and Iran. ⁵

After the Jewish communities left their historic places of residence, and particularly following migration to Israel, Hebrew gradually became the principal language of younger generations. As a result, the use of Lishan Didan as a mother tongue declined.

Today, Jewish Neo-Aramaic of Urmia is considered an endangered language, and the Urmia dialect itself has been described as nearly extinct. Geoffrey Khan’s research was based on fieldwork with some of the last speakers of the dialect, most of whom were living in Israel at the time of his research. ⁶

The importance of Lishan Didan is therefore not merely linguistic. It is an integral part of the historical and cultural heritage of the Jews of Urmia and the surrounding region. Through the language, it is possible to preserve not only words and grammar, but also the memory of the community, its way of life, and the world in which its ancestors lived for generations.

What Is Modern Eastern Aramaic?

Aramaic is a family of languages and dialects belonging to the Semitic language family. For thousands of years, varieties of Aramaic were spoken across large areas of the Middle East.

Modern Eastern Aramaic refers to a diverse group of Aramaic languages and dialects that developed in areas corresponding today to northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, southeastern Turkey, and neighboring regions. In linguistic literature, many of these varieties are grouped under the abbreviation NENA, meaning Northeastern Neo-Aramaic. The group includes numerous Jewish and Christian dialects. ⁷

Lishan Didan should not be viewed simply as “ancient Aramaic that survived unchanged”. It is a language that developed over many centuries, with its own changes in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. The term “modern” or “neo-Aramaic” refers to its historical and linguistic stage, rather than to an artificial or recently created language.

Urmia – A Major Center of Jewish Aramaic

Urmia was one of the important centers of Jewish life in northwestern Iran and, in particular, of Jewish Aramaic.

The Jewish community of the city had deep historical roots. The Jewish dialect of Urmia has been extensively documented, particularly in the work of the linguist Geoffrey Khan, who conducted fieldwork with speakers from the community who were living in Israel. ⁸

Other Jewish communities existed throughout the region. Irene Garbell’s study, published in 1965, examined the Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects of Persian Azerbaijan and documented, among others, the dialects of Urmia and Salmas, as well as additional communities in the region. ⁹

Modern linguistic research emphasizes that these communities should not be regarded as having spoken one completely uniform dialect. Differences existed between settlements and sometimes between groups of speakers. It is therefore more accurate to speak of a geographical area containing a number of closely related Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects.

The Region Between Urmia and Van

The world in which Lishan Didan existed did not end at the modern political border between Iran and Turkey.

For generations, Jewish communities around Lake Urmia and Lake Van maintained connections. Jewish communities in the Van region, particularly in Başkale and Gawar, spoke varieties of Jewish Aramaic and were connected to the wider Jewish communities of the region. ¹⁰

Nesi Altaras’s research on the Jews of Van and Urmia describes a borderland in which family, commercial, and religious connections crossed the boundary between Iran and the Ottoman Empire. The historic communal world of these Jews therefore cannot always be understood according to the modern international border. ¹¹

This reality is important for understanding the language. When people moved between communities, married into families from other communities, traded with one another, and maintained family relationships, linguistic connections also developed. The history of Lishan Didan is therefore connected not only with Urmia itself but with a wider network of Jewish communities in northwestern Iran and southeastern Turkey.

Lishan Didan and the Languages Around It

One of the most important characteristics of Jewish Aramaic in Urmia was its development within a multilingual environment.

Persian was the language of the Iranian state and of the wider cultural environment.

Azerbaijani was a major language of the Persian Azerbaijan region and had a significant influence on the Jewish Aramaic of Urmia.

Kurdish was an important language of communication in areas west and south of Urmia, and Jewish communities maintained extensive contact with Kurdish-speaking populations.

Turkish was particularly important in the Ottoman sphere and in the region around Van.

Modern research shows that the Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects underwent substantial changes as a result of prolonged contact with other languages. In the case of Urmia, researchers have examined in particular the interaction between Jewish Aramaic, Christian Neo-Aramaic, and the surrounding languages. ¹²

Lishan Didan and Jewish Identity

The expressions Lishan Didan and Nash Didan are closely related in their sense of communal identity.

“Lishan Didan” – our language.

“Nash Didan” – our people.

The use of these expressions reflects a strong sense of communal belonging. Language was one of the ways in which members of the community recognized one another and maintained a sense of connection.

At the same time, the name “Lishan Didan” should not be taken to mean that every Jew in the region spoke exactly the same dialect. Linguistic research identifies a range of Jewish dialects, with differences between individual communities.

Lishan Didan as a Spoken Language

Lishan Didan was first and foremost a spoken language.

Children learned it from their parents, and parents learned it from their own parents. It was generally acquired within the family and community rather than through a formal educational system.

Consequently, much of the richness of the language is found in material that was not necessarily written down: family stories, children’s songs, wedding songs, blessings, proverbs, jokes, nicknames, everyday expressions, names of foods, terms connected with trade and domestic life, and place names.

Academic research has also relied on such material. Geoffrey Khan’s study of the Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia includes, alongside a detailed grammatical description, transcribed texts such as folktales, historical accounts, and descriptions of customs. ¹³

The Writing System of Lishan Didan

Lishan Didan did not develop a single standardized written form.

This is closely related to its character as a spoken language. When it was necessary to write the language, Hebrew letters were commonly used as part of the writing tradition of Jewish communities.

Modern representations of the language may also use Latin letters and special symbols in order to describe pronunciation more precisely.

The absence of a standardized spelling system does not indicate a lack of structure in the language. Rather, it reflects the fact that for most of its history Lishan Didan was a spoken language transmitted orally from one generation to the next.

Jewish Tradition and Aramaic

Aramaic occupied an important place in Jewish religious and cultural life for many centuries. Jewish communities that spoke Aramaic also maintained traditions of translating, explaining, and studying Jewish texts in Aramaic.

Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish between the ancient Aramaic of Jewish sources and Lishan Didan. Lishan Didan was the mother tongue of the community and developed as a living language over many generations.

The relationship between Aramaic and religious life was therefore only one aspect of the language. Alongside religious use, Lishan Didan was spoken in the home, marketplace, family, and wider community.

Lishan Didan and the Aramaic of Christian Communities

Urmia and its surrounding region were also home to Christian communities speaking varieties of Modern Eastern Aramaic.

The geographical proximity of Jewish and Christian communities created linguistic contact, but this does not mean that they spoke exactly the same language. Research shows that the Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia differed from the Christian Neo-Aramaic varieties of the same region, despite their geographical proximity. ¹⁴

These differences are particularly interesting because they allow researchers to examine how communal identity, migration, and contact with other languages influenced the development of related dialects.

The Twentieth Century and the Upheavals of the Region

The history of Lishan Didan is closely connected with the upheavals experienced by the Jewish communities of the region during the twentieth century.

World War I was a major turning point. The Van–Urmia region became a zone of warfare and violence, and the Jewish communities were affected by population movements, displacement, and the disruption of established connections.

Nesi Altaras’s study notes that before 1914 approximately 2,000 Jews lived in the region between Lake Van and Lake Urmia, and that the Jewish communities of the Van area, including Başkale and Gawar, spoke the northern variety of Jewish Aramaic known as Lishan Didan. World War I severely disrupted the network of connections linking these communities. ¹⁵

Displacement and migration were not limited to a single event. They continued at different times and ultimately contributed to the dispersal of most of the historic Jewish communities of the region.

Lishan Didan in Israel

After migration to Israel, members of the first and second generations continued to use Lishan Didan within their families and among people from the same region.

But the linguistic environment had changed. Hebrew became the language of education, employment, and public life, and younger generations acquired it as their primary language.

Gradually, a process of language shift took place. Older speakers continued to use Lishan Didan, while among younger generations it increasingly became a language associated with family memory and the generation that came before them.

Khan’s study of the Jewish dialect of Urmia was based on fieldwork with some of the last speakers of the dialect in Israel. The work demonstrates the importance of documentation at a time when the number of active speakers is declining. ¹⁶

An Endangered Language

Modern Eastern Aramaic, across its various dialects, is considered a group of endangered languages. The North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic Database Project at the University of Cambridge documents recordings, transcriptions, and grammatical descriptions of these dialects, many of which are endangered and some of which have already become extinct. ¹⁷

The central issue is not simply the number of speakers alive today, but whether the language continues to be transmitted from one generation to the next. When children no longer acquire a language naturally from their parents, the ability to use it fluently and spontaneously gradually declines.

For this reason, every recording of a native speaker, every family story, song, proverb, or vocabulary list may be valuable for documenting the language.

Why Is It Important to Preserve Lishan Didan?

Preserving Lishan Didan means preserving part of the history of an entire community.

The language can teach us about family life, community organization, commerce, customs, relations with neighboring populations, and the geographical world in which the Jews of Urmia and the surrounding region lived.

It can also preserve details that do not always appear in historical books: the name of a particular food, a blessing given to a child, a family nickname, the way a story was told, the traditional name of a place, or the way family members spoke to one another.

In this sense, language is also a repository of memory.

When a particular word survives, an entire world associated with it may survive as well – a custom, a food, a place, a person, or a story.

Lishan Didan as Part of Nash Didan Heritage

Lishan Didan is one of the central elements of the linguistic heritage of the Jews of Urmia and the surrounding region.

It connects communities that lived across a broad area on both sides of the modern border, and it connects the generations who lived in Urmia, Salmas, Van, Başkale, Gawar, and other settlements with their descendants in Israel and elsewhere in the world.

The meaning of its name – “our language” – expresses much of its importance. It was not merely a system of words and grammatical rules. It was the language in which people described who they were, where they came from, who their families were, and what the world around them meant.

Therefore, when Lishan Didan is documented, it is not only a dialect of Aramaic that is being preserved. Part of the memory of an entire community is being preserved.

Footnotes

1. Jewish Languages, “Jewish Neo-Aramaic.” The resource identifies Lishan Didan among the names associated with Jewish Neo-Aramaic and explains the name as “our language.”
2. Geoffrey Khan, The Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Urmi, Gorgias Neo-Aramaic Studies 2, 2008; and Nesi Altaras, “The Jews of Van-Urmia: Remembering Borderland Migrations (1914–18),” Jewish Social Studies 28, no. 1 (2023), pp. 79–115.
3. Geoffrey Khan, “Contact-Induced Change in the Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialects,” Journal of Jewish Languages 12 (2024), pp. 13–26.
4. Jewish Languages, “Jewish Neo-Aramaic”; Nesi Altaras, “The Jews of Van-Urmia,” which discusses the use of Lishan Didan (“our language”) and Nash Didan (“our people”) among Jews of the Van region.
5. Nesi Altaras, “The Jews of Van-Urmia: Remembering Borderland Migrations (1914–18),” Jewish Social Studies 28, no. 1 (2023), pp. 79–115.
6. Geoffrey Khan, The Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Urmi, Gorgias Press, 2008.
7. North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic Database Project, University of Cambridge, “About the North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic Dialects.”
8. Geoffrey Khan, The Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Urmi, Gorgias Neo-Aramaic Studies 2, 2008.
9. Irene Garbell, The Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Persian Azerbaijan, Janua Linguarum, Series Practica 3, Mouton, 1965.
10. Nesi Altaras, “The Jews of Van-Urmia,” which discusses the Jewish communities of the Van region and their use of Lishan Didan and Nash Didan.
11. Ibid.
12. Geoffrey Khan, “Contact-Induced Change in the Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialects,” Journal of Jewish Languages 12 (2024), pp. 13–26.
13. Geoffrey Khan, The Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Urmi, Gorgias Press, 2008.
14. Geoffrey Khan, “Contact-Induced Change in the Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialects,” 2024.
15. Nesi Altaras, “The Jews of Van-Urmia,” Jewish Social Studies 28, no. 1 (2023), pp. 79–115.
16. Geoffrey Khan, The Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Urmi, 2008.
17. North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic Database Project, University of Cambridge. The project documents recordings, transcriptions, and grammatical descriptions of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic dialects, many of which are endangered.

Sources

Altaras, Nesi. “The Jews of Van-Urmia: Remembering Borderland Migrations (1914–18).” Jewish Social Studies 28, no. 1 (2023): 79–115.

Garbell, Irene. The Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Persian Azerbaijan. Janua Linguarum, Series Practica 3. The Hague: Mouton, 1965.

Khan, Geoffrey. The Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Urmi. Gorgias Neo-Aramaic Studies 2. Piscataway, New Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2008.

Khan, Geoffrey. “Contact-Induced Change in the Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialects.” Journal of Jewish Languages 12 (2024): 13–26.

North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic Database Project. University of Cambridge. A research database containing recordings, transcriptions, and grammatical descriptions of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic dialects.

Jewish Languages. “Jewish Neo-Aramaic.” A reference resource on Jewish languages, including information on Jewish Neo-Aramaic, its names, geographical distribution, dialects, writing, and current status.