Turoyo language Totally Explained

Everything about Turoyo Language totally explained

Turoyo is a Modern West Syriac language, a dialect of Aramaic. It is traditionally spoken in eastern Turkey and north-eastern Syria by members of the Syriac Orthodox Church. From the word ṭuro, meaning 'mountain', Ṭuroyo is the mountain tongue of the Tur Abdin in southeastern Turkey. A far older name for the language is Ṣurayt, and it's used by a number of speakers of the language in preference to Ṭuroyo. The etymology of this name is difficult, but is probably linked to the word 'Syriac'. However, especially in the diaspora, the language is frequently called Sëryoyo (or Sŭryoyo or Saryoyo depending on dialect), also meaning 'Syriac', seemingly imported from Classical Syriac. Most speakers use Classical Syriac, or Kthobonoyo, for literature and worship. Turoyo speakers are all traditionally members of the Syriac Orthodox Church. There is increasing interest in reviving Kthobonoyo, the classical language, as a spoken language. This is most acute among non-Turoyo-speaking Syriac Orthodox, whose first language may be Arabic, German, Swedish, English, Malayalam or another language. This, and the church's preference for Kthobonoyo, has had some impact on Turoyo.
   Until recently, Turoyo was a spoken vernacular and was never written down: Kthobonoyo was the written language. In the 1880s, various attempts were made, with the encouragement of western missionaries, to write Turoyo in the Syriac alphabet, in the Serto script used for West-Syriac Kthobonoyo. However, with upheaval in their homeland through the twentieth century, many Turoyo speakers have emigrated around the world (particularly to Syria, the Lebanon, Sweden and Germany). The Swedish government's education policy, that every child be educated in his or her mother tongue, led to the commissioning of teaching materials in Turoyo. Yusuf Ishaq, thus, developed a written language for Turoyo that uses the Latin alphabet. The series of reading books and workbooks that use Ishaq's written Turoyo are called Toxu Qorena!, or "Come Let's Read!" This project has also produced a Swedish-Turoyo dictionary of 4500 entries: the Svensk-turabdinskt Lexikon: Leksiqon Swedoyo-Suryoyo.
   Turoyo has borrowed many words from Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish. The main dialect of Turoyo is that of Midyat (Mëḏyoyo), in the east of Turkey's Mardin Province. The four villages of Midin, Kfarze, `Iwardo and Anhil, and the Raite (a cluster of seven small villages) all have distinctive Turoyo dialects (Midwoyo, Kfarzoyo, `Iwarnoyo, Nihloyo and Raityoyo respectively). All Turoyo dialects are mutually intelligible with each other. Many Turoyo speakers who have left their villages now speak a mixed dialect of their village dialect with the Midyat dialect. This mixture of dialects was used by Ishaq as the basis of his system of written Turoyo. For example, Ishaq's reading book uses the word qorena in its title instead of the Mëḏyoyo qurena or the village-dialect qorina. All speakers are bilingual in another local language. Church schools in Syria and the Lebanon teach Kthobonoyo rather than Turoyo, and encourage the replacement of non-Syriac loanwords with authentic Syriac ones. Some church leaders have tried to discourage the use and writing of Turoyo, seeing it as an impure form of Syriac.
   Phonetically, Turoyo is very similar to Classical Syriac. The additional phonemes /ʤ/ (as in judge), /ʧ/ (as in church) /ʒ/ (as in azure) and /ðˤ/ (the Arabic ẓāʼ) mostly only appear in loanwords from other languages. The most distinctive feature of Turoyo phonolgy is its use of reduced vowels in closed syllables. The phonetic value of these reduced vowels differs depending both on the value of original vowel and the dialect spoken. The Mëḏyoyo dialect also reduces vowels in pre-stress open syllables. This has the effect of producing a syllabic schwa in most dialects (in Classical Syriac the schwa isn't syllabic).
   The verbal system of Turoyo is similar to that used in other Neo-Aramaic languages. In Classical Syriac, the ancient perfect and imperfect tenses had started to become preterite and future tenses respectively, and other tenses were formed by using the participles with pronominal clitics or shortened forms of the verb hwā ('to be'). Most modern Aramaic languages have completely abandoned the old tenses and form all tenses from stems based around the old participles. The classical clitics have become incorporated fully into the verb form, and can be considered more like inflections.
   Turoyo has also developed the use of the demonstrative pronouns much further than any other Aramaic language. In Turoyo, they've become definite articles. Thus:

masculine singular: u-malko (the king)
feminine singular: i-malëkṯo (the queen)
plural common: am-malke (the kings), am-malëkōṯo (village dialects: am-malëkōṯe; the queens).

The Modern Western Syriac dialect of Mlahsô and `Ansha villages in Diyarbakır Province is quite different from Turoyo. It is virtually extinct; its last few speakers live in Qamishli in northeastern Syria. Turoyo is also more closely related to other neo-Syriac dialects than the Western Neo-Aramaic dialect of Ma'loula.

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