My mother-tongue is Sureth, an endangered Northeastern Neo-Aramaic language which makes use of the East Syriac (Madnhaya) script. Within Sureth exist hundreds of dialects spoken by sister ethno-religious minorities, Assyrians and Chaldeans, in the motherland Nineveh in Iraq, as well as Syria, Iran, Armenia, Lebanon, Palestine and Turkey.
Language erasure has been aggravated by waves of ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, immigration, Arabization policies and American occupation. When translating gallery texts with my mother, we realised there were many words that did not exist, we did not know of, or had been replaced by Arabic loan words. There is no current vocabulary in use that supports dialogue in Chaldean and Assyrian communities about Indigeneity, settler-colonialism, positionality, race, American occupation, cultural hybridity and most importantly allyship.
If Chaldean and Assyrian diasporas wish to revive language, they must recognise it is inseparable from Decolonialism. Despite Indigenous Mesopotamian roots, Chaldean diaspora in the US and Australia colonies tend to support right wing conspiracy, racial propaganda and colonial policies - and consequently facilitate further violence against minorities in the motherland, diaspora and alarmingly other Indigenous communities.
The urgency of a decolonial movement also demands a vocabulary to enable it. This work marks the beginning of a developing dictionary and is an open invitation for intercultural connection and cross-Indigenous allyship. The new words developed are transliterations of Wurundjeri/Woiwurrung words or suggestions for contextual use. These are the most urgent words needed in Chaldean and Assyrian circles to discuss settlership and allyship in the Australian colony. I am proposing 21 new words for use by diaspora in Naarm, starting with the revival of unused but thankfully documented words by Assyrian scholars Tobia Gewargis (2007), Alexander Joseph Oraham (1943) and Bailis Yamlikha Shamun (2014).
Alexander Joseph Oraham, Oraham’s Dictionary of the Stabilised and Enriched Assyrian language and English (1943)
Bailis Yamlikha Shamun, English-Assyrian-Arabic Dictionary, Volume 1 (2014).
Tobia Gewargis, English-Assyrian Dictionary, (2007)
