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By Ariel Sabar
Smithsonian magazine, February 2013 It was a sunny morning in May, and I was in a car with a linguist and a tax preparer trolling the suburbs of Chicago for native speakers of Aramaic, the 3,000-year-old language of Jesus. The linguist, Geoffrey Khan of the University of Cambridge, was nominally in town to…

February 25, 2013 – In recent years, around 60-100 Syriac Orthodox families have returned from central Europe to Turkey. Encouraged by changes in the political atmosphere, the minority nonetheless faces a host of problems, from the expropriation of land belonging to a monastery, to a ban on special schools and kindergartens, and also a lack…

A new monthly Turkish-Syriac journal, “Sabro” (“Hope”), will hit the shelves this week, marking the first time in the history of the Turkish Republic that a Syriac Christian newspaper will enter circulation. “As Syriacs, we also maintain hopes about the future in Turkey, and thus we named our newspaper ‘Sabro,’” the journal’s chief editor, Tuma…

SACRAMENTO, California USA – September 2009 – Today, many Assyrian families establish their homes in North America, Europe, and Australia where there is little pressure forcing the youth and newer generations to speak their native language in their homes and among friends. Romil Benyamino is a first generation Assyrian-American concerned about this issue, and recently,…