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The Church Militant: A Modern Western Aramaic Account
The article presents a recorded conversation in Modern Western Aramaic (MWA), known as Siryōn, collected during a fieldwork expedition in Maaloula, Syria, in 2021. The discussion provides linguistic and sociocultural insights, capturing the experiences of two elderly speakers, including one who recounts his uncle’s role as a bishop during political tensions involving Bishop Hilarion Capucci. The study highlights MWA’s endangered status, exacerbated by the Syrian Civil War, which has displaced speakers and disrupted intergenerational transmission. The transcription and analysis focus on phonological, morphological, and syntactic features, such as vowel shifts, assimilation, and construct forms, while also documenting new lexical items and borrowings from Arabic. The research underscores the urgent need for a comprehensive corpus to preserve the linguistic heritage of MWA.