Cormac Fire, Cyprus (AP) – Ashes hang unsteadily from the cigarettes of iosif scordis as they recall a fellow villager in the end of extinction language, which reaches a language that traces its roots in part to the language that Jesus Christ once spoke.
Skodis, 97, is one of only 900 people in the world who speak Cyprus’ Maronite Arabic or Sanna. Today, his village of Colmac Flame is the last fortress of the language spoken by tens of thousands of people in the village once.
The tongue, a derivative of Syrian Arabic that absorbed Greek, was passed from generation to generation in this blowing community in Cyprus. Less than 20 years later, parents told their children in conversation, so there were no written scripts or alphabets. Only a handful are trained to teach it.
Sanna is at risk of disappearing, according to minority language experts at the Council of Europe. The United Nations estimates that one Indigenous language dies every two weeks, reducing the tapestry of human knowledge one at a time.
However, Cyprus’s 7,500 powerful Maronite communities are being pushed back. With the support of the Cyprus government and the European Union, it created the Sanna Alphabet for building schools, publishing textbooks, and started classes to keep the language alive and thriving.
“Sanna… is undoubtedly one of the most distinctive features of our cultural identity,” says Yiannakis Moussas, president of the Maronite community in the Cypriot Parliament. He spoke at the Kolmac Flame Coffee Shop, where soccer trophies and banners were decorated with Lebanese cedar banners.
“And that’s impressive evidence of our heritage. The fact that we speak a kind of Arabic for centuries reveals that we are coming down from the Syrian and Lebanon regions.”
The roots of Syria and Lebanon
The language was brought to Cyprus by a wave of Arab Christians fled from persecution by invading Arab Muslim fighters in what is now Syria, Lebanon and Israel.
According to Professor Marilena Kariolemou, a professor of linguistics at the University of Cyprus, its roots are the language of Semitic language, unlike other Arabic dialects, which contains traces of Aramaic spoken by Arabs before the Levant Arab invasion.
That’s because Cyprus’ Maronite community has been isolated from other Arabic-speaking populations.
However, as Maronites interacted more and more with the island’s Greek-speaking population and became bilingual, Sanna evolved with the incorporation of several Greek words, increasing its uniqueness among many Arabic dialects.
According to Kariolemou, Sanna contains five vowels similar to Greek and another vowel similar to Aramaic, but the consonants that form sounds at the back of the throat are reduced due to Greek influences. Sanna also adopted the Greek syntax, she said.
The impact of Turkish invasion
Until the mid-1970s, the Maronite community was centered around four villages: Asomatos, Ia Marina, Carpathia and Cormac Fire.
However, the Turkish invasion in 1974 Split Cyprus We saw most of the malonites dispersed in the southern part of northern Turkey and southern Cyprus in Greece, where internationally recognized governments are sitting.
Asomatos and Ayamarina are empty with Maronite residents and are now Turkish army camps.
Mussas, a representative of the community, said the results in 1974 were “devastating” for Maronites, attracting major cities on the island, putting their culture and language at risk as children attended Greek-speaking schools and increased marriages to Cyprus, Greece.
It is said that only one in five Maronite marriages, currently among members of the community.
Hope for a revival
According to retired teacher Ilias Zonias, the Kolmac flame was spoken as the Cyprus Maronite Arabic language “hive,” and only residents over 50 years old. Born in Cormac Fire, Zonia is the only native Sanna speaker qualified to teach languages.
Kolmach flames were a closed society, residents spoke Sanna and children went to school without knowing Greek. That’s how language is preserved, Zonias said.
Still, speakers since 1974 began to decline to the turn of the millennium, where with the help of the Cypriot government, the Maronite community increased efforts to save language.
Cyprus’ 2004 EU membership was a Sanna milestone as the block poured resources into protecting Indigenous minority languages, a designation awarded by Cypriot authorities.
Kariolemou said in 2013 her team established a recorded archive of voice sanna, which lasted approximately 280 hours for further research.
The 27-letter alphabet was created primarily with Latin characters, thanks mainly to the work of linguist Alexander Borg. Grammar was formulated, refined, and allowed for the publication of books to teach Sanna.
Efforts to attract young families
The language course is in the early stages, with approximately 100 children and adults in the Colmac Flame class and St. Maronas Elementary School, outside Lacatamia. A summer language camp for children and adults in Cormac flames is also created.
An initiative is underway for native-born speakers (mainly residents of Cormac Fire) to learn how to teach Sanna.
At Ayios Maronas Primary School, 20 kindergarten children learn the language in books that contain scanned QR codes so that they can follow the sound adaptation on the tablets provided by the school.
However, for Sanna to have a real future, there is no alternative to the return of numerous young families to Cormac Fire. There, languages can be taught in newly built schools, said the EU-funded school.
However, community leaders are not satisfied with the small number of people expressing interest. Moussas said community leaders and the Cypriot government are considering providing incentives, primarily to make housing easier to find.
For Zonias, living the language for years will be the best achievement of his career.
“I don’t want to be Sanna’s last teacher,” he said.
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