Neo-Mandaic, also known as Modern Mandaic, sometimes called the "ratna" ( "jargon"), is the modern reflex of the Mandaic language, the liturgical language of the Mandaean religious community of Iraq and Iran. Although severely endangered, it survives as the first language of a small number of Mandaeans (possibly as few as 100–200 speakers) in Iran and in the Mandaean diaspora. All Neo-Mandaic speakers are multilingual in the languages of their neighbors, Arabic and Persian, and the influence of these languages upon the grammar of Neo-Mandaic is considerable, particularly in the lexicon and the morphology of the noun. Nevertheless, Neo-Mandaic is more conservative even in these regards than most other Neo-Aramaic languages.
General information Neo-Mandaic (ISO 639-3: mid) represents the latest stage of the development of Classical Mandaic, a language of the Middle East which was first attested during the period of Late Antiquity and which continues to be used to the present date by the Mandaean religious community of Iraq and Iran. While the members of this community, numbered at roughly 70,000 or fewer adherents throughout the world, are familiar with the classical dialect through their sacred literature and liturgy, only a few hundred Mandaeans, located primarily in Iran, speak Neo-Mandaic (known to them as the raṭnɔ) as a first language. Two surviving dialects of Neo-Mandaic have thus far been documented, those of Ahwāz (in Macuch 1965a,Macuch, R. 1965a: Handbook of Classical and Modern Mandaic. Berlin: De Gruyter. Macuch 1965b,Macuch, R. 1965b: The bridge of Shushtar. A Legend in Vernacular Mandaic with Introduction, Translation and Notes. In S. Segert (ed.). Studia Semitica Philologica necnon Philosophica Ioanni Bakoš Dedicata. (Bratislava: Slovenskej Akademie Ved) 153-72. Macuch 1989,Macuch, R. 1989: Neumandäische Chrestomathie mit grammatischer Skizze, kommentierte Übersetzung und Glossar. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. and Macuch 1993Macuch, R. 1993: Neumandäische Texte im Dialekt von Ahwɔz. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.) and Khorramshahr (in Häberl 2009Häberl, C.G. 2009: The Neo-Mandaic Dialect of Khorramshahr. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.). These dialects are mutually intelligible to the extent that speakers of either dialect will deny that there are any differences between the two.
Today, Neo-Mandaic is spoken almost exclusively in Ahvaz, Iran and in Western Sydney, Australia. Many of them are members of the priestly Choheili family.
Genetic affiliation Neo-Mandaic is a dialect of Aramaic, a Northwest Semitic language that was formerly spoken throughout the Middle East. Already in antiquity, a split had developed between the Western dialects of Aramaic (spoken in primarily in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel), and the Eastern dialects (spoken primarily in Mesopotamia and Iran) to which Neo-Mandaic pertains.
The bulk of scholarship on these modern reflexes of these dialects, collectively described as Neo-Aramaic, has focused primarily on Eastern Aramaic languages, particularly the Central Neo-Aramaic (Turoyo and Mlahsô) and Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) dialects spoken by Jewish and Christian communities in north-east Syria, northern Iraq, and north-west Iran.
A smaller but still considerable volume of scholarship is dedicated to the more peripheral dialects such as the Western Neo-Aramaic dialects spoken by Christians and Muslims in three villages near Damascus, and Neo-Mandaic. Of all the dialects that have thus far been documented, only Neo-Mandaic can be described with any certainty as the modern reflex of any classical written form of Aramaic.
History of scholarship The first attempt at documenting Neo-Mandaic, a polyglot glossary including a column of lexical items from the Neo-Mandaic dialect of Basra, was produced roughly 350 years ago by a Carmelite missionary whom BorgheroBorghero, R. 2000 "A 17th Century Glossary of Mandaic." In: S. Abouzayd (ed.). ARAM 11-12 (Leuven: Peeters) 311-31. has identified with the Discalced Carmelite . This Glossarium was to have a perennial influence upon subsequent generations of Mandaeologists; it was consulted by Theodor NöldekeNöldeke, T. 1862: "Ueber die Mundart der Mandäer." In: Abhandlungen der historisch-philologischen Classe der königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen 10, 81-160.Nöldeke, T. 1875: Mandäische Grammatik. Halle: Waisenhaus. and Rudolf Macúch in the preparation of their grammars, and the contents of its Neo-Mandaic column were incorporated into Drower and Macuch's 1963 dictionary.Drower, E.S. and R. Macuch. 1963: A Mandaic Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon. No complete Neo-Mandaic text was published until the beginning of the twentieth century, when de Morgande Morgan, J. 1904: Mission scientifique en Perse, tome V (études linguistiques), deuxième partie: textes mandaïtes. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale. published five documents collected in Iran (transliterated and translated by Macuch). The last few decades have seen a marked increase in the number of Neo-Mandaic texts available to scholarship (Macuch 1965b, 1989, and 1993) and a descriptive grammar (Häberl 2009).
Writing system Neo-Mandaic is generally unwritten. On the rare occasions on which it is written, in personal letters and in the colophons that are attached to manuscripts, it is rendered using a modified version of the classical script. With the exception of , all vowels are represented, but without any indication of length or quality. The letter ʕ consistently represents an epenthetic vowel, either or . Additionally, the Arabic letter has been borrowed to indicate the voiced pharyngeal fricative as well as the glottal stop. The letters b, g, k, p, and t may represent stops ( and ) or fricatives ( and ). Formerly the fricatives were not distinctive segments but merely allophones of the stops after a vowel; the sound rule governing this alternation is now defunct. Neo-Mandaic orthography differs from that of Classical Mandaic by using u to represent even when it is a reflex of Classical Mandaic b. As Neo-Mandaic contains several phonemes not found in Classical Mandaic, several letters from the original script have been modified with two dots placed below to represent these phonemes: š may represent , d represents , and h represents . Private Mandaic schools in Iran and Australia employ a version of this same script with a few further pedagogic modifications.Choheili, Salem 2004: Untitled contribution. In: S. Abouzayd (ed.). ARAM 16 (Leuven: Peeters) 310-14.
Phonology There are 35 distinctive segments in Neo-Mandaic: 28 consonants and seven vowels. For most of these segments, there is a relatively wide degree of allophonic variation. The transcription system, which is phonemic, does not reflect this variation; nor does it reflect sporadic assimilations, deletions, and other features that are typical of allegro speech.
Consonants Neo-Mandaic has 28 distinctive consonantal segments, including four loan-phonemes: the postalveolar affricates č and j and the pharyngeal fricatives and ḥ , which are found only in vocabulary of foreign origin, particularly Arabic and Persian. Two pharyngealized segments (a voiced alveolar stop ḍ and a voiced alveolar fricative ẓ ) are found in a few Arabic loan words. They have been excluded from the phonemic inventory of Neo-Mandaic due to their marginal status.
Voiceless stops are lightly aspirated.
+ Table 1: Neo-Mandaic Consonant Inventory Labial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal Stop/Affricate ( (č)) ( (j)) Fricative (th) (ṣ) (sh) (kh)( (ḥ)) (gh)( (ʿ)) Nasal Trill Approximant (y)
Vowels +Table 2: Neo-Mandaic Vowel InventoryFrontCentralBackCloseMid()Open The vowel system in Neo-Mandaic is composed of seven distinct vowels, of which six (i , u , e , o , a , and ɔ ) are principal phonemes, and one (ə ) is marginal. The vowels are distinguished by quality rather than quantity. Three of the principal vowels, the "tense" vowels i, u, and ɔ, are lengthened in open accented syllables to , , and or . and are realized as and whenever they occur in closed syllables,Häberl, Charles G. 2011. Mandaic. Stefan Weninger (ed.), The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook: Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 725–737. either accented or unaccented (exceptions are Persian loanwords (e.g. gush "ear") and contextual forms such as asut, from asuta "health"). The other three principle vowels, the "lax" vowels o, e, and a, appear only exceptionally in open accented syllables. is realized as in open syllables and in closed syllables. is realized as in open syllables and as in closed syllables. is realized as in closed accented syllables, and as or elsewhere. Schwa has the widest allophonic variation of all the vowels. It is regularly fronted, backed, raised, or lowered in harmony with the vowel of the following syllable. When it is followed by , it is regularly raised and backed to . When the accent falls on a closed syllable containing schwa, it becomes fronted and raised to .
There are also five diphthongs, ey , ay , aw , ɔy , and ɔw . The diphthongs and , which had already collapsed in closed accented syllables to and in the classical language, have collapsed in all accented syllables in the dialects of Ahwāz and Khorramshahr, apart from those in words of foreign origin. The collapse of diphthongs appears to be further advanced in the dialect of Ahvāz; compare Khorramshahr gɔw 'in' with Ahwāz gu id. Closely tied to the collapse of the diphthong in open accented syllables is the breaking of its outcome, to in the same environment. For example, classical baita 'house' has become bieṯɔ in Neo-Mandaic. This sound change is today typical of both the contemporary dialects of Ahwāz and Khorramshahr, but is not present in the unpublished texts from Iraq collected by Drower or in Macuch 1989.
Syllable structure Neo-Mandaic words range in size from one to five syllables. Each syllable consists of an onset (which is optional in word-initial syllables) and a rime. The rime consists of a nucleus (usually a vowel or a syllabic consonant) with or without a coda. The onset and the coda which frame the nucleus consist of consonants; the onset is mandatory for all word-internal syllables, but the coda is optional in all environments. Whenever an enclitic pronominal suffix (see 3.3. below) lacking an onset is added to a closed accented syllable, the coda of the syllable is geminated to form the onset of the following syllable. Whenever the voiceless interdental fricative /θ/ is geminated in this environment, its outcome is the cluster [χt] rather than the expected [θθ]. For example, when the pronominal suffixes are appended directly to the existential particle *eṯ [ɛθ] (Classical ‘it), it regularly takes the form ext- [ɛχt]. This rule affects the conjugation of the verb meṯ ~ moṯ (mɔyeṯ) ‘to die,’ e.g. meṯ ‘he died’ but mextat ‘she died.’ It is also responsible for the modern form of the abstract ending uxtɔ (Classical -uta).