12-09-2007, 06:14 PM
I don't think you can "properly" define the name of any given language.
If by "properly" you mean "linguistically," then no, our language isn't called "Assyrian." The full name would be, as you said, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic. The dialect spoken by those who belong to the Chaldean Catholic Church would be Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, and so on. The name of the nation/group doesn't always correspond to the name of the language: Austrians don't speak Austrian, Mexicans don't speak Mexican, Israelis don't speak Israeli, etc.
BUT, for practical reasons, when someone asks me what language I speak in everyday/common conversations with regular people, I reply "Assyrian." (A person who speaks Chaldean Neo-Aramaic might reply "Chaldean" in the same situation). I say "Assyrian" for the same reason I say "English" instead of "Canadian Neo-Anglo-Saxon:" practicality.
If I was speaking to someone with a broader knowledge of languages (say, a linguist) then I would probably reply with "a dialect of Neo-Aramaic." So the proper/linguistic/historic name for our language would indeed be "Aramaic," but the actual name of a language often has more to do with cultural or political (or, in my case, "situational") influence than it does with the "proper" name (again, which I believe can't be defined).
Basically, I've thought of two ways to name a language: 1) go by cultural/political factors, or 2) go by what linguists/ethnographers say. So who's to say which is more "correct:" the people who actually speak the language or outside sources who have meticulously researched the language? It's not for anyone to say or define...
As for Assyrians never having a unique language of their own: that's somewhat true. But, when you think about it, our Neo-Aramaic dialects and even the Akkadian spoken by the ancient Assyrians are/was fairly unique in their own right.
Uniqueness is relative: some see two dialects of a language and assume they're the same, others see two related languages (e.g. Aramaic and Hebrew) and say they're different, while a speaker of an unrelated language (e.g. Japanese) might say that Aramaic and Hebrew are the same since they share similarities, in other words, Aramaic and Hebrew aren't unique.
The only "real" unique languages are probably language isolates: Japanese, Korean, Basque, Sumerian. All these languages are not known to be related to any other language, hence they're truly "unique."
If by "properly" you mean "linguistically," then no, our language isn't called "Assyrian." The full name would be, as you said, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic. The dialect spoken by those who belong to the Chaldean Catholic Church would be Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, and so on. The name of the nation/group doesn't always correspond to the name of the language: Austrians don't speak Austrian, Mexicans don't speak Mexican, Israelis don't speak Israeli, etc.
BUT, for practical reasons, when someone asks me what language I speak in everyday/common conversations with regular people, I reply "Assyrian." (A person who speaks Chaldean Neo-Aramaic might reply "Chaldean" in the same situation). I say "Assyrian" for the same reason I say "English" instead of "Canadian Neo-Anglo-Saxon:" practicality.
If I was speaking to someone with a broader knowledge of languages (say, a linguist) then I would probably reply with "a dialect of Neo-Aramaic." So the proper/linguistic/historic name for our language would indeed be "Aramaic," but the actual name of a language often has more to do with cultural or political (or, in my case, "situational") influence than it does with the "proper" name (again, which I believe can't be defined).
Basically, I've thought of two ways to name a language: 1) go by cultural/political factors, or 2) go by what linguists/ethnographers say. So who's to say which is more "correct:" the people who actually speak the language or outside sources who have meticulously researched the language? It's not for anyone to say or define...
As for Assyrians never having a unique language of their own: that's somewhat true. But, when you think about it, our Neo-Aramaic dialects and even the Akkadian spoken by the ancient Assyrians are/was fairly unique in their own right.
Uniqueness is relative: some see two dialects of a language and assume they're the same, others see two related languages (e.g. Aramaic and Hebrew) and say they're different, while a speaker of an unrelated language (e.g. Japanese) might say that Aramaic and Hebrew are the same since they share similarities, in other words, Aramaic and Hebrew aren't unique.
The only "real" unique languages are probably language isolates: Japanese, Korean, Basque, Sumerian. All these languages are not known to be related to any other language, hence they're truly "unique."