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A map of Semitic Languages
#2
Hi Rudolf,

It's funny because Akhan Steve is always trying to place as much white space between his beloved "Galilean" Aramaic and all other dialects. He's even included a "modern Galilean" dialect, which I can only assume is the one he is teaching in his own home. (Don't ever change Akhi Steve, I actually love this little quirk)

The only real problem I see with the chart is the extreme specificity given for the Aramaic family (broken down by actual villages), but in contrast an extreme generality for all the other Semitic languages.

For example, the Arabic dialects are, as portrayed, very monolithic. Steve lists them by country at the finest level. But as someone who's parents were from Lebanon and whose grandparents were from Iraq, I can assure you that if Steve's chart bothered to expand either of those countries out by Arabic dialect at the village level, it would dwarf the Aramaic family of dialects. And that's just modern Iraqi or Lebanese dialects. Imagine other countries.

Also, the other languages like Hebrew, Akkadian and Geez are represented very generically and monolithically. As an Assyrian, I can assure you that Akkadian had many more dialects than what is represented there.

So in summary, I'm ok with the chart in the sense of the general language families. But I don't understand the extreme specificity of the Aramaic groupings by village, and not the same treatment of the other groups.

For a similar summary of English dialects, see here:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CAwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.m.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FList_of_dialects_of_the_English_language&ei=shftUtTEKaOTyQH-vYFg&usg=AFQjCNG7-ETFhPUJMWE_aZKMHYQFJY8CsA">http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=w ... HYQFJY8CsA</a><!-- m -->

+Shamasha
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Messages In This Thread
A map of Semitic Languages - by Bram - 02-01-2014, 05:49 AM
Re: A map of Semitic Languages - by Paul Younan - 02-01-2014, 04:06 PM
Re: A map of Semitic Languages - by Bram - 02-02-2014, 12:53 PM
Re: A map of Semitic Languages - by Paul Younan - 02-02-2014, 04:43 PM
Re: A map of Semitic Languages - by Bram - 02-04-2014, 12:14 AM

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