Turoyo
[aka Ṭurōyō, Suryoyo, Syryoyo]Classification: Afro-Asiatic
·vulnerable
Classification: Afro-Asiatic
·vulnerable
Information from: “Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 16th Edition (2009)” . M. Paul Lewis · SIL International
"3,000 in Turkey (1994 H. Mutzafi). Ethnic population: 50,000 to 70,000 (1994)."
Southeast Turkey, Mardin Province (originally).
Information from: “Tûrôyo - Die Volkssprache der syrischen Christen des Tûr 'Abdîn” . Hellmut Ritter (1967)
19,356 Christians in Tur 'Abdin, 1,500 in Istanbul, 150 in Ankara, 1,000 in Diyarbkir, 100 in El Aziz, 100 in Malatya, and 350 in Adiyaman. Outside the central village, people who move to cities typically no longer speak the language.
In the younger generations there are many loaned sounds from Arabic into Turoyo. The language is used for most local affairs.
Kurdish
Turkish
Kurmanci ('North Kurdish')
Arabic
There is a lot of languages mixing among cohabiting ethnic groups. Arabic is the most prevalent, with more borrowing of Arabic words into Turoyo, and a few nouns and particles from Kurmanci.
It is difficult to use the old Syrian script for Turoyo now because it has changed so much due to Arabic influence. Schoolchildren learn the Latin script, but there is no official modified version to account for non-western sounds in Turoyo. The author puts forward one such conventionalized system.
There are diaspora communities in Lebanon, the US, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Iraq. Those in Syria in Lebanon are under greater Arabic influence.
Information from: “Personal Communication” . Charles Häberl (2013)
Information from: “Turoyo and Mlahso” (697-708) . Otto Jastrow (2011) , Stefan Weninger · de Gruyter
Both Turoyo and Mlahso were unwritten vernaculars, with solely oral transmission. In recent years European diaspora communities have made attempts to write Turoyo, either in Syriac or in Latin characters.
"The original homeland of the Turoyo language is the so-called Tur-'Abdin, a compact area in the eastern part of Mardin province, in south-east Turkey. The Turoyo-speaking population who lived there were Christian and largely adhered to the Syrian Orthodox Church. The ethnocide of the Armenians in 1915 also brought death and destruction to Tur 'Abdin but did not lead to a wholesale extermination of the ethnic group. By 1970 an estimated 20,000 Turoyo speakers still lived in the area, but due to continuing pressure they gradually emigrated to Western Europe and other parts of the world. The Turoyo-speaking diaspora in Central Europe and Scandinavia is estimated at some 40,000 people, and there are also large communities in the United States, Canada and Australia while only a few hundred speakers remain in the original homeland."
Information from: “Glottolog” .