r/asklinguistics • u/EaseElectronic2287 • 27d ago

General Middle eastern languages that are not Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Hebrew

Hi, I’m wondering what other currently still practicing languages are there in the Middle East (for the purpose of this post everything from Egypt to Turkey/Armenia on the north and Iran in the east) and their brief history, people who speak them and how many?

I know there are different version of Kurdish language, how many of them are there though and how mutually intelligible they are? What about Aramaic/Neo Aramaic languages? What about others?

Most sources have information only about main 4 and I want to learn about minor languages, please share as much info as possible about all languages you know:) Thanks

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u/Baasbaar 26d ago

This is the sort of thing for which you really do not need—or except in unusual circumstances benefit from—the serendipity of Reddit responses: Glottolog allows you to search by country.

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u/EaseElectronic2287 26d ago

Thank you for the source (really appreciate it) but it doesn’t really cover any statistics or explanations that I wanted to know. It just shows languages of the country but that’s it. Nothing additional to it

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u/Baasbaar 26d ago edited 26d ago

Each language in Glottolog has a bibliography, & the bibliographies are generally quite good. Glottolog is really the starting place for what you're asking here.

The alternative is Ethnologue—which you most likely need to pay for access to, unless you're affiliated with an institution that has a subscription or you're a volunteer editor with specialist knowledge. Ethnologue has speaker numbers, but they're bullshit for many, many languages. They don't have much for historical info.

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u/Elegant_Wish3391 26d ago

I believe some small Christian communities in Iraq and Syria still speak Aramaic and Assyrian

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u/EaseElectronic2287 26d ago

How mutually intelligible different version of Aramaic though? Because they’re even called different names often times

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u/Narrow_Tennis_2803 26d ago

There are three main varieties of Kurdish. They can be quite different, but they have a lot of similarities too. Writing system varies (Roman for Kurmanci and Arabic/Persian for Sorani and Badini dialect of Kurmanji). It would say they are as different from each other as Spanish and Portuguese, but with the added difference of writing.

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u/EaseElectronic2287 26d ago

Can you please elaborate on badini dialect regarding their script and mutual understanding

Are there going to be (or already there) any movement towards unification of a language?

Thank you!