Neo-Mandaic
| Neo-Mandaic | |
|---|---|
| Mandɔyí | |
| Pronunciation | [mændɔːˈji] |
| Native to | Iran, formerly Iraq |
|
Native speakers
|
100–200 (2014) |
| Mandaic alphabet | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | nucl1706 |
Neo-Mandaic, sometimes called the "ratna" (Arabic: رطنة raṭna "jargon"), is the modern reflex of Classical Mandaic, the liturgical language of the Mandaean religious community of Iraq and Iran. Although severely endangered, it survives today 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 bi- or even tri-lingual 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 dialects.
As the only known Aramaic literary language with a surviving modern reflex, Mandaic has one of the longest continuous histories of attestation of any Aramaic dialect and is therefore potentially of great interest to scholars of Aramaic.
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 1965b, Macuch 1989, and Macuch 1993) and Khorramshahr (in Häberl 2009). These dialects are mutually intelligible to the extent that speakers of either dialect will deny that there are any differences between the two.
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