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Sadly I'm not a native speaker, but my children (when I have some) will be native speakers. I learned the language in my teens during Shabbat studies with my father. After I read an article on Eliazer ben Yehuda and his work on Modern Hebrew, I was inspired to work on modernizing and expanding my own religious dialect of Aramaic. That is primarily why I joined this group, to see if anyone else was doing something similar. Isarlaean, like the term Jewish, is ethnic, religious, and linguistic. The word itself comes from an old Medo-Persian word for the Northern Kingdom of Israel, "Isareyl." My mother's family comes from the Haruvatuan province of Old Medya in eastern Iran, which according to our family history had a high concentration of Reuveni and Naftali exiles. The Haruvatuans were called "Isarlyanin" by the Aramaic speaking Persians and "Haruvatyi" by those speaking Parsi. Somehow both names stuck. All the Zoroastrian religious connections we once had were exchanged for Judeo-Christianity when we (called Hrvats by the Slavs) migrated to Eastern Europe. Centuries later some of us (now called Isarlaeans) fled to America after constantly being harrassed by the Roman Catholic Church; those who stayed behind (now called Hrvats) converted to Catholocism. Today in America we're often mistaken as Karaite Jews because of our emphasis on the Torah, astronomy, and the lunar calendar. The only connection we have with the Assyrians is a historical one, that they exiled our ancestors to Medya (Media). Interestingly enough, after I attended a local Jewish synagogue for several months, they actually considered me to be Jewish based on my Torah observance. It's all very strange really. -Jacob- --- Yitzik wrote: > > Wow! Are you then, so to say, a native speaker? Or is it learnt later just > for religious purposes, as I did with my Hebrew? What religion/confession > uses Aramaic: Nestorian church, I guess? > > Kol b'rakhot, > or, as they say in Ajami (my Arabo-Romance conlang), "todos los tabrikos", > -- Yitzik >