“Back then the village…was almost entirely Christian, a vestige of an older and more diverse Middle East that existed before the arrival of Islam.”
I deeply feel the death of languages, experiencing it on a personal front in a relationship where my spouse doesn’t speak my mother tongue, and witnessing it in places like this where their language fading away.
BUT - what the heck does that quoted sentence mean? Islam came to Syria around 1238 AD. Why does that sort of irritating Orientalist dribble still pass for journalism?
baraka 7:28 pm on April 22, 2008 | #
“Back then the village…was almost entirely Christian, a vestige of an older and more diverse Middle East that existed before the arrival of Islam.”
I deeply feel the death of languages, experiencing it on a personal front in a relationship where my spouse doesn’t speak my mother tongue, and witnessing it in places like this where their language fading away.
BUT - what the heck does that quoted sentence mean? Islam came to Syria around 1238 AD. Why does that sort of irritating Orientalist dribble still pass for journalism?
musafir 5:38 pm on April 23, 2008 | #
Wow, I had no idea that Aramaic is still in existence (albeit dying out). I thought it was already completely lost.