English: Jewish Neo-Aramaic, part of the Northeastern Neo-Aramaic grouping of Neo-Aramaic dialects, is an extension of the ancient Aramaic language. Jewish Neo-Aramaic is comprised of various dialects originating from the Kurdish region, including Lishan Didan (לשן דידן), spoken by the Jews from Urmia ("Urmi"), Iran. Lishan Didan is endangered, as most speakers have migrated to Israel and the United States and are now elderly [1].

The speaker interviewed in this video is Rahel Gadi, who was born in Urmia, Iran. This interview was filmed in Queens, New York, and it was conducted, transcribed, and translated by Samuel Miller from the HUC-JIR Jewish Language Project.

This video was created as part of a Wikimedia Community Fund grant with Wikitongues titled "Documenting and increasing Jewish language representation on Wikimedia" [2].

Note: The "+" in the Latin transcription (top line of subtitles) represents velarized consonants and vowels, which are phonemically contrastive in Lishan Didan [3].

1. https://www.jewishlanguages.org/jewish-aramaic

2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Programs/Wikimedia_Community_Fund/Documenting_and_increasing_Jewish_language_representation_on_Wikimedia

3. Khan, Geoffrey (2008). The Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmi. Piscataway, NJ: Georgias Press.