The 12 Wise Men
( BBC)
(BBC) -- Thirty years ago there were 50,000 Christians in south-eastern Turkey speaking a dialect of Aramaic - the language of Christ. Now there are 2,500. Talking to one of them, the BBC's Jeremy Bristow learned that instead of Three Kings, there might actually have been 12.
Fresh out of his farm clothes, Habib the mayor now sits at his table in a crisply ironed shirt. He's a gentle, almost diffident man in his early 50s, but he can form his letters with a calm assurance. He's the custodian of a dying language.
Dipping his pen into the inkwell, he momentarily pauses, then starts to write. The broad nib moves right to left in neat black flicks and dashes, some vertical, some slanted, some horizontal, often with a deft flourish at the end. Sometimes Habib fashions a triangle, sometimes a circle, sometimes he adorns the shapes with a dot, indicating a vowel.
Read more at: http://aina.org/ata/20181222131416.htm
I will have to read the entire article, maybe their population dropped for various reasons (like persecution) but it is amazing that they speak Aramaic.
