Syria’s Tirbespi preserves ancient Syriac Christian language
TIRBESPI, Syria (North Press) – Youssef Elia, a Syriac resident from the city of Tirbespi 30 km east of Qamishli, said that his family members did not give up their native Syriac language.
He added that the church and school also play a prominent role in spreading the language among Syriacs, teaching them to read and write in their own language.
The Syriac Church plays its role in preserving this language through religious rituals, and private summer schools also teach the language.
Nowadays, teachers who graduate from Syriac cultural institutions also teach it in schools.
Spoken language
Elia belongs to a family that moved, along with other Syriac families, from Turkey, and have lived in the city for more than 80 years.
The Syriac people of Tirbespi are known as having preserved their spoken language despite the difficult circumstances they faced, most notably the Seyfo Genocide, when Ottoman soldiers and their allied forces massacred and forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands of Assyrian Christians living within the Empire.
Elia told North Press that the community was able to preserve the language by speaking its vernacular among the people. However, he gave credit to the prominent role of the church and school in teaching the formal language.
Tirbespi contains one church, the St. Mary Orthodox Church, which belongs to the Syriac Orthodox community.
As a result of emigration during the Syrian war, the number of Syriac families in Tirbespi decreased from 315 to 165, according to the Syriac Orthodox Milli Council in the city.
The Syriac Language
Saliba Bahno, a member of the Syriac Orthodox Milli council in the town, said that Syriac families preserved their language with the support of the church, which allocated Syriac schools and activities and taught the Syriac language in schools at all levels.
He added that Syriac schools are still teaching Syriac language, and many Syriac teachers graduated from these schools themselves.
The emigration of Syriac teachers affected the teaching process in schools between 2013 and 2015.
However, with the issuance of a decision by Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria (AANES) in 2013 to give classes to teach the languages of the region’s communities in schools, training for the Syriac language teachers began at the headquarters of the Syriac Cultural Association.
School curriculum
Mona Chamoun, a Syriac language teacher, said the priest of St. Mary Orthodox Church and one of the old teachers supervised the teacher training program initially.
She added, “We taught Syriac to Syriac students and to the children from other communities as well, after training in the Syriac Cultural Association, until the establishment of the Ulf Tau Foundation.
Ulf Tau is a foundation working on training and graduating Syriac language teachers and preparing special curricula for the Syriac language.
Reading and music in the Syriac language are taught from the first grade to the preparatory stage in all schools of the town, according to Faya Ardish, the official of the Ulf Tau Foundation in Tirbespi.
The same subjects are also taught in the Syriac language for the first and second grades in the church’s private school, at a rate of five lessons per week.
The Amal Private School in Tirbespi provides education for 125 students from Syriac families.
Ulf Tau is currently working on increasing the number of teachers assigned to Syriac language in the private school, making them four instead of two, and preparing a curriculum for the third and fourth grades.