Language
Syrians are mainly Arabic speakers. While some may speak the formal literary Arabic, many Syrians speak Syrian Arabic, a dialect which belongs to the Levantine Arabic family of dialects. There are also sub-dialects in Syrian Arabic; for example, people from Aleppo have a distinct and distinguishable accent, one that differs considerably from that of people from Homs or Al-Hasakah. Syrians can usually comprehend and understand the dialects of most Arabs, especially those who speak any form of Levantine Arabic.
Many old Syrian American families have lost their linguistic traditions because many parents do not teach their children Arabic. Newer immigrants, however, maintain their language traditions. The 2000 census shows that 79.9% of Syrian Americans speak English "very well". Throughout the United States, there are schools which offer Arabic language classes; there are also some Eastern Orthodox churches which hold Arabic services.
Aramaic dialects are spoken also, mainly by ethnic Assyrian Christians, and Armenian by those of Armenian ethnicity.
Read more about this topic: Syrian American
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
“In a language known to us, we have substituted the opacity of the sounds with the transparence of the ideas. But a language we do not know is a closed place in which the one we love can deceive us, making us, locked outside and convulsed in our impotence, incapable of seeing or preventing anything.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“There’s a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)