Talk:Mandaic language

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• The Mandaic language is the liturgical language of the Mandaean religion; a vernacular form is still spoken by a small community in Iran around Ahwaz and as well in Iraq.

To my knowledge, the Neo-Mandiac dialects spoken in Iraq are now extinct; if anyone has any information suggesting that it is still alive, I'd be much obliged. Leo Caesius 03:23, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I think in not declaring Neo-Mandaic extinct we are keeping the options open. The problem is that up-to-date linguistic surveys are incomplete. All we can say is that Neo-Mandaic is heavily endangered, with a few tens of speakers around Ahvaz. — Gareth Hughes 10:45, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

But what we know for sure is that there still are Mandians in Iraq (of course we can't stay how many.) Can we all agree on that? Chaldean 23:38, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

There is a Mandaean community in Iraq, some of them know Classical Mandaean, but they speak Arabic as their first language. Only a small number of Mandaeans in Ahvaz speak Neo-Mandaic, or the vernacular. The section of the article to which you've added Iraq is about the vernacular. Unless you can produce published reasearch to the contrary, no Iraqi Mandaeans speak Neo-Mandaic. There are a number of pieces of research that back this up: Wolfhart Heinrichs's Studies in Neo-Aramaic says as much. — Gareth Hughes 00:02, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

This article needs to put a lot more emphasis on classical Mandaic and literature and its relations to the other classical Aramaic languages and literature. The article barely mentions this. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jimhoward72 (talk • contribs) 12:13, 17 May 2007.

Rudolf Macuch's Handbook of Classical and Modern Mandaic is the classic source material for updating this article. — Gareth Hughes 13:08, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

"In terms of its grammar, Neo-Mandaic is the most conservative among the Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialects, preserving the old Semitic "suffix" conjugation (or perfect)." The first part of this sentence implies that Neo-Mandaic is conservative overall. The preservation of one grammatical element (the suffix conjugation), no matter how striking or how frequent in texts, doesn't mean that it is conservative in other ways. Is it? It's like saying that Jethro Tull's front man Ian Anderson is conservative because he wore a top hat. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.112.64.79 (talk) 14:52, 29 September 2007 (UTC)