Sureth is the term commonly used by the indigenous Assyrian Christian populations of Iraq, Syria, and Southeastern Turkey to refer to the various dialects of the Neo-Aramaic language spoken in those areas. In Iran, the word Suraya or Suryaya is often heard instead. The number of its speakers is estimated to range from 500,000 to two million people[1].
The term Swadaya (which means "conversational" or "vernacular") can also be found, in contrast to the word Sapraya (which means "literary").
In the area called Tur Abdin (to the west of the Sureth speaking area), the local language is called Turoyo. When they want to distinguish their languages between each other Sureth/Swadaya and Surayt/Turoyo speakers use the terms Madinkhaya (respectively Madenhoyo in Turoyo) meaning "Eastern (dialect)" and Ma'irwaya (respectively Ma'erboyo) meaning "Western (dialect)".[2]
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Scholars differ on the origin of Sureth[3]. It is undeniably a Semitic language spoken by the natives of the Fertile Crescent prior to the Muslim invasion. The core of its heartland is the North of the Fertile Crescent (most particularly Northern Iraq, Syria, North-Western Iran and South-Eastern Turkey). All native speakers of this language (or dialect), wherever they may be (America, Europe, Australia, the Middle-East, etc.), can trace their ancestry to Northern Mesopotamia (that is to say Northern Iraq), the core of the Assyrian Empire that had Nineveh as its capital-city.
This area has undergone many upheavals and invasions, especially Persian (Aryan), Arab and Turkish. Sureth is a far cry from Akkadian language (written in cuneiform characters, that can be deciphered nowadays), though close in phonology.
Among other alterations, Sureth has borrowed a lot to the invaders' languages (Persian, Greek, Arabic, Turk or even English).
For instance, conjugation in Sureth has been strongly influenced by Aryan languages and has a peculiar situation of its own among the Semitic languages, different from Arabic and Hebrew notably. Last but not least, the vast stretch of land covered by the Assyrian Empire has seen the emergence of a wide variety of variants (or local dialects) sometimes unconnected to each other ranging from Biblical Aramaic to Iranian Sureth including Samaritan, Mandaic, classical Syriac, etc.