Al-Iraqiya news recently started a Syriac-language broadcast in an attempt to preserve the ancient language, which derives from Aramaic, the original language of the Bible and Jesus. They are based in Baghdad. People at the network and in the Iraqi Christian community talk about what this means for them.
Thats awesome! It’s sad to see so few people preserving smaller dialects, much less entire dying languages. Even in non English-speaking places, language tends to drift towards whatever the officially sanctioned ones (read “whatever is taught in school”) are.