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Cypriot Maronite

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Re: Cypriot Maronite

Postby qelo » Sun Oct 18, 2015 11:22 pm

Get Real! wrote:
yialousa1971 wrote:I think GR is Syrian. :)

why is he hiding it though? :D

In fear of being drafted... :?

Don't worry, I'm Lebanese.
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Re: Cypriot Maronite

Postby qelo » Sun Oct 18, 2015 11:24 pm

Get Real! wrote:
qelo wrote:anyone here that speak the cypriot maronite language?

No mate, but I have a maronite customer if that helps... :?

One time he showed me his summer photos of a family trip they took to visit St Maron before all the troubles begun.


oh cool ! I am interested in knowing more about their language and current situation.
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Re: Cypriot Maronite

Postby qelo » Sun Oct 18, 2015 11:30 pm

Oceanside50 wrote:
qelo wrote:This thread is to discuss and share info about Cypriot Maronites.

Anyone here is a cypriot maronite or knows anything about them. Do share. Thanks.

:)

I have a Greek Cypriot friend who married a maronite. Two questions 1) since they are a minority in Cyprus and in all the countries they live in, do they have any misgivings about allowing their kids to marry outside of the Maronite culture and does this differ among males and females. 2) are Maronites both orthodox or catholic or only catholic?


what I know about them is (not 100% sure it's all accurate):
1-After the turks invaded north cyrpus, Maronite were forced to go down south and seperate, and their villages in the north were destroyed/occupied. Today, there is 4 maronites villages left in the North. So, since most of them are in the south and not living in maronite villages, they probably got mixed with the rest. (not sure about it though)
2- Only Catholic
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Re: Cypriot Maronite

Postby repulsewarrior » Fri Oct 23, 2015 3:58 am

Quote:
Bringing back to life an ancient language
By Sebastian Heller Published on February 7, 2010, Cyprus Mail

A COMMUNITY living in northern Scandinavia may hold the key to how the Maronites can save their ancient language which dates back to biblical times.

Cypriot Maronite Arabic (CMA) is a distinct language composed of a mixture of Arabic and Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ and his disciples, but its use has been in decline for more than 30 years.

A seminar in Nicosia this weekend will look at ways to reverse this trend by focusing on the lessons learnt from the Sami community in far northern Scandinavia.

“The situation of the Maronite community in Cyprus is very similar to the situation of the Sami 30 years ago, where they were being assimilated by the dominant Norwegian group,” said Costas Costantinou, a professor from the University of Keele who has helped organise the workshop.

The Sámi, more commonly known as Lapps, initially faced conditions and challenges very similar to those of the Maronite community in Cyprus. Consequently the workshop is intended “To see what wisdom, what good practice can be taken from their case, as their example is very successful,” said Costantinou.

The total size of the Maronite community in Cyprus numbers around 5,500, and around 1,000 of them speak CMA. Traditionally, only the Maronites from the occupied village of Kormakitis spoke the language. Members of the community from the other Maronite villages - Asomatos, Karpasia and Ayia Marina - are all Greek speakers. Following the 1974 invasion, the majority of the Maronites from Kormakitis moved south and the language went into sharp decline.

“Up until the present day, it was exclusively from the home that we would learn the language. In the past, when we were in our villages, the whole context supported it, it was easy to speak our language,” said Peppinos Moussas, a Maronite currently living in Nicosia, “Afterwards, once we were scattered, it was difficult.”

Nowadays, large efforts are being made on a social level, and in an organised way, to rejuvenate the language and culture particularly for those under the age of 30.

Following a number of Council of Europe resolutions and recommendations, in November 2008 the Republic of Cyprus formally declared to the Council of Europe that it recognises CMA as a minority language. As a result “the state has various legal responsibilities from now on to protect the language,” said Moussas.

Like the Sami, who 30 years ago were in the position where the dominant Norweigian majority was trying to assimilate them into their culture, language and society, the Maronites do not want to be viewed as a “religious group” but as a “community”.

“There have been repeated calls from our representative, Mr Hadjiroussos, for us to recognised as such,” said Giorgos Skordis, a Maronite who co-ordinates the Xki Fi Sanna (Speak Our Language) educational programme involving approximately 30 students. He emphasised that the Maronites, though they have developed alongside the mainstream population for centuries (since the 7th century AD) have a different history, different heritage, religion and, of course, a distinct language.

“The existence of CMA provides the ‘hard fact’ that Maronites are a national minority with a distinct ethnic identity, not merely a ‘religious group’ that is compelled to affiliate to either the Greek or Turkish Cypriot community as provided by Article 2 of the 1960 Cypriot Constitution,” noted Costantinou in his article “The Protection and Revival of Cypriot Maronite Arabic” produced for the Peace Research Institute Oslo centre which is organising this weekend’s workshop.

The Xki Fi Sanna initiative is co-funded by the European Economic Area countries of Norway, Iceland, Lichtenstein and Switzerland (90 per cent of the cost) and the Republic of Cyprus (10 per cent).
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Re: Cypriot Maronite

Postby repulsewarrior » Fri Oct 23, 2015 3:59 am

Cyprus Maronites battle to preserve rare ancestral language
By Simon Martelli
Agence France-Presse
Page 7
2010-03-06 12:00 AM
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With his twice-weekly lessons, Elias Zonias is fighting to preserve the ancestral language of Cyprus's dwindling Maronite community, described by experts as a "treasure" but now threatened with extinction by rapid demographic change.
Every year the number of children at the island's only Maronite school has been shrinking, he says, highlighting the difficulty of keeping alive his native tongue, a unique form of Arabic that is strongly influenced by the Aramaic spoken by Jesus and his followers.

"I feel that I'm lucky because I'm part of a small group of people who speaks this language well," says Zonias, 41, a cheerful father of three with a passion for photography.

"But we see the problem here in this school. Every year the number of children goes down," he notes, adding that he now has only 20 pupils learning Cyprus Maronite Arabic, or CMA, a language with a non-written, oral tradition.

The Maronite Christian community, inhabiting Cyprus since the 12th century, has been battling to preserve its historic identity since Turkey's 1974 military invasion forcibly partitioned the island into the Greek-speaking south and the Turkish-occupied north.

Forced to take sides, the Maronites opted for the south, leaving behind their traditional agricultural heartland in the north, a move that virtually displaced the entire community.

Kormakitis, the largest of four Maronite villages in the north, is the home of CMA and now a dying community, with fewer than 150 elderly inhabitants and its only school closed for more than 10 years.

When Zonias and others like him arrived in their new schools in the south they had trouble being understood by the other Greek-speaking pupils, few of whom had even heard of their language.

Today, there are 5,000 Cyprus Maronites scattered throughout the island and only about a thousand native speakers of CMA.

Most Maronites tend to marry outside the clan now and very few speak the language to their children, eroding the most distinctive aspect of the community's identity.

Zonias is currently working on a CMA dictionary - a crucial step in rehabilitating the oral tongue - which he hopes will be ready by Easter.

In November 2008, under strong pressure from the Council of Europe, the Cyprus government agreed to officially recognize CMA as a minority language, a move that boosted the hopes of Zonias and others like him.

'The language is a treasure

"The recognition of the language is a very important step, because it now gives Maronites the right to be taught in their language, to demand things for the Maronite school," says Costas Constantinou, international relations professor at the University of Nicosia.

"This language is a treasure that is worth saving," he says.

The Cypriot Maronites' vernacular tongue is closely linked to their religion, and like their far more numerous counterparts in Syria and Lebanon Maronite churches in Cyprus use in their liturgy the ancient Christian language Syriac, a branch of a group of Semitic tongues known as Aramaic.

George Skordis, another CMA activist from Kormakitis, said that saving the language required urgency.

"The situation is urgent because people are dying every day, and some of the words are only known to a few of them," says Skordis, who runs the NGO "Hki Fi Sanna," meaning "Speak our language" in CMA.
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Re: Cypriot Maronite

Postby repulsewarrior » Fri Jan 29, 2016 9:32 pm

...another bit of news.

Preservation of the Maronite Arabic language moving forward

http://cyprus-mail.com/2016/01/29/prese ... g-forward/


...Cypriot Arabic, i did not know that it is an Official Language.
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Re: Cypriot Maronite

Postby tsukoui » Sat Jan 30, 2016 12:07 pm

Cypriot Maronite Song:
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Re: Cypriot Maronite

Postby repulsewarrior » Tue Feb 09, 2016 6:13 am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVKH7thX8vc

The Third Motherland (Cyprus, 2011)
A documentary film by Costas M. Constantinou and Giorgos Kykkou Skordis

...to be perfectly honest i have not watched the whole thing yet. I include it here, to easily find it frankly, for those interested in the subject, and for the record.

cheers.
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Re: Cypriot Maronite

Postby repulsewarrior » Wed Dec 07, 2016 4:24 am

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