Assyrians speak Akkadian-influenced Aramaic (Suret, Turoyo), one of the oldest continuously spoken and written languages in the world. Aramaic has influenced Hebrew, Arabic, and some parts of Mongolian and Uighur. Aramaic was the lingua franca of West Asia and the language Jesus spoke.[34][35][36][37]
The ancestral indigenous lands that form the Assyrian homeland are those of ancient Mesopotamia and the Zab rivers, a region currently divided between modern-day Iraq, southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, and northeastern Syria.[41] A majority of modern Assyrians have migrated to other regions of the world, including North America, the Levant, Australia, Europe, Russia and the Caucasus. Emigration was triggered by genocidal events throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as religious persecution by Islamic extremists.
The emergence of the Islamic State and the occupation of a significant portion of the Assyrian homeland resulted in another major wave of Assyrian displacement due to events such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies, and the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011. Of the one million or more Iraqis who have fled Iraq since the occupation, nearly 40% were indigenous Assyrians, even though Assyrians accounted for only around 3% of the pre-war Iraqi population.[42][43]
^Miri, Adhid (27 January 2021). "Chaldeans in Europe Part V". Chaldean News. Archived from the original on 14 December 2022. Retrieved 14 December 2022.
^"Canada Census Profile 2021". Census Profile, 2021 Census. Statistics Canada Statistique Canada. 7 May 2021. Archived from the original on 3 January 2023. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
^Kramer, Samuel Noah (1988). In the world of Sumer: an autobiography. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. ISBN0-8143-2121-6. OCLC17726815.
^A. Leo Oppenheim (1964). Ancient Mesopotamia(PDF). The University of Chicago Press. Archived(PDF) from the original on 10 October 2017. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
^Naby, Eden (2016), The Assyrians and Aramaic: Speaking the Oldest Living Language of the Middle East.
^The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Aramaic language.
^Barr, James, WHICH LANGUAGE DID JESUS SPEAK? SOME REMARKS OF A SEMITIST, p. 29.
^Khan, Geoffrey (2012), The Language of the Modern Assyrians: The North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialect group.
^Minahan, James (2002). Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations: A-C. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 206. ISBN978-0-313-32109-2. The Assyrians, although closely associated with their Christian religion, are divided among a number of Christian sects. The largest denominations are the Chaldean Catholic Church with about 45% of the Assyrian population, the Syriac Orthodox with 26%, the Assyrian Church of the East with 19%, the free Orthodox Church of Antioch or Syriac Catholic Church with 4%, and various Protestant sects with a combined 6%.
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