Neo-Aramaic in the context of "Assyrian people"

Terms for Syriac Christians are endonymic (native) and exonymic (foreign) terms, that are used as designations for Syriac Christians, as adherents of Syriac Christianity. In its widest scope, Syriac Christianity encompass all Christian denominations that follow East Syriac Rite or West Syriac Rite, and thus use Classical Syriac as their main liturgical language. Traditional divisions among Syriac Christians along denominational lines are reflected in the use of various theological and ecclesiological designations, both historical and modern. Specific terms such as: Jacobites, Saint Thomas Syrian Christians, Maronites, Melkites, Nasranis, and Nestorians have been used in reference to distinctive groups and branches of Eastern Christianity, including those of Syriac liturgical and linguistic traditions. Some of those terms are polysemic, and their uses (both historical and modern) have been a subject of terminological disputes between different communities, and also among scholars.

Territorially, Syriac Christians are divided in two principal groups: Syriac Christians of the Near East, and Syriac Christians of India. Terminology related to Syriac Christians of the Near East includes a specific group of ethnoreligious terms, related to various Semitic communities of Neo-Aramaic-speaking Christians, that are indigenous to modern Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and Palestine.

Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) is a grouping of related dialects of Neo-Aramaic spoken before World War I as a vernacular language by Jews and Assyrian Christians between the Tigris and Lake Urmia, stretching north to Lake Van and southwards to Mosul and Kirkuk. As a result of the Assyrian genocide, Christian speakers were forced out of the area that is now Turkey and in the early 1950s most Jewish speakers moved to Israel. The Kurdish-Turkish conflict resulted in further dislocations of speaker populations. As of the 1990s, the NENA group had an estimated number of fluent speakers among the Assyrians just below 500,000, spread throughout the Middle East and the Assyrian diaspora. In 2007, linguist Geoffrey Khan wrote that many dialects were nearing extinction with fluent speakers difficult to find.

The other branches of Neo-Aramaic are Western Neo-Aramaic, Central Neo-Aramaic (Turoyo and Mlahso), and Mandaic. Some linguists classify NENA, as well as Turoyo and Mlahso, as a single dialect continuum.

Assyrians (Syriac: ܣܘܪ̈ܝܐ, romanized: Sūrāyē / Sūrōyē) are an ethnic group indigenous to Mesopotamia, a geographical region in West Asia. Modern Assyrians share descent directly from the ancient Assyrians, one of the key civilizations of Mesopotamia. While they are distinct from other Mesopotamian groups, such as the Babylonians, they share in the broader cultural heritage of the Mesopotamian region. Modern Assyrians may culturally self-identify as Syriacs, Chaldeans, or Arameans for religious, geographic, and tribal identification.

The ancient Assyrians originally spoke Akkadian, an East Semitic language, but subsequently switched to the Aramaic language and currently speak various dialects of Neo-Aramaic, specifically those known as Suret and Turoyo, which are among the oldest continuously spoken and written languages in the world. Aramaic (language of the Arameans) was the lingua franca of West Asia for centuries and was the language spoken by Jesus. It has influenced other languages such as Hebrew and Arabic, and, through cultural and religious exchanges, it has had some influence on Mongolian and Uighur. Aramaic itself is the oldest continuously spoken and written language in the Middle East, with a history stretching back over 3,000 years.