Cyprots ran to save Sanaa, a language with only 900 speakers

Kormakitis (Cyprus): Ash threatens the cigarette of Eosif Scordis, as he reminded with fellow villagers in a language on the edge of extinction, one who partially detects his roots in the language, Jesus Christ spoke once.The 97 -year -old is one of the only 900 people in the world who speaks Cyprat Meronite Arabic, or Sana. Today, his village of Kormacitis is once the last stronghold of the language spoken by thousands of people.For less than two decades, the tongue, an offshoot of the Syrian Arabic that has absorbed some Greek had no written script, as the children learned it orally from the parents. According to the council of minority language experts in Europe, Sana is in danger of disappearing. But the 7,500-strong Meronite community is pushing back in Cyprus. With the help of Cypriot Govt and EU, it has built schools, created a Sanna alphabet to publish textbooks and introduced classes to keep the language alive and prosper.Sana was brought to Cyprus by Arab Christians, who were now attacking the Arab Muslim fighters in Syria, Lebanon and Israel, who were starting as the 8th century. The Sana AT route is a semitic language, unlike other Arabic dialects, the Arami marks, which were spoken by the population before the Arab attack of Levant, the University of Cyprus Linguistics Professor Marilena Carolemau, which leads the team responsible for the language revision.