9 Language Change and Maintenance among Mandaic Speakers of Iran: A Socio-linguistic Study

Abstract

Mandaic is a highly endangered language spoken by an ethnic minority group, with almost a few hundred native speakers in Khuzestan, southern Iran. This study aims to determine how Mandaic language has been shifted and maintained in various domains of use within the Mandaean community of Ahvaz, Khuzestan. The native speakers of Mandaic constitute a low percentage of their community, and the majority of the most recent generation has no effective command of the language. In this field study, questionnaires were used to collect data from a sample group of 100 Mandaeans across four generations. The results show that the frequency of spoken Mandaic is decreasing in all age groups. Since the language use is regressive, the new generation of speakers is likely to be the last. Persian, the official language of Iran, and Arabic, the most widely spoken language in Khuzestan, have negatively affected the Mandaic language significantly, therefore most of the Mandaic speakers are bilingual or even multilingual. The status of Persian as the official language of administration and education explains the dwindling of the use of local minority languages. Therefore, speakers of Mandaic language have mainly shifted to Persian and Arabic.