Assyrian Urmia dialects. Intelligibility Urmi Neo-Aramaic, at the northeastern extreme end of this area, is somewhat intelligible with Trans-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic (spoken further south, in Iranian Kurdistan) and Inter-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic (formerly spoken around Kirkuk, Iraq). However, the local Christian Neo-Aramaic dialects of Suret Neo-Aramaic are only mildly mutually intelligible: Christian and Jewish communities living side by side developed completely different variants of Aramaic that had more in common with their coreligionists living further away than with their neighbors. The topography in many of the dialects of Neo-Aramaic is so distinct that small villages, (like the town of Arodhin which consisted of two Jewish families), had their own dialect. Phonology Consonants Most dialects feature a weakening of historically emphatic consonants. For example, Urmi dialect features suprasegmental velarization in historically emphatic contexts. Sometimes these consonants can be realized differently: // is often realized as [ ~ ] between a vowel/sonant and a vowel // is realized as [ ~ ~ ] // is realized as [] in intervocalic and post-vocalic positions // is realized as [] before //, //, and // // is realized as [] in non-velarized words, and [] in velarized words //, //, and // tend to be devoiced when near voiceless consonants Vowels Some vowels are realized in many different ways: /a/ is realized as [] most commonly in non-velarized words [] when in the vicinity of back and labial consonants in stressed syllables in pretonic open syllables at the end of a word in velarized words [] when, for non-velarized words in unstressed closed syllables in open syllables that do not immediately precede the stress [] when in the sequence /aø/ (sometimes) [] when, for velarized words in unstressed closed syllables in open syllables that do not immediately precede the stress /ə/ is realized as [ ~ ] in non-velarized words [] in velarized words /o/ is realized as [] in non-velarized words [] in velarized words /u/ is realized as [] in non-velarized words [] in unstressed closed syllables [] in velarized words [] in unstressed closed syllables /i/ and /e/ are realized with lowered onglides and/or offglides in velarized words Comparisons Below is a general comparison of different Neo-Aramaic dialect differences in phonology: Reflexes As a trans-Zab dialect, Jewish Salamas *ḏ has a reflex l like the Irbil dialect above. Examples are: The reflex for Jewish Salamas of *ṯ is l like the Urmia