| Even from when I was a teenager, I knew there were a lot of Chaldeans in Michigan but it never was really clear to me what, exactly, Chaldeans are. Turns out that they are, basically, Christian (Roman Catholic) people from Iraqi and nearby Turkey. From the Detroit Free Press:
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, about 34,500 Michigan residents were Chaldean, Syriac or Assyrian, the three Iraqi Christian groups whose members speak, or have ancestors who spoke, Aramaic. Aramaic was the language most widely used in the Middle East at the time of Jesus. This is, of course, just a subset of the many Arab-Americans found here. It's been reputed that they are more people of Arab descent here than any place else in the world outside of the Middle East. There are more details about Chaldeans at Wikipedia. |