Judeo-Tat

It belongs to the southwestern group of the Iranian division of the Indo-European languages with heavy influence from the Hebrew language. In the era of Soviet historiography, the Mountain Jews were mistakenly considered to be related to the Muslim Tats of Azerbaijan. However, they do not share a common linguistic heritage, as the Mountain Jews kept their native language, while the Muslim Tats eventually adopted Persian. The words Juvuri and Juvuro translate as "Jewish" and "Jews".

Judeo-Tat
cuhuri, жугьури, ז׳אוּהאוּראִ‎
Native to	Azerbaijan, Russia – North Caucasian Federal District, spoken by immigrant communities in Israel, United States (New York City)
Ethnicity	Mountain Jews
Native speakers	80,000 (2010–2018)
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Iranian Southwestern Iranian Persian Tat Judeo-Tat
Writing system	Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew
Language codes
ISO 639-3	jdt
Glottolog	jude1256
ELP	Judeo-Tat
Judeo-Tat is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (2010)
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Judeo-Tat features Semitic elements in all linguistic levels of the language. Uniquely, Judeo-Tat retains the voiced pharyngeal approximant, also known as 3ayn (ع/ע), a phoneme whose presence is considered to be a hallmark of Semitic languages such as Arabic and no longer found in Modern Hebrew; no neighbouring languages in Azerbaijan or Dagestan feature it.

Judeo-Tat is an endangered language classified as "definitely endangered" by UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.

The language is spoken by an estimated 101,000 people:

• Israel: 70,000 in 1998
• Azerbaijan: 24,000 in 1989
• Russia: 2,000 in 2010
• United States: 5,000
• Canada 2,500

In the early 20th century, Judeo-Tat used the Hebrew script. In the 1920s, the Latin script was adapted for it; later it was written in Cyrillic. The use of the Hebrew alphabet has enjoyed renewed popularity.

Judeo-Tat is a dialect of the Southwest Iranian language family, which includes Persian. Compared to other Iranian languages spoken in the Caucasus [for example, Talysh, Ossetian, and Kurdish], Judeo-Tat has more similarities to modern Persian. Howeverer, it also bears strong influence from other sources:

Medieval Persian: Postpositions are used predominantly in lieu of prepositions, for example in modern Persian: باز او > Judeo-Tat æ uræ-voz "with him/her".

Arabic: like in modern Persian, a significant portion of the vocabulary is Arabic in origin. Unlike modern Persian, Judeo-Tat has almost universally retained the original pharyngeal/uvular phonemes of Arabic, for example /ʕæsæl/ "honey" (Arab. عسل), /sæbæħ/ "morning" (Arab. صباح).

Hebrew: As in other Jewish dialects, the language also has many Hebrew loanwords, for example /ʃulħon/ "table" (Heb. שלחן‎ shulḥan), /mozol/ "luck" (Heb. מזל‎ mazal), /ʕoʃiɾ/ "rich" (Heb. עשיר‎ ʻashir). Hebrew words are typically pronounced in the tradition of other Mizrahi Jews. Examples: ח‎ and ע‎ are pronounced pharyngeally (like Arabic ح‎, ع respectively); ק‎ is pronounced as a voiced uvular plosive (like Persian ق/غ). Classical Hebrew /w/ (ו‎) and /aː/ (kamatz), however, are typically pronounced as /v/ and /o/ respectively (similar to the Persian/Ashkenazi traditions, but unlike the Iraqi tradition, which retains /w/ and /aː/)

Azerbaijani: Vowel harmony and many loan words

Russian: Loanwords adopted after the Russian Empire's annexation of Daghestan and Azerbaijan

Northeast Caucasian languages: /tʃuklæ/ "small" (probably the same origin as the medieval Caucasian city name "Sera-chuk" mentioned by Ibn Battuta, meaning "little Sera")

Other common phonology/morphology changes from classical Persian/Arabic/Hebrew:

• /aː/ > /o/, /æ/, or /u/ as in /kitob/ "book" (Arab. كتاب), /ɾæħ/ "road/path" (Pers. راه rāh), /ɢurbu/ "sacrifice" (Arab., Aramaic /qurbaːn/ or Heb. קרבן‎ Korban)
• /o/ > /u/ as in /ovʃolum/ "Absalom" (Heb. אבשלום‎ Abshalom)
• /u/ > /y/, especially under the influence of vowel harmony
• Stress on final syllable words
• Dropping of the final /n/ as in /soχtæ/ "to make" (Pers. ساختن sākhtan)

Being a variety of the Tat language, Judeo-Tat itself can be divided into several dialects:

• Quba dialect (traditionally spoken in Quba and Qırmızı Qəsəbə).
• Derbent dialect (traditionally spoken in the town of Derbent and the surrounding villages).
• Kaitag dialect (spoken in the North Caucasus).

The dialects of Oğuz (formerly Vartashen) and the now extinct Jewish community of Mücü have not been studied well and thus cannot be classified.

• Borjian, Habib; Kaufman, Daniel (2016). "Juhuri: From the Caucasus to New York City". International Journal of the Sociology of Language (237): 59–74. doi:10.1515/ijsl-2015-0035. S2CID 55326563.
• Shapira, Dan D.Y. (2010). "Juhūrī (Judeo-Tat or Judeo-Tātī)". In Norman A. Stillman (ed.). Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Brill Online.

 

Wiki Commons has media related to Judeo-Tat.

 

Judeo-Tat test of Wiki at Wiki Incubator

• Judeo-Tat literature
• Горско-еврейский язык (словарь, грамматика, библиотека)
• JUHURO.RU - Информационно развлекательный портал горских евреев Горские Евреи Израиля population ~70,000
• Горские Евреи Нальчика Mountain Jews of Nalchik.
• Горские Евреи Америки Mountain Jews of the US.
• Сайт Горских Евреев Культура новости
• Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World: "Juhūrī (Judeo-Tat or Judeo-Tātī)", p 16 sq, print: Brill, Leiden 2010