Judeo-Tat

Judeo-Tat or Juhuri (Cuhuri, Жугьури, ז׳אוּהאוּראִ) is a Judeo-Persian dialect and the traditional language spoken by the Mountain Jews in the eastern Caucasus Mountains, especially Azerbaijan, parts of Russia and today in Israel.^[1] It belongs to the southwestern group of the Iranian division of the Indo-European languages, albeit with heavy influence from Hebrew. 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)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Iranian Southwestern Iranian Persian[2] 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)
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

The Iranic Tat language is spoken by the Muslim Tats of Azerbaijan, a group to which the Mountain Jews were mistakenly considered to belong during the era of Soviet historiography though the languages probably originated in the same region of the Persian empire.

Judeo-Tat features Semitic elements in all linguistic levels of the language. Uniquely, Judeo-Tat retains the voiced pharyngeal approximant, also known as ayin (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 feature it. ^[3]

Judeo-Tat is an endangered language^[4][5] classified as "definitely endangered" by UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.^[6]

Distribution

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^[1]
• United States: 5,000^[7]
• Canada 2,500^[8]

Phonology

Vowel phonemes of Judeo-Tat^[9]

	Front		Central	Back
	Unrounded	Rounded
Close	i	y		u
Near-close	ɪ
Mid	ɛ			o
Open	æ		a

Consonant phonemes of Judeo-Tat

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Post- alv./Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyn -geal	Glottal
Nasal		m	n̪
Stop/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t̪	t͡ʃ	k
	voiced	b	d̪	d͡ʒ	ɡ	ɢ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s̪	ʃ		χ	ħ	h
	voiced	v	z̪
Approximant			l	j			ʕ
Flap			ɾ

Alphabet

Main article: Tat alphabet

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.

Script and phonemes of Judeo-Tat

Latin

Aa

Bb

Cc

Çç

Dd

Ee

Əə

Ff

Gg

Hh

Ḩḩ

Ħћ

Ii

Jj

Kk

Ll

Mm

Nn

Oo

Pp

Qq

Rr

Ss

Şş

Tt

Uu

Vv

Xx

Yy

Zz

Cyrillic

Аа

Бб

Чч

Жж

Дд

Ее

Ээ

Фф

Гг

Гьгь

ГӀгӀ

Хьхь

Ии

Йй

Кк

Лл

Мм

Нн

Оо

Пп

Гъгъ

Рр

Сс

Шш

Тт

Уу

Вв

Хх

Уьуь

Зз

Hebrew

אַ

בּ

ג׳/צ

ז׳

ד

אי

א

פ

ג

ה

ע

ח

אִ

י

כּ

ל

מ

נ

אָ

פּ

ק

ר

ס

ש

ת

אוּ

ב

כ

או

ז

IPA

a

b

tʃ/ts

dʒ

d

ɛ

æ

f

g

h

ʕ

ħ

i

j

k

l

m

n

o

p

ɢ

ɾ

s

ʃ

t

u

v

χ

y

z

Influences and etymology

Judeo-Tat is a Southwest Iranian language (as is modern Persian) and is much more closely related to modern Persian than most other Iranian languages of the Caucasus (for example: Talysh, Ossetian, and Kurdish). However, 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)

Dialects

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.^[10]

References

1. Judeo-Tat at Ethnologue (26th ed., 2023)
2. Windfuhr, Gernot. The Iranian Languages. Routledge. 2009. p. 417.
3. Habib Borjian, “Judeo-Iranian Languages,” in Lily Kahn and Aaron D. Rubin, eds., A Handbook of Jewish Languages, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015, pp. 234-295. .
4. Published in: Encyclopedia of the world’s endangered languages. Edited by Christopher Moseley. London & New York: Routledge, 2007. 211–280.
5. John M Clifton. "Do the Talysh and Tat languages have a future in Azerbaijan?" (PDF). Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 November 2013. Retrieved 18 Feb 2013.
6. UNESCO Interactive Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger Archived 2009-02-22 at the Wayback Machine
7. Habib Borjian and Daniel Kaufman, “Juhuri: from the Caucasus to New York City”, Special Issue: Middle Eastern Languages in Diasporic USA communities, in International Journal of Sociology of Language, ed. Maryam Borjian and Charles Häberl, issue 237, 2016, pp. 51-74. .
8. James B. Minahan, ed. Ethnic Groups of North, East, and Central Asia: An Encyclopedia: Juhuro.
9. (in Russian) Phonetics of the Mountain Jewish language
10. (in Russian) Language of the Mountain Jews of Dagestan Archived 2005-05-01 at the Wayback Machine by E.Nazarova

Further reading

• 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.

External links

• 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