Juhuri language
Encyclopedia : J : JU : JUH : Juhuri language
Juhuri, Juwri or Judæo-Tat is the traditional language of the Juhurim or Mountain Jews of the eastern Caucasus Mountains, especially Dagestan.
The language is closely related to Middle Persian; it belongs to the Iranian division of the Indo-European languages. A similar, but still different language is spoken by the Muslim Tats of Azerbaijan, a group to which the Mountain Jews have sometimes been considered to belong. Speakers of Juhuri are called Juhuro, which simply means "Jews".
Juwuri have Semitic (Hebrew/Aramaic/Arabic) elements on all linguistic levels. Juwuri have Hebrew "ayin" (ע) sound while no neighboring languages have it.
In the early 20th century Juhuri used the Hebrew script. In the 1920s Latin script was adapted for it; later it was written in Cyrillic characters. Recently, the use of the Hebrew alphabet has enjoyed renewed popularity for writing the language.
The language is presently spoken by an estimated 101,000 people:
- Israel: 70,000
- Azerbaijan: 24,000
- Russia: 7,000
External links
- [Judeo-Tat page] at [Ethnologue.com]
- [Язык Горских Евреев Дагестана] (Yazyk Gorskikh Yevreev Dagestana — lit. "Language of the Mountain Jews of Dagestan")
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