Judeo-Tat
| Judeo-Tat | |
|---|---|
| çuhuri / жугьури / ז'אוּהאוּראִ | |
| Native to | Spoken by immigrant communities in Israel, United States (New York City) |
|
Native speakers
|
(ca. 80,000 cited 1989–1998) |
| Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew | |
| Official status | |
|
Official language in
|
no official status |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | jude1256 |
Judeo-Tat or Juhuri (çuhuri / жугьури / ז'אוּהאוּראִ) is the traditional language of the Mountain Jews of the eastern Caucasus Mountains, especially Azerbaijan and Dagestan, now mainly spoken in Israel.
The language is a form of Persian; it belongs to the southwestern group of the Iranian division of the Indo-European languages. The Tat language, a similar, but still different 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. The words Juvuri and Juvuro literally translate as "Jewish" and "Jews".
Judeo-Tat has Semitic (Hebrew/Aramaic/Arabic) elements on all linguistic levels. Judeo-Tat has the Hebrew sound "ayin" (ע), whereas no neighbouring languages have 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:
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.
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