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Judeo-Tunisian Arabic

Judeo-Tunisian Arabic
Native to Beit Shemesh, Jerusalem District, Israel
Houmt Souk, Djerba, Tunisia
Tunis, Tunisia
Gabes, Tunisia
Native speakers
 46,000 (1995)
Arabic script
Hebrew alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3
Glottolog jude1263

Judeo-Tunisian Arabic is a variety of Tunisian Arabic mainly spoken by Jews living or formerly living in Tunisia. Speakers are older adults, and the younger generation has only a passive knowledge of the language.

The vast majority of Tunisian Jews have relocated to Israel and have shifted to Hebrew as their home language. Those in France typically use French as their primary language, while the few still left in Tunisia tend to use either French or Tunisian Arabic in their everyday lives.

Judeo-Tunisian Arabic is one of the Judeo-Arabic languages, a collection of Arabic dialects spoken by Jews living or formerly living in the Arab world.

A Jewish community existed in what is today Tunisia even prior to Roman rule in Africa. After the Arabic conquest of North Africa, this community began to use Arabic for their daily communication. They had adopted the pre-Hilalian dialect of Tunisian Arabic as their own dialect. As Jewish communities tend to be close-knit and isolated from the other ethnic and religious communities of their countries, their dialect spread to their coreligionists all over the country had not been in contact with the languages of the communities that invaded Tunisia in the middle age. The primary language contact with regard to Judeo-Tunisian Arabic came from the languages of Jewish communities that fled to Tunisia as a result of persecution. This explains why Judeo-Tunisian Arabic lacks influence from the dialects of the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym, and has developed several phonological and lexical particularities that distinguish it from Tunisian Arabic. This also explains why Judeo-Tunisian words are generally less removed from their etymological origin than Tunisian words.


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