Judeo-Tat
Persian-derived Jewish language of the eastern Caucasus
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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.
Judeo-Tat is an endangered language classified as "definitely endangered" by UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.
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
- United States: 5,000
- Canada 2,500
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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 as well as other towns and villages in the region.).
- 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.
Phonology
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.
Influences and etymology
Judeo-Tat is a Southwest Iranian language (as is modern Persian) and is much more closely related to (but not fully mutually intelligible with) 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 "honey" (Arab. عسل), "morning" (Arab. صباح).
Hebrew: As in other Jewish dialects, the language also has many Hebrew loanwords, for example "table" (Heb. שֻלחן shulḥan), "luck" (Heb. מזל mazal), "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 (ו) and (kamatz), however, are typically pronounced as /v/ and /o/ respectively (similar to the Persian/Ashkenazi traditions, but unlike the Iraqi tradition, which retains and )
Azerbaijani: Vowel harmony and many loan words
Russian: Loanwords adopted after the Russian Empire's annexation of Daghestan and Azerbaijan
Northeast Caucasian languages: "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:
- > /o/, /æ/, or /u/ as in "book" (Arab. كتاب), "road/path" (Pers. راه rāh), "sacrifice" (Arab., Aramaic or Heb. קרבן Korban)
- /o/ > /u/ as in "Absalom" (Heb. אבשלום Abshalom)
- /u/ > /y/, especially under the influence of vowel harmony
- Stress on the final syllable of words
- Dropping of the final /n/ as in /soχtæ/ "to make" (Pers. ساختن sākhtan)