Judeo-Yazdi

Classification: Indo-European

Language metadata

The Jewish residents of Yazd and Kerman speak two varieties of essentially the same language.

Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Iranian, Northwest Iranian

As csv

"Ethnologue uses the designation “Dzhidi” (i.e., Jidi) for all Iranian dialects spoken by the Iranian Jews. Having given the alternative name Judeo-Persian, with the identifier [jpr], the Ethnologue classifies Dzhidi under “Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Iranian, Western, Southwestern, Persian,” and further describes it as being “similar” to Bukharic [bhh] and Iranian Persian [pes], noting that Dzhidi employs the Hebrew script for writing (Ethnologue, s.v. “Dzhidi”). This data could not be more inaccurate. First, Jidi is a designation used by the speakers of the Jewish dialect of Isfahan (Judeo-Isfahani), and does not necessarily apply to the Jewish dialects native to other towns. Secondly, as we shall see below, the native Jewish dialects spoken in various towns are very far from constituting a homogeneous whole and therefore cannot be lumped together collectively as a single language. Thirdly, these dialects or languages, which we refer to here as Judeo-Median, are from the Northwest branch of Iranian family, genealogically distinct from Persian, a Southwest Iranian language, and also from Bukhari (and Juhuri). Finally, in contrast to Judeo-Persian, with its long written tradition, Judeo-Median has survived in spoken form only." (Habib Borjian 2014)

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