Judeo-Persian refers to both a group of Jewish dialects spoken by the Jews living in Iran and Judeo-Persian texts. As a collective term, Judeo-Persian refers to a number of Judeo-Iranian languages spoken by Jewish communities throughout the formerly extensive Persian Empire, including the Mountain and Bukharan Jewish communities.
Jewish languages are the various languages and dialects that developed in Jewish communities in the diaspora. The original Jewish language is Hebrew, supplanted as the primary vernacular by Aramaic following the Babylonian exile. Jewish languages feature a syncretism of Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic with the languages of the local non-Jewish population.
Luri is a Southwestern Iranian language continuum spoken by the Lurs, an Iranian people native to Western Asia. The Luri dialects are descended from Middle Persian and are Central Luri, Bakhtiari, and Southern Luri. This language is spoken mainly by the Bakhtiari and the Northern and Southern Lurs in Iran.
The Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia, a dialect of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic, was originally spoken by Jews in Urmia and surrounding areas of Iranian Azerbaijan from Salmas to Solduz and into what is now Yüksekova, Hakkâri and Başkale, Van Province in eastern Turkey. Most speakers now live in Israel.
Trans-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic, also known as Hulaulá, is a grouping of related dialects of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic originally spoken by Jews in Iranian Kurdistan and easternmost Iraqi Kurdistan. Most speakers now live in Israel.
Barzani Jewish Neo-Aramaic is a modern Jewish Aramaic language, often called Neo-Aramaic or Judeo-Aramaic. It was originally spoken in three villages near Aqrah in Iraqi Kurdistan. The native name of the language is Lishanid Janan, which means 'our language', and is similar to names used by other Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects .
Judaeo-Aramaic languages represent a group of Hebrew-influenced Aramaic and Neo-Aramaic languages.
Judeo-Tat or Juhuri is a Judeo-Persian dialect of the Tat language historically spoken by the Mountain Jews, primarily in Azerbaijan, Dagestan, and today in Israel. It belongs to the southwestern group of the Iranian division of the Indo-European languages with some influence from the Hebrew language. In the era of Soviet historiography, the Mountain Jews were mistakenly considered to be related to the Muslim Tats of Azerbaijan. However, they do not share a common linguistic heritage, as the Mountain Jews speak a dialect of Persian with some linguistic features derived from Hebrew, while the Muslim Tats are an Iranian ethnic group native to the Caucasus and Persian speakers. The words Juvuri and Juvuro translate as "Jewish" and "Jews".
Bukharian, also known as Judeo-Bukharic and Judeo-Tajik, is a Judeo-Persian dialect historically spoken by the Bukharan Jews of Central Asia. It is a Jewish dialect derived from—and largely mutually intelligible with—the Tajik branch of the Persian language.
Judeo-Hamadani and Judeo-Borujerdi constitute a Northwestern Iranian language, originally spoken by the Iranian Jews of Hamadan and Borujerd in western Iran. Hamadanis refer to their language as ebri "Hebrew" or zabān-e qadim "old language". Though not Hebrew, the term ebri is used to distinguish Judeo-Hamadani from Persian.
In 1920, Hamadan had around 13,000 Jewish residents, most can also be found in Israel, New York City, and most predominantly in Los Angeles.
Judeo-Shirazi is a variety of Fars. Some Judeo-Shirazi speakers refer to the language as Jidi, though Jidi is normally a designation used by speakers of Judeo-Esfahani. It is spoken mostly by Persian Jews living in Shiraz and surrounding areas of the Fars Province in Iran.
The Western Iranian languages or Western Iranic languages are a branch of the Iranian languages, attested from the time of Old Persian and Median.
Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) is a grouping of related dialects of Neo-Aramaic spoken before World War I as a vernacular language by Jews and Assyrian Christians between the Tigris and Lake Urmia, stretching north to Lake Van and southwards to Mosul and Kirkuk. As a result of the Assyrian genocide, Christian speakers were forced out of the area that is now Turkey and in the early 1950s most Jewish speakers moved to Israel. The Kurdish-Turkish conflict resulted in further dislocations of speaker populations. As of the 1990s, the NENA group had an estimated number of fluent speakers among the Assyrians just below 500,000, spread throughout the Middle East and the Assyrian diaspora. In 2007, linguist Geoffrey Khan wrote that many dialects were nearing extinction with fluent speakers difficult to find.
Soi (Sohi) is one of the Central Iranian language varieties of Iran, one of five listed in Ethnologue that together have 35,000 speakers. It is closely related to Natanzi.
Hamedan is a city in western Iran. It is located in the Central District of Hamedan County in Hamedan province, serving as the capital of the province, county, and district. As of the 2016 Iranian census, it had a population of 554,406 people in 174,731 households.
Persian Romani, also known as Ghorbati (Qorbati), Magadi (Mogadi), Qazulagi and Jogigi, Lafzi Mugat or Arabi/Arabcha in Central Asia, refers to various argots, spoken by the Ghorbati and closely related peoples, often called “Persian Gypsies” or “Central Asian Gypsies”. There is no proof of any historical connection between any of these peripatetic groups and the Roma or Dom peoples, except for the fact that some use a few words that are apparently of Domari origin. These argots are related to Lotera’i, or Judeo-Persian.
Rouben Abrahamian was an Armenian Iranologist, linguist and translator.
Judeo-Kashani ("Kashi") is a subvariety of Judeo-Iranian spoken by the Jews of Kashan (Kāšān). Diachronically, Judeo-Kashani is a Median language, belonging to the Kashanic branch of the Central Plateau Language Group spoken across Central Iran.
Judeo-Esfahani, also spelled Judeo-Isfahani, is a spoken variety of the Judeo-Iranian languages. It originated in Isfahan, Iran, and is used today in Israel and the United States. In 2023 there were an estimated 2,000-7,000 speakers of Judeo-Esfahani, compared to 100,000 in 1900.
