Judeo-Tat

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.

Distribution

The language is spoken by an estimated 101,000 people: