Can Persian Speakers Understand Juhuri (Judeo-Tat)?

Juhuri or Judeo-Tat is an endangered language spoken by the Mountain Jews, also known as Kavkazi Jews, the Jewish community of the eastern and northern Caucasus who trace their roots to the Jews of ancient Iran, dating back to the Achaemenid era and the time of Cyrus the Great. The language retains a lot from Medieval Persian, with later influence from other languages.

In this video we will take a look at how well modern Persian speakers from Iran and Tajikistan can understand the Juhuri language, with Batsion and Hilah representing Juhuri, and Chehrona, Alan, and Hossein as the participants from Tajikistan and Iran.

Here are some links and additional information that we briefly mentioned in the video:

The Jewish Language Project's page on Juhuri, written by Vitaly Shalem: https://www.jewishlanguages.org/judeo...

The Endangered Language Alliance's videos of Simon Mardakhayev and Yakov Abramov speaking Juhuri:    • A Mother's Love - Juhuri  

The ELA's page on Juhuri: https://www.elalliance.org/languages/...

Wikitongues's video of Valeriya Nakshun's grandmother Vera speaking Juhuri and Russian:    • The Juhuri language, casually spoken ...  

STMEGI's extensive library of Juhuri texts: https://stmegi.com/library/.

Valeriya Nakshun's Facebook group, Kavkazi Jewish History and Culture:   / 1906826196269634  

Valeriya's interview with George Prigov about Juhuri history and activism will be released online here: https://jewishcurrents.org/office-hou...

Russian Language Journal's collaborative article about Indigenous languages of the Russian Federation, with Hilah's contribution about Juhuri, will be released online here: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rlj/

Be sure to check out Alan's work that aims to document and preserve Judeo-Iranian, as well as other Jewish languages. In the following videos with the Jewish Language Project, Alan has put together a short film to give an introduction to several historical Judeo-Iranian languages such as Judeo-Isfahani, Judeo-Hamedani, Judeo-Yazdi, and others:
   • Judeo-Isfahani, Judeo-Hamedani, Judeo...  
   • Documenting Endangered Iranian Jewish...  

If you would like to participate in a video on our channel please contact me on Instagram:   / bahadoralast  

Note: In the Juhuri Latinate alphabet, c represents a ch sound, while ç represents a dzh sound-- that is, these two letters are reversed relative to the Turkish and Azerbaijani Latinate alphabets.

زبان جهوری یا یهودی-تاتی یا جیدی (ז'אוּהאוּראִ) زبان یهودیان کوهستان (یهودیان قفقاز) است

The Persian language (Farsi) is an ancient language which has had a huge amount of impact on other languages and cultures, mainly the Middle East, as well as Central and South Asia. Classified as one of the Western Iranian languages, Persian holds official status is Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, which it is also the native language of many minority Persian communities in other countries. Persian has strongly influenced many different languages, including numerous Turkic languages, as well as well as Armenian, Georgian, and many languages in the Indian subcontinent. Persian has a long history of literature and it was notable for being the first language in the Muslim world to break through Arabic's monopoly on writing. The Persian language has also influenced the Arabic language, although the impact of Arabic on Persian has been higher.