Jewish-Tajik dialect

Jewish-Tajik uses the Hebrew alphabet (the so-called oriental Rashi in writing and the square font in print). In 1928-40. the written Hebrew-Tajik language in the USSR used the Latin alphabet.

Early version of the alphabet ^[3]

Late version of the alphabet : ^[4]

Phonetics and Phonology

At the phonological level, the Jewish-Tajik dialect is characterized by:

• the presence of pharyngals / ħ / and / ʕ /, including in words of non-Semitic origin,
• lack of sustainable / ī /,
• a set of specific narrative, interrogative and exclamatory intonations, different from similar intonations in the Tajik language.

Morphology

At the morphological level, the Jewish-Tajik language is different:

• type of perfect endings: 3 l. units h. rafte < raftaast (instead of Samarkand raftas ), 1 l. many h. raftim < raftaam , 3 l. many h. raftin < raftaand ;
• type of verb system (Samarkand-Hebrew variety of the northern type): there are three new forms compared to the main variety of the northern system of the verb:
  • long present definitive indicative tense with the prefix me- ( merafsode < merafta istodaast );
  • long present certain time of the alleged mood ( merafsodage < merafta istodagist );
  • -gi participle in the prolonged present definite time ( merafsodagi < merafta istodagi ).

Syntax

The syntax of the Hebrew-Tajik language is characterized, on the one hand, by greater freedom, on the other hand, by a smaller set of subordinate clauses. The vocabulary includes some (compared to a number of other Hebrew languages - a relatively small) amount of borrowings from Hebrew, both religious-ritual and domestic ( šulħon - "low" eastern "table"), as well as a number of words from the Iranian language fund that came from use in the literary Tajik language, or possessing more ancient semantics in the Hebrew-Tajik language.

Until the 19th century Bukhara Jewish literature continued to be created in the classical Jewish-Persian language and was part of Jewish-Persian literature. The first literary monument of Bukhara Jews, written in a language having phonetic, morphological and lexical characteristics of the Jewish-Tajik dialect, is Ibrahim ibn Abi-l-Khair's poem “Khudoydodnoma” (“The Book of Khudoydod”, beginning of the 19th century). The foundations of the Jewish-Tajik language were laid at the end of the 19th century. in Jerusalem, Rabbi Shimon Hakham (1843-1910), the founder of a kind of literary school, which was engaged mainly in translating from Hebrew into Jewish-Tajik language books of both religious and secular content, including works of Eastern European Haskala. From the end of 1880 to 1914, over 100 books in the Hebrew-Tajik language were published in Jerusalem - the result of intensive translation work by Rabbi Shimon Haham and a number of his associates and students. In Russia of this period, books in the Jewish-Tajik language were practically not published, but in 1910-16. in the city of Skobelev (now Ferghana ), the Jewish-Tajik newspaper Rakhamim was published.

In the years 1922-40. in the USSR there was a network of schools in the Jewish-Tajik language. In the 1920s and 30s a number of periodicals were published ( Bayroki Mikhnat , etc.) and there was fiction in this language (writer M. Bachaev (Muhib) and others). Since 1932, a theater functioned in Samarkand. All cultural and pedagogical activities in the Jewish-Tajik language in the USSR were discontinued in 1940, and it became only the language of oral communication. This was one of the main factors that led to the fact that by the 1970s. the younger generation preferred Russian to Hebrew-Tajik and as a spoken language, children in many families owned it only passively or did not speak it at all. In the 1970s in fact, only for the older generation of members of the community, the Bukhara-Jewish language was a language serving all spheres of life. For a significant part of the middle generation, the language of culture is Russian, and Jewish-Tajik remains only the language of the source. The younger generation prefers Russian to Hebrew-Tajik and in everyday everyday life and often finds it difficult to speak the latter. Children in many families only understand the language, but cannot speak it; there are many families where children no longer understand the mother tongue of their parents. In other words, one generation late compared to the Ashkenazi community of the USSR, the same intense assimilation process takes place that took place in the latter in the late 1920s and early 30s.

Jewish-Tajik editions sporadically appeared in Israel in the 1950s and 60s. With the repatriation of Bukhara Jews to Israel in the 1970s. regular broadcasts of Israeli radio in Hebrew-Tajik began. Now Kol Israel ( Hebrew קול ישראל , Russian Voice of Israel ) broadcasts in the Hebrew-Tajik language at 13:45 and at 23:00 Eastern European time . Since 1973, the monthly bulletin Thia, an organ of the Union of immigrants from Bukhara, began to appear. A book of poetry by Mukhib (M. Bachaev) was published in Jerusalem in Jewish-Tajik language in Jerusalem in 1979, and a book of poetry by Shulamit Tiglyaeva (a native of Jerusalem , taken away by her parents to Bukhara as a child; in 1934, was published in Tel Aviv ); returned to Palestine).

• Zarubin I.I. Essay on the spoken language of Samarkand Jews // Iran. - T. 2. - L., 1928.

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