Judeo-Moroccan Arabic
| Judeo-Moroccan Arabic | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Israel, Morocco, France, Algeria |
Native speakers | ca. 260,000 (1992)[1] |
|
Afro-Asiatic
| |
| Hebrew alphabet | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 |
aju |
| Glottolog |
jude1265[2] |
Judeo-Moroccan Arabic is a variety of the Arabic Language spoken by Jewish people living or formerly living in Morocco and Algeria. Speakers of the language are usually older adults.[3]
The vast majority of Moroccan Jews and Algerian Jews have relocated to Israel and have switched to using Hebrew in as their home language. Those in France typically use French as their first language, while the few still left in Morocco and Algeria tend to use either French, Moroccan or Algerian Arabic in their everyday lives.
History and composition
Historically
Widely used in the Jewish community during its long history there, the Moroccan dialect of Judeo-Arabic has many influences from languages other than Arabic, including Spanish (due to the close proximity of Spain), Haketia or Moroccan Judeo-Spanish, due to the influx of Sephardic refugees from Spain after the 1492 expulsion, and French (due to the period in which Morocco was colonized by France), and, of course, the inclusion of many Hebrew loanwords and phrases (a feature of all Jewish languages). The dialect has considerable mutual intelligibility with Judeo-Tunisian Arabic, and some with Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic, but almost none with Judeo-Iraqi Arabic.
Today
The vast majority of Morocco's 265,000 Jews emigrated to Israel after 1948, with significant emigration to Europe (mainly France) and North America as well. Although about 3,000 Jews remain in Morocco today,[4] most of the younger generations speak French as their first language, rather than Arabic, and their Arabic is more akin to Moroccan Arabic than to Judeo-Arabic. There are estimated to be 8,925 speakers in Morocco, mostly Casablanca and Fes, and 250,000 in Israel (where speakers reported bilingualism with Hebrew). Most speakers, in both countries, are elderly. There is a Judeo-Arabic radio program on Israeli radio.
Daily phrases in Judeo-Moroccan
Hello: שלמה šlāma / שלמה עליך šlāma ʿlik
Goodbye: בשלמה bšlāma / בשלמה עליך bšlāma ʿlik
Thanks: מרסי mersi
Yes: ייוה ēywa
No: לא lā
How are you?: אשכברך? āš iḫbark?
Fine, thank you: לבש, מרסי lābas, mersi
Fine / No problems: לבש lābas
Notes
- ↑ Judeo-Moroccan Arabic at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Judeo-Moroccan Arabic". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- ↑ Raymond G. Gordon, Jr, ed. 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 15th edition. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
- ↑ http://www.ejpress.org/article/58013
References
- Jewish Language Research Website: Judeo-Arabic
- Heath, Jeffrey, Jewish and Muslim dialects of Moroccan Arabic (Routledge Curzon Arabic linguistics series): London, New York, 2002.
- Stories in Judeo-Arabic by David Bensoussan
External links
- Reka Kol Israel radio station broadcasting a daily program in Judeo-Moroccan (Mugrabian)
| Official languages | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Native vernaculars |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Main liturgical languages | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Main foreign languages | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1 Modern Standard Arabic · 2 Classical Arabic · 3 Medieval Hebrew · 4 Formerly native to Moriscos, extinct as native in Morocco · † Extinct | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
