Bukhori language
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
| Bukhori (בוכורי) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Israel, Uzbekistan, United States, Tajikistan, Afghanistan |
| Region: | Middle East |
| Total speakers: | ~60,000 |
| Ranking: | not in top 100 |
| Genetic classification: | Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Southwestern Persian Bukhori |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | --- |
| Regulated by: | --- |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | |
| ISO 639-2 | ira |
| SIL | BHH |
| See also: Language – List of languages | |
Bukhori, also known as Bukharic or Bukharan, is an Indo-Iranian language. A more descriptive name for the language might be Judæo-Tajiki Persian or Judæo-Tajik. It is the primary traditional language of the Bukharan Jews.
Bukhori is based on a substrate of classical Persian, with a large number of Hebrew loanwords, as well as smaller numbers of loanwords from other surrounding languages, including Uzbek and Russian. Despite its long history, still has a great deal of mutual intelligibility with Tajik, and shares many similar features with Dzhidi.
Today, the language is spoken by approximately 10,000 Jews remaining in Uzbekistan, although most of its speakers reside elsewhere, predominantly in Israel (approx. 50,000 speakers), and the United States.
Like most Jewish languages, Bukhori is written using the Hebrew alphabet.
External links
- Ethnologue.com article on Bukharic (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=BHH)
- Omniglot.com (http://www.omniglot.com/writing/languages.htm)
