Bukhori language

"Bukharan" redirects here. For other uses, see Bukhara (disambiguation).

Bukhori
בוכארי, бухорӣ Bukhori
Spoken in	Israel, Uzbekistan, United States, Tajikistan, Afghanistan
Region	Central Asia
Native speakers	~110,000  (date missing)
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Southwestern Persian Tajik Bukhori
Writing system	Hebrew, Cyrillic
Language codes
ISO 639-3	bhh

Persian language

Regional and social varieties: Modern Persian & Western variant Classical Persian & Eastern variant Central Asian variant (Tajik) Hazara dialects (Hazaragi) Judeo-Persian (Dzhidi) Judeo-Tajik (Bukhori) Grammar: Standard New Persian Central Asian Persian Language features: Vocabulary Nouns Verbs Phonology Writing systems: Perso-Arabic script Cyrillic alphabet Romanized Persian alphabet Geographic distribution: Persian by country

Bukhori (Persian: بخاری – boxārī, Tajik and Bukhori Cyrillic: бухорӣ – buxorī; Bukhori Hebrew script: בוכארי – buxori; also known as Bukhari, Bukharic, Bukharan, Bukharian, Judeo-Tajik, Local Jewish Language, Samarkand Jewish Dialect of Tajik) is a unique dialect of the Persian language spoken in Central Asia by the Bukharian Jews. Hence, a more descriptive name for the language might be Judæo-Persian or Judæo-Tajik.

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, it still has a great deal of mutual intelligibility with Tajik Persian, and shares many similar features with Dzhidi. The vocabulary consists of a mixture of Persian (Tajik), Hebrew, Arabic and Uzbek words.

Today, the language is spoken by approximately 10,000 Jews remaining in Uzbekistan and surrounding areas, although most of its speakers reside elsewhere, predominantly in Israel (approx. 50,000 speakers), and the United States.

Like most Jewish languages, traditionally, Bukhori uses the Hebrew alphabet. But throughout the past century, due to Soviet influence, the alphabet used to write Bukhori included Latin (1920's) then the Cyrillic (1940) alphabet and many Bukharian Jews only are familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet in writing the language for Tajik, its parent language (and lingua franca of the region) is also written in Cyrillic due to the Soviet influence in the region. Today, most books published in the Judeo-Tajik (Bukhori) language are written with the Tajik Cyrillic alphabet, with only few publications still using the Hebrew alphabet for Bukhori and Tajik. Additionally, since 1940, when the Bukharian Jewish schools were closed in Central Asia, the use of the Hebrew Alphabet outside Hebrew liturgy fell into disuse and Bukharian Jewish publications such as books and newspapers began to appear using the Tajik Cyrillic Alphabet. Today, many older Bukharian Jews who speak Bukharian and went to Tajik or Russian schools in Central Asia only know the Tajik Cyrillic Alphabet when reading and writing Bukharian and Tajik.

Among some Bukharian Jewish youth, especially in the New York City area, there has been a revival of using the Bukharian Jewish language written in a modified Latin alphabet similar to the one developed by Bukharian Jewish linguist and writer, Yakub Kalontarov. Today, youths learning the Bukharian Jewish language sponsored by the Achdut-Unity Club in Queens, New York City, New York, USA, learn the language using the modified Latin alphabet.

Kol Israel (קול ישראל) broadcasts in Bukhori from 12:45 to 13:00 GMT.

See also

• Azerbaijani Jews
• Bukharan Jews
• Bukhara
• Dushanbe synagogue
• Emirate of Bukhara
• History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union
• Kazakh Jews
• Mountain Jews
• Persian Jews
• Shimon Hakham
• Tajik Jews
• Uzbek Jews

External links

• Learn Basic Bukhori