Judeo-Yemeni Arabic

Judeo-Yemeni Arabic
Native to	Israel, Yemen
Ethnicity	Yemenite Jews
Native speakers	(50,000 cited 1995)
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Arabic languages Peninsular Judeo-Yemeni Arabic
Writing system	Hebrew alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	jye
Glottolog	jude1267
ELP	Judeo-Yemeni Arabic

Judeo-Yemeni Arabic (also known as Judeo-Yemeni, Yemenite Judeo-Arabic) is a variety of Arabic spoken by Jews living or formerly living in Yemen. The language is quite different from mainstream Yemeni Arabic, and is written in the Hebrew alphabet. The cities of Sana'a, Aden, al-Bayda, and Habban District each have (or had) their own dialect.

The vast majority of Yemenite Jews have relocated to Israel and have switched to using Hebrew in as their first language. In 1995, Israel was home to 50,000 speakers of Judeo-Yemeni in 1995, while 1,000 remained in Yemen. According to Yemeni rabbi Al-Marhabi, most of these have since left for the United States, and fewer than 100 Jews are believed remain in Yemen.

See also

Judeo-Arabic

Further reading

• Khan, G. (Ed.). (2013, January 1). Hebrew as a secret Language in Yemenite Judeo-Arabic (EHLL). Retrieved February 13, 2015, from http://www.academia.edu/6421917/Hebrew_as_a_secret_Language_in_Yemenite_Judeo-Arabic_EHLL_
• Wexler, P. (n.d.). Jewish Interlinguistics: Facts and Conceptual Framework. Retrieved February 13, 2015, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/414288
• Piamenta, Moshe. 1990-1991. A dictionary of post-classical Yemeni Arabic. Leiden: Brill. (Includes bibliographical references (v. 1, p. xv-xxiv)).
• Goitein, Shelomo D. 1960. The language of al-gades: The main characteristics of an Arabic dialect spoken in Lower Yemen. Le Muséon 73. 351-394.

External links

• YouTube Video of Judeo-Yemeni