Endangered Languages Project

The Jewish vernacular of Shiraz.

ALSO KNOWN AS		Jidi
CLASSIFICATION		Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Iranian, Southwest Iranian
DOWNLOAD		As csv
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS		"Ethnologue uses the designation “Dzhidi” (i.e., Jidi) for all Iranian dialects spoken by the Iranian Jews. Having given the alternative name Judeo-Persian, with the identifier [jpr], the Ethnologue classifies Dzhidi under “Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Iranian, Western, Southwestern, Persian,” and further describes it as being “similar” to Bukharic [bhh] and Iranian Persian [pes], noting that Dzhidi employs the Hebrew script for writing (Ethnologue, s.v. “Dzhidi”). This data could not be more inaccurate. First, Jidi is a designation used by the speakers of the Jewish dialect of Isfahan (Judeo-Isfahani), and does not necessarily apply to the Jewish dialects native to other towns. Secondly, as we shall see below, the native Jewish dialects spoken in various towns are very far from constituting a homogeneous whole and therefore cannot be lumped together collectively as a single language. Thirdly, these dialects or languages, which we refer to here as Judeo-Median, are from the Northwest branch of Iranian family, genealogically distinct from Persian, a Southwest Iranian language, and also from Bukhari (and Juhuri). Finally, in contrast to Judeo-Persian, with its long written tradition, Judeo-Median has survived in spoken form only." (Habib Borjian 2014)

MORE ON SPEAKER NUMBERS
"... Shirazi dialects are a subgroup of a larger linguistic group known as ‘Fars dialects’. Fars dialects belong to the Southwest branch of Iranian languages, as does Persian, but are far more conservative."

Judeo-Shirazi