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Judeo-Tajik / Bukharian
Description by Logan Drone, Earle Schweizer, Brian Snitman, and Or Turner, compiled for a class assignment

Brief Historical Overview:

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Relevant Migrations Patterns: 

Ancestors of Bukharian Jews have been living in the central Asian region for over 2,000 years. While many Bukharian Jews are descendants of the former subjects of the Emir of Bukhara, many were also Ashkenazi Jews who immigrated during Russian rule, political deportees from the Soviet era, and Polish refugees who were trying to escape Hitler (Shapiro 2021).

 

Bukharian Jews descend from the Jews exiled from Israel by the Babylonians. They then migrated to Assyria, and under Russian rule, they were allowed to live in Central Asia. Many Bukharian Jews moved to Central Asian hubs like Tashkent (the capital of Uzbekistan), but they also had significant communities in Samarkand, Bukhara, and Dushanbe.

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After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Bukharian Jews immigrated mainly to the US and Israel. As of the 1990s, only about a hundred Jews were left in Bukhara (Bukharian heartland) in Uzbekistan (Burton 1996).

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Historical Periods of Bukharian:

Late 18th to early 19th century: Political and territorial changes in Central Asia caused Judeo-Persian to transform into Bukharian. It was used for communication within the community.

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Late 19th century: Rabbi Shimon Hakham founded a literary school in Jerusalem, whose members translated the bible and other works into Bukharian, making it a literary language.

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Early 20th century: in the rise of the Soviet Regime, hundreds of school books, poems, and plays were still being written in Bukharian. When the Soviet regime of Turkestan was established, however, certain changes took place. In late 1921, the Turkestani People’s Commissariat of Education ordered that Bukharian replace Hebrew as the primary language of instruction in schools (Iranica Encyclopedia).

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Mid-20th century: publication in Bukharian became forbidden in the USSR (1940), and the penalty for it was a death sentence. Once again, Bukharian became a language of communication within the community of Bukharian Jews in the USSR rather than a rich literary language. In Israel however, there were still a few publications in Bukharian.

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Late 20th century to today: since the migration of Jews from the USSR to Israel, Bukharian has been used in a few publications, poems, plays, and radio programs (Tolmas 2002). Post-vernacular use of Bukharian has also been occurring in the United States, but to a lesser extent.

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Documentary Evidence:

  • The first printed book in Bukharian was a translation of the biblical book of Psalms in 1883. In 1885 the same translator, Benyamin R. Yohanan ha-Kohen, translated the book of Proverbs.

  • The book of Job was published in Bukharian in 1895 in Jerusalem.

  • About 100 books using the Hebrew alphabet were published in Bukharian in Jerusalem.

  • One of the most active translators was Shimon Hakham. He created modern Bukharian adaptations of European classics (Shapiro 2021). 

  • The first Bukharian newspaper was created in Central Asia in 1910.

  • On November 16, 1925, a weekly Bukharian newspaper was established, and in 1931 a bi-monthly literary and political magazine was created (Iranica Encyclopedia).

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Scholarship on Bukharian:

There are many articles and books about Bukharian.

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Non-Jewish Correlate:

Bukharian is a Southwestern Iranian language and is very similar to Tajik (ELA Alliance). It is also a part of the Indo-European family.

Bukhara Province, located in modern day Uzbekistan, was the most prominent location of Bukharian Jews

Quick facts


Names of language:

Judeo-Tajik, Judeo-Tadjik, Judaeo-Tajik, Judaeo Tadjik, Bukharan, Bukharian, Bukhori, Bukhari, Bukharic, Bucharian, Bucharan (Tolmas 2022)

 

Territories where it was/is spoken:

Originally spoken in parts of Central Asia, particularly Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Within those countries, there were large communities in the cities of Tashkent, Dushanbe, Samarkand, Bukhara, and the towns of the Fergana Valley (Borjian 2016).

Today the language is primarily spoken in Israel, Austria, Germany, Canada, Uzbekistan, and the United States (Tolmas 2022).

 

Estimated # speakers:

20th century: most of the estimated 45,000 Bukharian Jews spoke Bukharian (Burton 2015)

2019: the population of Bukharian Jews today might be as high as 200,000 (Borjian 2016) or 220,000 (Tolmas 2022), however, only 40% of the older generation can speak Bukharian

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Vitality:

Endangered

 

Writing systems:

Hebrew, then Latin, then Cyrillic (Tolmas 2022)​

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Literature:

Poems, books, plays, periodicals

 

Language family/branch:

Indo-European family, Southwestern Iranian branch (ELA Alliance)

Map of cities in Asia where Bukharian was spoken

Repertoire of Distinctive Jewish Linguistic Features:

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Hebrew/Aramaic Component: 

  • Many loanwords are related to religion: rituals (bar mitzvah, brit, etc.), prayers, food, holidays, objects (mezuza, Torah, etc.), etc. Also, there are loanwords used in greetings, curses, and other random objects/adjectives.

  • Most words preserve the original semantic meaning, however, some of the words are used in different ways. For example- shomayim, which correlates to 'sky' in Hebrew, means ‘an intoxicated man’ in Bukharian. Barokho, which correlates to the word ''blessing in Hebrew often means ‘profit’ in Bukharian (Tolmas 2022).

  • Loanwords tend to be integrated with Tajik morphology and syntax:

    1. Hypocoristic forms, for example, adding -cha at the end of a word means “little + the word.”

    2. Plural forms end with the suffix -ho.

    3. Possessive forms end with -i. For example, sandoq+i rishon means 'the first godfather' (Tolmas 2022).

    4. The suffix -i can turn words into adjectives. For example, shir means 'milk' and shiri means 'dairy'.

  • The Hebrew letters het and ayin are pronounced as gutterals, whereas these sounds are not used by non-Jews.

  • Words are integrated with a slight vowel shift: ​

    1. /u/ often becomes [ü]. Example: hanükko = 'Hanukkah'. The /u/ sound became an [ü].

    2. With Kamats vowels, the sound /a/ becomes [ɵ]. In the past, /ɵ/ used to be /o/, but there was a vowel shift in the early 20th century (Ido 2017). Example: Ben zɵkhɵr = 'male son'.

    3. The sound of the Hebrew letter tzadik (צ) /t͡s/ does not exist in Bukharian, and instead, it becomes /s/.

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Additional Language(s) in Contact:

Bukharian has more Russian influence than other Tajik dialects because of the amount of time that areas like Tashkent and Dushanbe were under Russian control. As a result, some words in Bukharian are borrowed from Russian, such as istokon which means 'cup' and ishkof which means 'closet'. Words from Persian were also borrowed by Bukharian, including the phrase oshi savo which means 'the Sabbath meal'. Bukharian contains some loan words from other Jewish languages like Yiddish, such as shvarz, meaning 'black'.

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Archaic Features:

Bukharian contains words from Tajik that are no longer in use among non-Jews, such as arzoni shudan, 'to have the privilege of'.

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Other Distinctive Features:

  • Bukharian is different from the Samarqand non-Jewish dialect in some of its verb endings, possessive suffixes, vowel sounds, and the inclusion of glottal stops, as in ain (Burton 1996).

  • Bukharian has the bilabial fricative /β/, an allophone of /b/ which is rendered by the letter /v/. For example kitov, 'book' (Borjian 2016).

  • Bukharian has morpho-phonological features such as the elision of the final consonant (example: raftan < raftand, which is ‘they went’), contraction of periphrastic perfect forms (example: raftem < rafta-am, which means ‘I have gone’), and reduction of the postposition ro to o in post-consonantal position (Borjian 2016).

  • Compared to Tajik, Bukharian has different question and exclamation intonations.

  • ​Bukharian has distinctive verbal morphology. For example, the phrase “I will go” in Tajik is Meravam, and in Bukharian is Merum.

Orthography:

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Bukharian is a written language, and it primarily uses Hebrew characters. Other historical documents reveal that some Jews also used Arabic letters to write the language. Despite that, in 1929-1932, the Latin alphabet replaced the Hebrew characters. This was done so non-Hebrew speakers could understand the phonology, and because the possession of books written in Hebrew was considered seditious by the Soviet Government. As a result, many of those literary works were burned and discarded (Iranica Encyclopedia). This period also marked a shift in the language's written legacy. In the 1940s, countries of the region forbade publishing in Bukharian, so the language became one of oral tradition. This is also a reason that Bukharian initially did not follow the Central Asian trend at the time of adopting Cyrillic orthography – if no one can use the writing system, there is no point in changing it. Beyond that, schools also started teaching in different languages to align themselves with the written law. There are very few publications that appeared in Judeo-Tajik from then until 1980, however, with massive migrations to Israel and the United States there was a small resurgence. Some of these new publications were published in the traditional Hebrew characters, while others were done in Cyrillic characters.

The Latin-based Bukharian writing system, which was introduced in 1930 (Borjian 2016)

The Cyrillic-based Bukharian writing system

Sociolinguistic Variation:

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Inter-speaker Variation: 

There are two primary dialects of the Tajik language that originated in Bukhara and Samarkand, and Jews spoke both of them. There is no research on inter-speaker variation according to gender or learnedness.

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Intra-speaker Variation: 

Sometimes Bukharian Jews used Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords to make sure Muslim Tajik speakers did not understand them:

  • Numerals of Hebrew-Aramaic origin were most popular: ehot < אחד 'one;' shinem < שניים 'two;' shalüsho < שלושה 'three;' arbo’o < ארבעה 'four;' hamisho < חמישה 'five;' shisho < שישה 'six' (Tolmas 2022).

  • word combinations were used: umüt ho’ülom ‘nation(s) of the world’ < אומות-העולם diburlü ‘say nothing’ < דיבור ‘talk’ + lü <  לא 'not' nishev shudan < נשב ‘we will sit’ in combination with the Tajik verb shudan ‘become’ is used in the meaning of ‘disappear' (Tolmas 2022).

Contemporary Status:

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Vitality: 

There are approximately 220,000 Jews of Bukharian descent. However, as of 2019, only 40% of the older generation could speak Bukharian, making it endangered. This is according to Chana Tolmas’ observation, which also included an estimate that 70% of the Bukharian Jews can understand the language. Most of the speakers reside in Israel and the United States, but there are also communities in Austria, Germany, Canada, and Uzbekistan.

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Vernacular Uses: 

Bukharian is only used by the older generation. Children from Bukharian communities are no longer taught the language and are native speakers of whatever language is spoken in the country they live in.

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Post Vernacular Uses: 

Publications in periodicals: a page in "Menora” – a weekly newspaper of the World Bukharian Jewish Congress in Israel, and a page in "Bukharian Times" – a weekly newspaper from New York. There is also a thirty-minute daily show in Bukharian on Israeli radio. More engagement is evident through performances of amateur actors and concerts of professional musicians in Israel and New York. Young community members know some words and phrases and engage with the language in metalinguistic ways.

This is a short story in Bukharian, recited by Bobby Nudel. Below is the transcription and translation.

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Transcription: ​

Yak psar baonesh me purse one chuve de dim kali muye mui kalesh hamesh rex egi. onesh megu psar jonam azbaskiki dedet yagla xayolu oylumekune hama muir shrextak. psar ufte xai azbaskiki ami sabab chube mui saret hole nahaltide. onesh megu ibi gavoy axmakinaza akotuhuru maktav tez tez boro.

 

Translation:

The son asks his mom "How come dad’s head is completely bald? Where'd all his hair go?" The mom says "well son your dad thinks and does a lot of pondering and that’s why all his hair fell down. He thinks too much." The son says "Mom if that's the case how come none of your hair has fallen down yet." The mom says "Eh. Don't say stupid stuff here. Eat your food quickly and go to school already.”

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Native Speaker Interview:

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Description of Speaker: 

The speaker that we interviewed was named Robert “Bobby” Nudel. Bobby, 31, was born in the United States, but his family is from the former Soviet Union. Bukharian is his mother’s family’s language, and he started to learn it when he was 18. He has been fluent in Bukharian for at least 12 years now. As a child, his parents both spoke to him in Russian, his mother also spoke to him in Hebrew, and his grandmother and mother would speak Bukharian to each other. 

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Bobby speaks Bukharian, Russian, Hebrew, English, the standard dialect of Tajik, a dialect of Persian, and some Arabic. He was born and raised in Miami, Florida, and currently lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He is one of the few people in his age group who speaks Bukharian fluently.

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After learning about Bobby and his background, we asked Bobby if he could teach us some common phrases in Bukharian. Below is a copy of the elicitation with Bobby.

Descendant Interview:

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Description of Descendant: 

The descendant that we interviewed was named Daniel Maksumov, a former native of Queens, NY, currently residing in Florida. Daniel doesn’t speak Bukharian; he’s a native English speaker and is also decently fluent in Russian. Besides that, his language knowledge consists of basic French (from taking it as a class in high school), and the ability to read Hebrew and speak/understand a few Hebrew and Bukharian words. He grew up in a community of Bukharian Jews in Queens. His school was attended by many Bukharian Jews, and he mentioned that most had grandparents, and at times even parents, that spoke Bukharian. His primary exposure to the language was at home, through his grandparents (especially his dad's side), who used it as a “secret language.”

This is a short video of a song in Bukharian: "Yakumin Ki Medonad" (a Bukharian version of the traditional Passover song "Echad Mi Yodea")​

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He mentioned that his generation and that of his parents tend to view the language as "backwards.” He compared it to rednecks in America and explained that Bukharian speakers are portrayed as less sophisticated people, and their language doesn't get much respect. He thought the same thing when he was a kid, but nowadays he has a lot of respect for Bukharian, as it’s a testament to historical Jewish life. He tried to learn Bukharian as a young adult since he felt the responsibility to preserve the language but ultimately stopped after realizing the difficulties of learning a new language. Over time, his parents also grew to understand the importance of the language, and his dad actually knows a good amount of the language; his mom only knows a few words. 

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He expressed concern that Bukharian will be extinct fairly soon and that there is unfortunately no time for revitalization. He explained that the number of fluent speakers in Gen X onwards is tiny, and virtually all fluent speakers are in his grandparent’s generation. This means that in a few decades when these speakers die, no millennial will be able to pass on and continue Bukharian. However, he still believes that traces of the language will still be used, such as select phrases and expressions.

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Some of the words he knew were hudo (God), gir (take), hes (stand), mahmamodum (smartass), nahze (how are you), and yachmasche (days of the week), as well as the highlighted words in the chart from the elicitation with a native speaker. Daniel attributed his knowledge of these words to his grandparents, who would speak Bukharian as a secret language around him and his siblings. Some of the words were taught directly to Daniel, while others he learned from hearing them often.

Selected Bibliography

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