Judeo-Yemeni Arabic (also known as Judeo-Yemeni and Yemenite Judeo-Arabic) is a variety of Arabic spoken by Jews living or formerly living in

Yemen Yemen, officially the Republic of Yemen, is a country in West Asia. Located in South Arabia, southern Arabia, it borders Saudi Arabia to Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, the north, Oman to Oman–Yemen border, the northeast, the south-eastern part ...

. The language is quite different from mainstream

Yemeni Arabic Yemeni Arabic () is a cluster of varieties of Arabic spoken in Yemen and southwestern Saudi Arabia. It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, having many classical features not found across most of the Arabic-speaking world ...

, and is written in the

Hebrew alphabet The Hebrew alphabet (, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is a unicase, unicameral abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably ...

. The cities of

Sana'a Sanaa, officially the Sanaa Municipality, is the ''de jure'' capital and largest city of Yemen. The city is the capital of the Sanaa Governorate, but is not part of the governorate, as it forms a separate administrative unit. At an elevation ...

Aden Aden () is a port city located in Yemen in the southern part of the Arabian peninsula, on the north coast of the Gulf of Aden, positioned near the eastern approach to the Red Sea. It is situated approximately 170 km (110 mi) east of ...

, al-Bayda, and Habban District and the villages in their districts each have (or had) their own dialect. The vast majority of

Yemenite Jews Yemenite Jews, also known as Yemeni Jews or Teimanim (from ; ), are a Jewish diaspora group who live, or once lived, in Yemen, and their descendants maintaining their customs. After several waves of antisemitism, persecution, the vast majority ...

have relocated to Israel and have shifted to

Modern Hebrew Modern Hebrew (, or ), also known as Israeli Hebrew or simply Hebrew, is the Standard language, standard form of the Hebrew language spoken today. It is the only surviving Canaanite language, as well as one of the List of languages by first w ...

as their

first language A first language (L1), native language, native tongue, or mother tongue is the first language a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period hypothesis, critical period. In some countries, the term ''native 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 them have since left for the United States. In 2010, fewer than 300 Jews were believed to remain in Yemen. , only one Jew is believed to remain in Yemen.

References

External links

YouTube Video of Judeo-Yemeni
Jews and Judaism in Yemen Peninsular Arabic Judeo-Arabic languages Mashriqi Arabic Languages of Israel Languages of Yemen {{arabic-lang-stub

See also

References

Further reading

External links