Talk:Judeo-Arabic languages

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Contents 1 dialects of judeo-arabic 2 another thing the page needs to address 2.1 Deletion of Categories from cross-references 3 Judeo-Arabic is a much more complex subject

[edit] dialects of judeo-arabic

this article needs to clearly tell: does or does not each arab country have it's own dialect of judeo-arabic? each arab country has it's own dialect of "regular" arabic.

The Judeo-Arabic dialects predate the modern countries and did not stick to modern country boundaries. I don't think the issue is relevant today, since there are few, if any, native speakers left. Jayjg | (Talk) 17:26, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] another thing the page needs to address

is there an ethnic name for judeo-arabic speaking jews? (along the lines of: yiddish speaking jews are ashkenazim).

Not really; Mizrahi Jews would be closest, but it's not accurate. Judaeo-Arabic speaking Jews came from a number of different regions, and actually spoke different dialects. Jayjg ^(talk) 03:14, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've never heard of a non-Mizrahi Jew being brought up in the Judeo-Arabic language, what other ethnic backgrounds once carried the language?--Josiah 02:49, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

My point was that not all Mizrahi Jews spoke Judaeo-Arabic; Persian Jews would be one obvious Mizrahi group which never spoke Judaeo-Arabic. "Judaeo-Arabic speaking" and "Mizrahi" are not synonymous. Jayjg ^(talk) 17:02, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That's true... The descendants of the Jews of Kaifeng (now all secular) are of Mizrahi origin, but speak Mandarin Chinese. - Gilgamesh 04:32, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Also, many Moroccan Sephardim (not Mizrachim) have been brought up in Judaeo-Arabic, actually... So, all in all, Judaeo-Arabic is not the linguistic equivalent of Mizrachi, nor vice versa. -- Olve 23:03, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There is a term musta'arabi, meaning "Arabized Jew", and that is the nearest you're going to get. It was used of the ancient communities of countries such as Syria, as distinguished from the Sephardi immigrants in the sixteenth century. (On a personal note, I can't stand "Mizrahi" as a general term for all these communities, as by far the largest single group is Moroccan. "Mizrahim" is properly the Hebrew translation of "Mashriqiyyun", Orientals, in other words the peoples of Syria and Iraq as opposed to "Maghrabiyyun", people from North Africa. Jewish usage used to respect this: there is a collection of responsa called "Mizrach u-Maarav".)--Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 14:12, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion of Categories from cross-references

I linked to Jews of West Africa.

Is it not appropriate, for an article on Judeo-Arabic languages, to link with the sub-culture (Jews of West Africa) that would be speaking these languages. Is not this deletion an exercise of POV, and a violation of NPOV.

In sum, please give a rationale for the deletion. Dogru144 18:19, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Judeo-Arabic is a much more complex subject

First of all, check the Ethnologue and you will see there are indeed regional variations of Judeo-Arabic. Secondly, Judeo-Arabic is a much older phenomenon. What is described here is only the modern stage of Judeo-Arabic, yet Judeo-Arabic was employed by the Jewish population of Egypt (see Shlomo Dov Goitein's "The Mediterranean Society") as early as the 10th century (see also the Geniza documents|, by the Jewish population of the Maghreb in 15th century and in print by Jews in Iraq. There is a growing body of work on the Judeo-Arabic language, the most important being Joshua Blau's "The Emergence and linguistic background of Judaeo-Arabic" (last edition 1999). My research bibliography includes over 200 monographs and 300 scholarly papers on the subject by such scholars as Haim Blanc, Joshua Blau, Benjamin Hary, Joshua Fishman and Otto Jastrow - to name but a few. There are also audio materials available on the Semarch semitic languages archive website. Gentlemen, please check your sources before contributing. I have been planning to write an entry on the Judeo-Arabic language for some time. Who should I coordinate my work with? Anybody who can help me, feel free to contact me. --Bulbul 23:18, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to…) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. Jayjg ^(talk) 23:23, 12 September 2005 (UTC)