Judeo-Shirazi

Judeo-Shirazi is a variety of Fars. Some Judeo-Shirazi speakers refer to the language as Jidi, though Jidi is normally a designation used by speakers of Judeo-Esfahani. It is spoken mostly by Persian Jews living in Shiraz and surrounding areas of the Fars Province in Iran.

Judeo-Shirazi is descended from Medieval Shirazi.^[2] In 1900, there were an estimated 10,000 speakers of Judeo-Shirazi, but in 2023 that estimate has dwindled to less than 200. Like speakers of other Jewish-Iranian languages, many Judeo-Shirazi speakers immigrated to Israel or North America in the late 20th century. Today, around 4,000 individuals of Shirazi descent are living in Brooklyn, New York.^[1]

Unlike other Judeo-Iranian languages, Judeo-Shirazi has history of literature.^[3]

Unlike the other Judeo-Iranian languages, which are part of the Median languages, Judeo-Shirazi is a Southwest Iranian language, like Persian. Highlighting this are the lexical isoglosses Judeo-Shirazi exhibits, such as go- “say” and geyra “weeping”. Despite this affiliation, Judeo-Shirazi is distinct from Persian in its grammar.^[2]

The following list of words indicates a few isoglosses distinguishing Judeo-Shirazi from the dialect of Judeo-Esfahani.^[4]

Judeo-Shirazi displays several features of Southwest Iranian languages, as well as several features of Old Shirazi.

Judeo-Shirazi displays split ergativity in the past tenses of transitive verbs. This feature is a common link between Fars varieties. Additionally, Judeo-Shirazi marks person in the past transitive using a proclitic, which otherwise functions as an oblique pronominal suffix. Other grammatical features of note:^[4]

• The preposition a, derived from Middle Persian ō, with a primary ablative function in Judeo-Shirazi, e.g., Isof-râ . . . a Mesr-eš
• mibren “they take Joseph to Egypt.” Past participle marker -eθ- (< -est-), used in perfective forms: Judeo- Shirazi vâgešteθâ bodom “I had returned,” cf. Davāni amesse beδe, “I had come.”

Judeo-Shirazi articulates sibilants (s, z) as intra-dental (θ, ð). Persian, and other Southwest Iranian languages, distinguish these phonemes. The systematic replacement of /s z/ by /θ ð/ in Judeo-Shirazi may be a result of two processes: the post-vocalic fricativatization found in other Fars dialects, like Davāni, and the original phoneme /θ/ stemming from proto-Shirazi.^[5]

Though it has been to some extent influenced by Persian, over the years, Judeo-Shirazi has remained relatively stable. Other phonological features contribute to evidence of its descendance from proto-Shirazi and other old Fars dialects:

• Judeo-Shirazi present stem toδ- (< toz-) “burn,” attested in Medieval Shirazi texts as toz- and θoz-
• Judeo-Shirazi teš “louse,” also attested in Medieval Shirazi and a number of dialects spoken to the south, southeast, and east of Shiraz, is rooted in proto-Iranian *tswiš(ā)-,
• Judeo-Shirazi tanȷ-̌ “drink” must correspond with Medieval Shirazi tanz-, which is defined by the cognate Persian word sanȷ-̌

Additional features similar to Fars dialects include the fronting of back vowels and final -a and -e.^[4]

Judeo-Shirazi is now Moribund with only 200 speakers as of 2023.^[3] The language is poorly documented but there is currently linguistic study being done by the Endangered Language Alliance, among the Shirazi jewish community of New York.^[6]

1. Lazard, Gilbert. 1968. La Dialectologie du Judeo-Persan. Studies in Bibliography and Booklore 8. 77–98.

• Ancient Judeo-Persian Language Kept Alive
• Judeo-Shirazi at the Endangered Languages Project
• Judeo-Iranian Languages at the Jewish Languages Project