What are Judeo-Arabic languages?
Q: What are Judeo-Arabic languages?
A: Judeo-Arabic languages are a collection of Arabic language dialects spoken by Jews living or formerly living in Arabic-speaking countries.
Q: How were Judæo-Arabic dialects written?
A: Most Judæo-Arabic dialects were written in modified forms of the Hebrew alphabet, often including consonant dots from the Arabic alphabet to accommodate phonemes that did not exist in the Hebrew alphabet.
Q: Why did Jews flee Arab countries after 1948?
A: In retaliation for 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Jews in Arab countries became subject to increasingly insufferable discrimination and violence, causing virtually all of them to flee en masse to Israel.
Q: What replaced Judaeo-Arabic when Jews fled Arab countries?
A: Their dialects of Arabic did not thrive in Israel, and most became extinct, replaced by the Modern Hebrew language.
Q: When did Jews start speaking a dialect of Arabic?
A: In the Middle Ages, Jews in the Islamic diaspora spoke a dialect of Arabic which they wrote in a mildly adapted Hebrew script (rather than using Arabic script). This phenomenon is called Judaeo-Arabic.
Q: What is similar to Judaeo-Arabic?
A: Judaeo-Arabic may be compared to both Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish) and Yiddish (Judaeo-German).
Q: Which important books were originally written in Judaeo-Arabic?
A:Some of the most important books of medieval Jewish though were originally written in Judaeo-Arabic, as well as certain halakhic works and biblical commentary.
