Judeo-Arabic today

STILL AROUND: Blessings and curses of Judeo-Arabic (Lyn Julius, Jerusalem Post Blog). I have mentioned from time to time (here and links) my own developing research interest in Judeo-Arabic. So I found it very interesting to hear that it survives as a spoken language today, although perhaps not for much longer.

When I was growing up as the daughter of Iraqi Jews, I used to think that the language my parents spoke consisted largely of curses. My mother would insult the object of her scorn with wakamazzalem ('May their luck run out'). Woudja ! was an expression of pain and Wi Abel ! (O mourning - from the Hebrew evel), an expression of dismay. An idiot would be called zmal ( a donkey) or booma (an owl - anything but wise). Later, I discovered that there was more to the Judeo-Arabic language. It had marvellously sonorous words like bezoona (cat), darboona (corridor) and teeteepampa (mattress fluffer - a trade now sadly extinct.)

The Jewish dialect is more ancient than the Arabic spoken by Muslim Iraqis, which was adulterated through the centuries by Beduin Arabic. The Jewish version is closer to the Arabic spoken in northern Iraq and has definite affinities with Aramaic.

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