Endangered Jewish Language Varieties in Hamadan Province: Judeo-Hamadani, Judeo-Nahavandi, Judeo-Tuyserkani, and Judeo-Malayeri

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Associate Professor in Linguistics, Research Institute for Cultural Heritage and Tourism, Department of Contemporary Languages and Dialects, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Among the diverse language varieties spoken in Hamadan Province are those of its Jewish communities. These varieties warrant urgent scholarly attention, as over the past few decades, the majority of their speakers have emigrated from the region. The remaining speakers are now dispersed across various cities and countries, and there is currently no reliable data regarding speaker populations, or the status of intergenerational language transmission. This article investigates some of these varieties by drawing upon available linguistic data and the oral knowledge of local populations concerning the Jewish communities of Hamadan Province. Building upon previous research on the language varieties of Iranian Jews—specifically those in Hamadan Province—this study aims to identify features that indicate their affiliation with the Northwestern Iranian languages. Through an analysis of the Jewish varieties from Hamadan, Nahavand, and Tuyserkan, this study examined their linguistic features and found that they were influenced by the surrounding non-Jewish varieties (Hamadani, Nahavandi, and Tuyserkani). While no data is available for the language variety of the Jews of Malayer, given the historical presence of a Jewish community there, the present study suggests that the conclusions drawn from prior research and the current analysis may be reasonably extended to this variety as well.

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References

I express my sincere gratitude to the speakers whose linguistic data have been used in this article. I am also grateful to Dr. Habib Borjian and Ms. Hayedeh Ayenechi for collecting the data, and to all the researchers whose findings have contributed to this study.
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Research in Western Iranian Languages and Dialects
Volume 14, Issue 2
July 2026
Pages 1-17

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