The phonology of endangered Judeo-Arabic languages
There are at least eight understudied Jewish varieties of Arabic spoken in Israel by Jewish immigrants from Arab countries (Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen). Those varieties are endangered and are unfortunately expected to disappear in the next decades, as they are not passed on to children as native languages. Our goal is to record, document, and analyze the sound systems of those varieties, investigate their consequences for human cognition, and make the data and results available for the general public. This project thus serves the dual goals of contributing to the preservation of Judeo-Arabic varieties for future generations, while also contributing to our understanding of the human language capacity.
As part of this project, we have published the Tel-Aviv University audio database of Judeo-Baghdadi Arabic.