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Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic
Libyan Judeo-Arabic Tripolitanian Judeo-Arabic Jewish Tripolitanian-Libyan Arabic Tripolita'it Yudi
Native to	Israel, Italy
Native speakers	(43,000 cited 1994–1994)
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Maghrebi Pre-Hilalian Libyan Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic
Writing system	Hebrew alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	yud
Glottolog	jude1264
ELP	Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic

Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic (also known as Tripolitanian Judeo-Arabic, Jewish Tripolitanian–Libyan Arabic, Tripolita'it, Yudi) is a variety of Arabic spoken by Jews formerly living in Libya.

Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic differs from standard Libyan Arabic in that it closely resembles the original dialect of the sedentary population, whereas much of Libya's population now speaks Bedouin-influenced varieties of Arabic. A reference grammar is available.

The vast majority of Libyan Jews have relocated to Israel and have switched to using Hebrew in as their first language. Those in Italy typically use Italian as their first language.

Phonology

Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic contains 31 consonant phonemes which are as follows:

Nasals	Plosives	Affricative	Fricatives	Liquids	Rhotic	Semi-Vowels
m, n, (ŋ)	b, (t), d, (tˤ), g, k, q, ʔ	t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ	f, s, z, sˤ, ʃ, x,. ħ, ʕ, h	l, (lˤ)	ɣ	w, j

It also has 4 Vowels which are as follows:

Front Vowels	Back Vowels
i, (e)	a, ə, o, (u)

Morphology

Pronouns

Independent Pronouns

	Singular	Plural
1st	ʔaná	ħnán
2nd Male	nt͡ʃá	nt͡ʃə́mm
2nd Female	nt͡ʃí
3rd Male	ʔáwwa	ʔə́mma
3rd Female	ʔə́jja

Pronoun suffixes

	Singular			Plural
	After consonant	After vowel	After semivowel
1st	-i (-ni)	-ya (-ni)
2nd	-ək	-k		-kəm
3rd Male		+ stress and length -u (followed by consonant)	-(w)ú, (y)i	-əm
3rd Female	-a

Demographics

In ca. 1994 there were 35,000 speakers of Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic, mostly in Israel (30,000) and Italy (5,000). As of 2014, those in Israel are mostly over the age of 60 and are bilingual in Hebrew.

History

There were 20,000 Jews living in Tripoli, Libya in 1948. About 14,000 migrated to Israel and Italy in 1948–1952, following two riots. After riots during the Six-Day War in 1967, most of the remaining 6,000 Jews emigrated; there were only a few dozen Jews living in Tripoli in 1970.

See also

• History of the Jews in Libya
• Jewish languages
• Judeo-Arabic languages

Further reading

• Garcia Arevalo, T. (2014). "The General Linguistic Features of the Modern Judeo-Arabic dialects in the Maghreb". Zutot. 11 (1): 49–56. doi:10.1163/18750214-12341266.
• Goldberg, H. (1983). "Language and culture of the Jews of Tripolitania". Mediterranean Language Review. 1: 85–102. JSTOR 10.13173/medilangrevi.1.1983.0085.
• Spolsky, B. (2014). The languages of the Jews: A sociolinguistic history. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-69995-3.

External links

• Judeo-Arabic at endangeredlanguages.com