Open AccessTerminological Situation with the Name of the Language of the Mountain Jews
Author(s) -
Evgenia Nazarova
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
judaic-slavic journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2658-3364
DOI - 10.31168/2658-3364.2020.2.06
Subject(s) - linguistics , ethnogenesis , ethnic group , onomastics , judaism , state (computer science) , history , standard language , computer science , sociology , archaeology , anthropology , philosophy , algorithm
The article analyzes the difficult terminological situation with the name of the language of the Mountain Jews. In the article, the author gives different versions of the names of the language, existing in parallel, but in different areas. On the one hand, this is the ethnic name of the language - Juhuri, which is associated with the ethnonym Juhurho and is used by its speakers, the Mountain Jews, in their intra-ethnic communication. On the other hand, there is a second name of the same language – the Tat lan- guage and its modifications like Jewish-Tatian language (Judeo-Tat) etc. This name is currently used in scientific literature, in the state administrative “Nomenclature of the Languages of the Peoples of the Russian Federation”, in the name of such phenomena of the verbal culture of the Mountain-Jewish people as literature and theater. The author states that the presence of two or more disparate and in no way related names of one language brings confusion into the self-identification of Mountain Jews, complicates the study of its ethnogenesis, interferes with the normal statistical records of native speakers and creates many other difficulties. And because of it the author calls for unifying the name of the language of the Mountain Jews at the legislative level. Such unification will help in rejecting the use wrong term “The Tat language”, which is currently used as official one, and which is treated as erroneous and unacceptable by the Mountain Jews themself. Instead of that name, the author proposes to introduce into the administrative nomenclature the ethnic name of the language of the Mountain Jews Juhuri, thereby giving it an official status. As a result of such a replacement, the language of Mountain Jews will get their own relevant official name, which until now their language did not have for a number of specific historical reasons mentioned in the article. And this, the author believes, will fundamentally change the difficult long-term terminological situation with the name of the native language of the Mountain Jews for the better and bring it into a natural and harmonious state, similar to how it is noted in the vast majority of the peoples of Russia and the world: one people of Juhurho - one correlation it is the name of the native language of Juhuri.