Central Asian Arabic
Central Asian Arabic or Jugari Arabic (in Arabic: العربية الآسيوية الوسطى) is a variety of Arabic currently facing extinction and spoken predominantly by Arab communities living in portions of Central Asia.
| Central Asian Arabic | |
|---|---|
| Jugari Arabic | |
| Native to | Afghanistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan |
| Speakers | Tajiki Arabic: 17,000 (2017) Uzbeki Arabic (not counting Khorasani): 700 (1992) |
Afro-Asiatic
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| Dialects |
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| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Either:abh – Tajiki Arabicauz – Uzbeki Arabic |
| Glottolog | cent2410 |
Enclaves in Afghanistan, Iran and Uzbekistan where Central Asian Arabic is still spoken. In brackets, after the name of each region, is the number of villages with Arabic-speaking inhabitants. | |
It is a very different variant from others known in the Arabic language and, although it bears certain similarities with North Mesopotamian Arabic, it is part of the Central Asian family, an independent linguistic branch of the five main groups of the Modern Standard Arabic. There is no diglossia with Modern Standard Arabic.
It is spoken by an estimated 6,000 people in Afghanistan, Iran, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, countries where Arabic is not an official language, and reported to be declining in number.
In contrast to all Arab countries, it is not characterized by diglossia; The Arab ethnic group use Uzbek and Persian (including Dari and Tajiki) to communicate with each other, and as literary language; Speakers are reported to be bilingual, others speak these languages as mother tongue, and only few members of the communities now speak Jugari Arabic.