Jacob Kodner · Language Keepers: Judeo-Kashani

Part 1 of our new series, Language Keepers: Documenting Endangered Jewish Languages

Learn the essential skills of language preservation while documenting a critically endangered Jewish language.

For centuries, a thriving Jewish community lived in Kashan, Iran, speaking Judeo-Kashani—a unique, now critically endangered language unintelligible to outsiders. After the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the community dispersed, and only a few elderly speakers remain. This course offers a rare chance to help preserve the language. You will gain practical, hands-on experience in the essential skills of language preservation while working directly to document Judeo-Kashani. In six weekly 90-minute sessions, this course provides training in linguistics and fieldwork through lectures, interactive exercises, and collaborative work with some of the language's last native speakers.

What You'll Learn:

• The basics of linguistics needed to document any endangered language (e.g., language variation, morphology, International Phonetic Alphabet symbols)
• How to collaborate with a native speaker to film, transcribe, and translate an oral history
• Techniques to elicit vocabulary and develop online dictionary entries

You may participate synchronously (joining each week on Zoom) or asynchronously (self-studying with the video afterward), as all sessions will be recorded. (Note: The class will not meet on Dec 1.)

Curious? Learn more about Judeo-Kashani and efforts to document and preserve it here.

Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor, this program is offered at no cost.

Please consider making a donation to New Lehrhaus to help support our Endangered Jewish Languages program.
(Be sure to indicate that your donation is in appreciation of this program.)