Heritage language maintenance and shift of three languages across three generations of Mountain Jews in Israel

Mountain Jewish immigrants to Israel from the Eastern Caucasus used two heritage languages, Juhuri (Judeo-Tat) and Russian. Juhuri was their home and Russian the societal languages prior to migration. In Israel, Juhuri and Russian are Heritage Languages and Hebrew is the societal language. The present study reports on frequency of use and codeswitching behaviour across three generations of Mountain Jewish speakers in order to account for patterns of language maintenance and language shift (LMLS). Audio-recorded conversations were collected from six female middle-generation speakers (G1.5: ages 33–50) with their mothers (G1: ages 60–75) and children (G2: ages 9–21). Findings for language use showed significant cross-generational differences, where use of both Russian and Juhuri declined and use of Hebrew increased across generations. Juhuri was maintained only among G1 participants, G1.5 speakers using it mainly for comprehension and G2 speakers abandoning it entirely. G1.5 participants maintained Russian for interaction with parents but did not use it with their children, for whom Hebrew was the dominant means of communication. Code-switching data showed the same overall shift to Hebrew with some maintenance of Russian among G1.5 speakers. Results are discussed in terms of LMLS and motivations for code-switching.