Jewish languages

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Hebrew

Judeo-Aramaic

Judeo-Arabic

Other Jewish diaspora languages

Jewish folklore

Jewish poetry

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  • Other aspects
Judaism portal

Jewish languages are the various

Judeo-Aramaic
with the languages of the local non-Jewish population.

Ancient history

Early

Ugaritic and Amarna Canaanite), though noticeable differentiation did occur during the Iron Age (1200–540 BCE).[2] Hebrew as a separate language developed during the latter half of the second millennium BCE between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an area known as Canaan.[3]

The earliest distinctively Hebrew writing yet discovered was found at Khirbet Qeiyafa and dates to the 10th century BCE.[4][5] The Israelite tribes established a kingdom in Canaan at the beginning of the first millennium BCE, which later split into the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south after a dispute of succession.[6]

The kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the

scrolls from the 5th century BCE on the island of Elephantine.[8] Later the Persians made Judah a province and permitted Jewish exiles to return and rebuild the Temple.[6] Aramaic became the common language in the north of Israel, in Galilee and Samaria, though Hebrew remained in use in Judah with Aramaic influence.[7]

Bar-Kochba revolt in 132–135 CE led to a large departure of the Jewish population of Judea.[6] Biblical Hebrew after the Second Temple period evolved into Mishnaic Hebrew, which ceased being spoken and developed into a literary language around 200 CE.[9] Hebrew remained in widespread use among diasporic communities as the medium of writing and liturgy, forming a vast corpus of literature which includes rabbinic, medieval, and modern literature prior to the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language.[8][10]

Development of Jewish varieties of languages

Jewish communities were dispersed around the world in the diaspora which followed the Jewish-Roman wars. Some adopted the languages of their neighbors, but many developed new varieties of these languages, collectively termed "Jewish languages".

Bukhori, a dialect of Tajik, and Mountain Jews spoke Judeo-Tat
.

In the early 20th century, secularism among Jews and large population shifts prompted the beginning of a shift from Jewish to non-Jewish languages. Even so, the majority of Jews in

Holocaust brought about a significant drop in the use of Jewish languages, especially Yiddish. Later, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, learning Yiddish has begun to see a significant increase in popularity and interest,[12] with studies revealing a surge in registration to online Yiddish language learning resources such as Duolingo.[13]

Classification

Jewish languages are generally defined as the unique linguistic

Germanic language, shows a high degree of dissimilarity to modern German dialects. Due to continued liturgical and literary use of Hebrew and Aramaic, Jewish communities were naturally in a state of diglossia.[14] Along with their vernacular Jewish language, most Jews could read and write in Hebrew, which was necessary to fulfill the religious commandment to learn Torah and teach it. Jews were expected to also have knowledge of Judeo-Aramaic, the language of religious commentary (targumim) as well as many prayers, including the Kaddish. Hebrew, the "Holy Tongue", was the highest linguistic register in these communities, used for liturgy and study. Hebrew-Aramaic is the only adstratum shared by all Jewish languages.[8]
Some Jewish languages have multiple registers; for example, both Yiddish and Judezmo have three linguistic registers: colloquial, written, and scholarly-liturgical.

Some Jewish languages show the effects of the history of language shift among the speakers, including Hebrew-Aramaic influence. Yiddish exemplifies such a language. Some Jewish languages may become marked as distinctively Jewish because some shift affected some parts of the language as a whole. For example, what is today known as Baghdad Jewish Arabic (because it is the Arabic variety that was up until recently spoken by Baghdad's Jews) was originally the Arabic dialect of Baghdad itself and was used by all religious groups in Baghdad, but the Muslim residents of Baghdad later adopted Bedouin dialects of Arabic. Similarly, a dialect may be perceived as Jewish because its Jewish speakers brought the dialect of another region with them when they were displaced. In some cases, this may cause a dialect to be perceived as "Jewish" in some regions but not in others.

Some Jewish language varieties may not be

Berber in "Ladino Occidental" (also known as Haketia); Levantine Arabic, Greek, Turkish and South Slavic
in "Ladino Oriental".

In some cases, as with Ladino, a register may be developed for Biblical translation and exegesis in which Hebrew-Aramaic patterns are frequently

Moses Mendelsohn
's translation of the Hebrew Bible into German written with Hebrew letters.

Judaeo-Papiamento, the only living Jewish ethnolect endemic to the Americas and likely the only one that is also a creole language, has lexical differences from its non-Jewish counterpart that go beyond the influence of Hebrew and Aramaic. In formal contexts, Sephardic Jewish speakers of Papiamento tend to use extensive borrowing from French and Portuguese, whereas non-Jewish Curaçaoans mostly use Spanish loanwords in similar contexts.[15]

Arabic, and transliterated into Latin script
.
Signs in English and Yiddish in the predominantly Hasidic area of Kiryas Joel, New York

Status

Among the most widely spoken Jewish languages to develop in the diaspora are

French Jews.[16][17]

Many ancient and distinct Jewish languages, including

Jewish exodus from Arab lands, the assimilation policies of Israel
in its early days and other factors.

Yiddish was the language spoken by the largest number of Jews in the 1850s, but today the three most commonly spoken languages among Jews are English, modern Hebrew, and Russian—in that order.[18] Yiddish, as well as several other Jewish languages, has contributed to the vocabulary of coterritorial non-Jewish languages, such as English or French.[19]

Bukharian and Judeo-Tat for both domestic and overseas shortwave audiences in relevant areas. In addition, for over two decades starting in the late 1970s, a daily 30-minute shortwave transmission was made to Yemen in Yemenite Jewish Arabic
.

Radio Exterior de España, Spain's international public broadcaster, provides programming in Ladino, which they refer to as Sefardi.[20]

In the United States as well as in Birobidzhan, Russia, there are some local radio programs in Yiddish.

Judeo-Marathi (Marathi: जुदाव मराठी) is a form of Marathi spoken by the Bene Israel, a Jewish ethnic group that developed a unique identity in India. Judeo-Marathi, like other Marathi dialects, is written in the Devanagari script. It may not be sufficiently different from Marathi as to constitute a distinct language, although it is characterized by a number of loanwords from Hebrew and Aramaic as a result of influence from the Cochin Jewish community, as well as from Judeo-Malayalam, Portuguese and also some influence from the Urdu language.

Alphabets

A page from a Haggada shel Pesah in Judaeo-Marathi which was printed in Mumbai in 1890.
Main article: Hebrew alphabet

For centuries Jews worldwide spoke the local or dominant languages of the regions they migrated to, often developing distinctive dialectal forms or branching off as independent languages. The usual course of development for these languages was through the addition of Hebrew words and phrases used to express uniquely Jewish concepts and concerns. Often they were written in Hebrew letters, including the block letters used in Hebrew today and Rashi script.

Conversely, Ladino, formerly written in Rashi script or Solitreo, since the 1920s is usually written in Turkey in the Latin alphabet with a spelling similar to that of Turkish, and has been occasionally printed in the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets.[21]

Also, some Yiddish-speakers have adopted the use of the Latin alphabet, in place of the Hebrew alphabet. This is predominantly to enable communications over the internet, without the need for special Hebrew keyboards.

References

  1. ^ Waltke & O'Connor (1990:6–7)
  2. ^ Waltke & O'Connor (1990:8–9)
  3. ^ Sáenz-Badillos (1993:1–2)
  4. ^ Feldman (2010)
  5. ^ Shanks (2010)
  6. ^ a b c d e Steiner (1997:145)
  7. ^ a b c Sáenz-Badillos (1993:112–113)
  8. ^ a b c d e f g Handbook of Jewish Languages
  9. ^ Sáenz-Badillos (1993:166, 171)
  10. ISBN 9781403938695
    .
  11. ^ YIDDISH: History and Development
  12. ^ Miller, Tori (November 18, 2019). "Yiddish on the Rise". University of Texas. Retrieved Nov 4, 2023.
  13. ^ Smith, Noah (September 30, 2022). "The pandemic and apps are fueling a surge of interest in Yiddish". Washington Post. Retrieved Nov 4, 2023.
  14. ^ A Short History of the Hebrew Language: Hebrew in the Diaspora
  15. Forverts
    (in Yiddish). Retrieved 2023-06-26.
  16. doi:10.1163/22134638-12340080
  17. S2CID 243838176
    .
  18. Beth Hatefutsoth, The Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora. Archived from the original
    on 2008-07-25. Retrieved 2008-07-03.
  19. ^ For Yiddish loanwords in French, see P. Nahon, « Notes lexicologiques sur des interférences entre yidich et français moderne », Revue de linguistique romane 81, 2017, p. 139-155.
  20. ^ REE programs in Ladino
  21. ^ Verba Hispanica X: Los problemas del estudio de la lengua sefardí Archived 2008-04-07 at the Wayback Machine, Katja Smid, Ljubljana, pages 113–124: Es interesante el hecho que en Bulgaria se imprimieron unas pocas publicaciones en alfabeto cirílico búlgaro y en Grecia en alfabeto griego. [...] Nezirović (1992: 128) anota que también en Bosnia se ha encontrado un documento en que la lengua sefardí está escrita en alfabeto cirilico. The Nezirović reference is: Nezirović, M., Jevrejsko-Spanjolska knjitévnost. Institut za knjifevnost, Svjeálost, Sarajevo, 1992.

Bibliography

External links

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