This is a list of languages and groups of languages that developed within Jewish diaspora communities through contact with surrounding languages. [1]
(both written in local alphabets)
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Hebrew, and numerous other ancient and modern languages. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Malta, and in large immigrant and expatriate communities in North America, Europe, and Australasia. The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history, who derived the name from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis.
A sacred language, holy language or liturgical language is a language that is cultivated and used primarily for religious reasons by people who speak another, primary language in their daily lives.
Jewish languages are the various languages and dialects that developed in Jewish communities in the diaspora. The original Jewish language is Hebrew, supplanted as the primary vernacular by Aramaic following the Babylonian exile. Jewish languages feature a syncretism of Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic with the languages of the local non-Jewish population.
Judeo-Arabic dialects are ethnolects formerly spoken by Jews throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Under the ISO 639 international standard for language codes, Judeo-Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage under the code jrb, encompassing four languages: Judeo-Moroccan Arabic (aju), Judeo-Yemeni Arabic (jye), Judeo-Iraqi Arabic (yhd), and Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic (yud).
Judeo-Italian is an endangered Jewish language, with only about 200 speakers in Italy and 250 total speakers today. The language is one of the Italian languages and one of the Jewish Romance Languages. Some words have Italian prefixes and suffixes added to Hebrew words as well as Aramaic, roots. All of the language's dialects except one are now extinct.
Suret, also known as Assyrian or Chaldean, refers to the varieties of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) spoken by Christians, namely Assyrians. The various NENA dialects descend from Old Aramaic, the lingua franca in the later phase of the Assyrian Empire, which slowly displaced the East Semitic Akkadian language beginning around the 10th century BC. They have been further heavily influenced by Classical Syriac, the Middle Aramaic dialect of Edessa, after its adoption as an official liturgical language of the Syriac churches, but Suret is not a direct descendant of Classical Syriac.
The Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Urmia, a dialect of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic, was originally spoken by Jews in Urmia and surrounding areas of Iranian Azerbaijan from Salmas to Solduz and into what is now Yüksekova, Hakkâri and Başkale, Van Province in eastern Turkey. Most speakers now live in Israel.
Barzani Jewish Neo-Aramaic is a modern Jewish Aramaic language, often called Neo-Aramaic or Judeo-Aramaic. It was originally spoken in three villages near Aqrah in Iraqi Kurdistan. The native name of the language is Lishanid Janan, which means 'our language', and is similar to names used by other Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects .
Judaeo-Aramaic languages represent a group of Hebrew-influenced Aramaic and Neo-Aramaic languages.
Judeo-Tat or Juhuri is a traditional language of the Mountain Jews, primarily spoken in Azerbaijan, Dagestan, and Israel.
Judeo-Hamadani and Judeo-Borujerdi constitute a Northwestern Iranian language, originally spoken by the Iranian Jews of Hamadan and Borujerd in western Iran. Hamadanis refer to their language as ebri “Hebrew” or zabān-e qadim “old language.” Though not Hebrew, the term ebri is used to distinguish Judeo-Hamadani from Persian.
In 1920, Hamadan had around 13,000 Jewish residents. According to members of the community that Donald Stilo encountered in 2001-02, there were only eight people from the Jewish community left in Hamadān at the time, but others can still be found in Israel, New York City, and most predominantly in Los Angeles.
Judaeo-Romance languages are Jewish languages derived from Romance languages, spoken by various Jewish communities originating in regions where Romance languages predominate, and altered to such an extent to gain recognition as languages in their own right. The status of many Judaeo-Romance languages is controversial as, despite manuscripts preserving transcriptions of Romance languages using the Hebrew alphabet, there is often little-to-no evidence that these "dialects" were actually spoken by Jews living in the various European nations.
Targum is used by the Jews of northern Iraq and Kurdistan to refer to a variety of Aramaic dialects spoken by them till recent times. For details of these dialects, see Judeo-Aramaic language. The word "targum" simply means "translation" in Hebrew, and the primary reference of the term is the Aramaic Bible translations of that name. The Jewish use of "Targum" to mean the Aramaic language in general dates back to the early Middle Ages. An analogy is the use of "Ladino" to mean Judeo-Spanish, and of sharħ to mean Judeo-Arabic.
Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) is a grouping of related dialects of Neo-Aramaic spoken before World War I as a vernacular language by Jews and Assyrian Christians between the Tigris and Lake Urmia, stretching north to Lake Van and southwards to Mosul and Kirkuk. As a result of the Assyrian genocide, Christian speakers were forced out of the area that is now Turkey and in the early 1950s most Jewish speakers moved to Israel. The Kurdish-Turkish conflict resulted in further dislocations of speaker populations. As of the 1990s, the NENA group had an estimated number of fluent speakers among the Assyrians just below 500,000, spread throughout the Middle East and the Assyrian diaspora. In 2007, linguist Geoffrey Khan wrote that many dialects were nearing extinction with fluent speakers difficult to find.
Baghdad Jewish Arabic or autonymhaki mal yihud or el-haki malna is the variety of Arabic spoken by the Jews of Baghdad and other towns of Lower Mesopotamia in Iraq. This dialect differs from the North Mesopotamian Arabic spoken by Jews in Upper Mesopotamian cities such as Mosul and Anah. Baghdadi and Northern Mesopotamian are subvarieties of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic.
Salentino is a dialect of the Extreme Southern Italian spoken in the Salento peninsula, which is the southern part of the region of Apulia at the southern "heel" of the Italian peninsula.
The Judeo-Iranian languages are a number of related Jewish variants of Iranian languages spoken throughout the formerly extensive realm of the Persian Empire. Judeo-Iranian dialects are generally conservative in comparison with those of their Muslim neighbours. Judeo-Shirazi, for example, remains close to the language of Hafez.
Guido Bedarida was an Italian Jewish writer. He is notable for being the main source of Judeo Livornese literature.
Judeo-Livornese/Baggito (Italian: Giudeo-Livornese/Bagitto) is an extinct dialect of the Judeo-Italian languages, historically spoken by the Jewish community in and around Livorno. It was heavily influenced by Judeo-Portuguese, Judeo-Italian, Ladino. It is best attested through the works of Guido Bedarida.
Judeo-Algerian Arabic also known as Algerian Judeo-Arabic is a dialect of Judeo-Arabic based on Algerian Arabic. Today it is nearly extinct with only a few elderly speakers remaining. The language has a large amount of historical literature. It contained influence from several dialects of Arabic as well as from Hebrew and Aramaic.