Jewish languages are a set of languages Language is a term most commonly used to refer to so-called "natural languages" — the spoken forms of communication ubiquitous among humankind. By extension the term also refers to the type of thought process which creates and uses language. Essential to both meanings is the systematic creation, maintenance and use of systems of and dialects The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class. A dialect that is associated that developed in various Jewish The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation. Converts to Judaism, whose status as Jews within the Jewish ethnos communities around the world, more notably in Europe Europe is one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus region (Specification of borders) and the Black Sea to the southeast. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean and, West Asia Western Asia, West Asia, Southwest Asia or Southwestern Asia are terms that describe the westernmost portion of Asia. The terms are partly coterminous with the Middle East - which describes geographical position in relation to Western Europe rather than location within Asia. Due to this perceived Eurocentrism, international organizations such as, and North Africa North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes seven countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, and Western Sahara Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritania, and. The usual course of development for these languages was through the addition of Hebrew Extinct as a regularly spoken language by the 4th century CE, but survived as a liturgical and literary language; revived in the 1880s words and phrases, used to express uniquely Jewish concepts and concerns, to the local vernacular. Often they were written in Hebrew letters, including the block letters used in Hebrew today and Rashi script Rashi script is a semi-cursive typeface for the Hebrew alphabet, in which Rashi's commentaries are printed both in the Talmud and Tanakh (Hebrew Bible). This does not mean that Rashi himself used such a script: the typeface is based on a 15th century Sephardic semi-cursive hand and was called by the Ashkenazic Rishonim - the Provencial script. Due to the insular nature of many Jewish communities, many Jewish languages retain vocabulary and linguistic structures long after they have been lost or changed in later forms of the language from which they descended. Among the most widely spoken Jewish languages to develop in the diaspora are Yiddish Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages. It is written in the Hebrew alphabet, which has been spoken by more Jews than any other language in history; Ladino Judaeo-Spanish, commonly referred to as Ladino, and known locally as Judezmo, Djudeo-Espanyol, Djudezmo, Djudeo-Kasteyano, Spaniolit and other names, is a Romance language derived from Old Spanish. As a Jewish language, it is influenced heavily by Hebrew and Aramaic, but also Arabic, Turkish and to a lesser extent Greek and other languages where, the language of much of Sephardic Jewry for five centuries; and the Judæo-Arabic group of languages which have been spoken in Arabic-speaking lands The Arab World refers to Arabic-speaking countries stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean in the southeast. It consists of 25 countries and territories with a combined population of 358 million people straddling North for nearly a millennium.
Hebrew Extinct as a regularly spoken language by the 4th century CE, but survived as a liturgical and literary language; revived in the 1880s is the liturgical language A sacred language, "holy language" , or liturgical language, is a language that is cultivated for religious reasons by people who speak another language in their daily life of Judaism (termed leshon ha-kodesh, "the holy tongue"), the language in which the Hebrew scriptures (Tanakh The Tanakh is a name used in Judaism for the canon of the Hebrew Bible. The Tanakh is also known as the Masoretic Text or the Miqra. The name is an acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the Masoretic Text's three traditional subdivisions: The Torah ("Teaching", also known as the Five Books of Moses), Nevi'im ("Prophets&) were composed, and the daily speech of the Jewish people for centuries. By the fifth century BCE, Aramaic Aramaic is a Semitic language belonging to the Afroasiatic language family. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic subfamily, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic group of languages, which also includes Canaanite languages such as Hebrew and Phoenician. Aramaic script was widely adopted for other languages and is, a closely related tongue, joined Hebrew as the spoken language in Judea Judea or Judæa is the name given to the mountainous southern part of the historic Land of Israel (Hebrew: ארץ ישראל Eretz Yisrael) during the period of Classical Antiquity, from roughly the 8th century BCE (Assyrian rule) to the 2nd century CE, when Roman Judea was renamed to Syria Palaestina following Bar Kokhba's revolt.[1] By the third century BCE, Jews of the diaspora were speaking Greek Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning the Archaic , Classical (c. 5th–4th centuries BC), and Hellenistic (c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD) periods of ancient Greece and the ancient world. It is predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek. Its Hellenistic phase is known as Koine (&.
Hebrew was revived as a spoken language by Eliezer ben Yehuda, who arrived in Palestine in 1881. Modern Hebrew is now the official language of the State of Israel. It hadn't been used as a mother tongue A first language is the language a human being learns from birth. The term is also used for the language that the speaker speaks best. In either case, a person's first language is a basis for sociolinguistic identity since Tannaic The Tannaim were the Rabbinic sages whose views are recorded in the Mishnah, from approximately 70-200 CE. The period of the Tannaim, also referred to as the Mishnaic period, lasted about 130 years. It came after the period of the Zugot ("pairs"), and was immediately followed by the period of the Amoraim times[1], i.e. since 200 CE. For over sixteen centuries Hebrew was used almost exclusively as a liturgical language, and as the language in which most books had been written on Judaism, with a few speaking only Hebrew on the Sabbath Shabbat is the seventh day of the Jewish week and a day of rest in Judaism. Shabbat is observed from a few minutes before sunset on Friday evening until a few minutes after the appearance of three stars in the sky on Saturday night. The exact times, therefore, differ from week to week and from place to place, depending on the time of sunset at.[2] For centuries, Jews worldwide have spoken the local or dominant languages of the regions they migrated to, often developing distinctive dialectal The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class. A dialect that is associated forms or branching off as independent languages. Yiddish Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages. It is written in the Hebrew alphabet is the Judeo-German language developed by Ashkenazi Jews Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, and other Jewish ethnic divisions who migrated to Central Europe Central Europe is the region lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. The term and widespread interest in the region itself came back into fashion after the end of the Cold War, which, along with the Iron Curtain, had divided Europe politically into East and West, splitting Central Europe in half, and Ladino Judaeo-Spanish, commonly referred to as Ladino, and known locally as Judezmo, Djudeo-Espanyol, Djudezmo, Djudeo-Kasteyano, Spaniolit and other names, is a Romance language derived from Old Spanish. As a Jewish language, it is influenced heavily by Hebrew and Aramaic, but also Arabic, Turkish and to a lesser extent Greek and other languages where, also called Judezmo and Muestra Spanyol, is the Judeo-Spanish language developed by Sephardic 1st row: Maimonides • Isaac Abrabanel • Baruch Spinoza • David Nieto • Daniel Mendoza • David Ricardo Jews who lived in the Iberian peninsula The Iberian Peninsula is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes modern-day states Portugal, Spain, Andorra, the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar and a very small area of France. It is the westernmost of the three major southern European peninsulas—the Iberian, Italian, and Balkan peninsulas. It is bordered on the. Due to many factors, including the impact of the Holocaust The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah (Hebrew): השואה,[citation needed] Romanized ha'shoah; Yiddish: חורבן, Romanized churben or hurban is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany on European Jewry, the Jewish exodus from Arab lands, and widespread emigration from other Jewish communities around the world, ancient and distinct Jewish languages of several communities, including Gruzinic, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Berber, Krymchak, Judeo-Malayalam Judeo-Malayalam is the traditional language of the Cochin Jews , from Kerala, in southern India, spoken today by a few dozens of people in Israel and by probably fewer than 25 in India and many others, have largely fallen out of use.
The three most commonly spoken languages among Jews today are English, modern Hebrew, and Russian, in that order. Some Romance languages, such as French and Spanish, are also widely used.[3] Overall, the language spoken by the largest number of Jews in history is Yiddish, followed closely by English and then Hebrew. This is due to the fact that Yiddish was spoken by the majority of the world's Jews for several centuries of high Jewish populations (13 million by 1939) and because the descendents of Yiddish speakers after the Holocaust split among speaking several different languages (Hebrew, English, Russian, etc) instead of switching to only one language.
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Background
The Aleppo Codex The Aleppo Codex is a medieval bound manuscript of the Hebrew Bible. The codex was written in the 10th century C.E., a 10th century CE Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible is a term referring to the books of the Jewish Bible (Tanakh) as originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew, with some Biblical Aramaic. It is also called the Hebrew Scriptures. The term closely corresponds to contents of the Jewish Tanakh and the Protestant Old Testament (see also Judeo-Christian) and does not include the originating from the Middle East. The page shown is from the Book of Deuteronomy Deuteronomy or Devarim (Hebrew: דְּבָרִים, literally "things" or "words") is the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fifth of five books of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch.(uiji) The oldest and most treasured books of the Jewish people have been the Torah The term Torah , also known as the Pentateuch (Greek: Πεντάτευχος from πεντα- penta- [five] and τεῦχος teuchos [tool, vessel, book]), refers to the Five Books of Moses—the entirety of Judaism's founding legal and ethical religious texts. A "Sefer Torah" (סֵפֶר תּוֹרָה, "book of Torah") or and Tanakh The Tanakh is a name used in Judaism for the canon of the Hebrew Bible. The Tanakh is also known as the Masoretic Text or the Miqra. The name is an acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the Masoretic Text's three traditional subdivisions: The Torah ("Teaching", also known as the Five Books of Moses), Nevi'im ("Prophets& (i.e. the Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible is a term referring to the books of the Jewish Bible (Tanakh) as originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew, with some Biblical Aramaic. It is also called the Hebrew Scriptures. The term closely corresponds to contents of the Jewish Tanakh and the Protestant Old Testament (see also Judeo-Christian) and does not include the) written almost entirely in Biblical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew, also called Classical Hebrew, is the archaic form of the Hebrew language in which the Hebrew Bible and various Israelite inscriptions were written, with a small amount of Biblical Aramaic Biblical Aramaic is the form of the Aramaic language that is used in the books of Daniel, Ezra and a few other places in the Hebrew Bible and should not be confused with the Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible known as targumim, and widely used by Jews during their history. Jews zealously studied these detailed Hebrew texts, observed the commandments The 613 Mitzvot are statements and principles of law and ethics contained in the Torah or Five Books of Moses. These principles of Biblical law are sometimes called commandments (mitzvot) or collectively as the "Law of Moses" (Torat Moshe, תורת משה), "Mosaic Law", or simply "the Law" (though these terms are formulated in them, based their prayers Jewish services are the prayer recitations that form part of the observance of Judaism. These prayers, often with instructions and commentary, are found in the siddur, the traditional Jewish prayer book on them, and spoke its language. Jews maintained a belief that Hebrew was God's "language" as well (as it was the language God uses in the Torah itself), hence its name "lashon hakodesh" ("Holy language" or "tongue").
The earliest surviving Hebrew inscription, the Gezer calendar, dates from the 10th century BCE; it was written in the so-called Paleo-Hebrew alphabet The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet is an abjad offshoot of the ancient Semitic alphabet, identical to the Phoenician alphabet. At the very least it dates to the 10th century BCE. It was used as the main vehicle for writing the Hebrew language by the Israelites, both Jews and Samaritans (ktav ivrit), which continued to be used through the time of Solomon's Temple According to the Hebrew Bible, Solomon's Temple, also known as the First Temple, was constructed by Solomon, king of the ancient Israelites, on mount Moriah in Jerusalem. It housed the Ark of the Covenant and functioned as a religious focal point in ancient Judaism for the worship of YHWH until changed to the new "Assyrian lettering" (ktav ashurit), the "square-script", by Ezra the Scribe Ezra was a Jewish priestly scribe who led about 5,000 Judean exiles living in Babylon to their home city of Jerusalem in 457 BCE. Ezra reconstituted the dispersed Jewish community on the basis of the Torah and with an emphasis on the law. According to the Hebrew Bible, Ezra resolved the identity threat which arose by the intermarriage between Jews following the Babylonian Exile Although the term Babylonian captivity, or Babylonian exile, typically refers to the deportation and exile of the Jews of the ancient Kingdom of Judah to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 BC, in fact the exile started with the first deportation in 597 BC. The captivity and subsequent return to Israel and rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple are. During this time there were also changes in the language, as it developed towards Mishnaic Hebrew The term Mishnaic Hebrew refers to the Hebrew dialects found in the Talmud, excepting quotations from the Hebrew Bible. The dialects can be further sub-divided into Mishnaic Hebrew , which was a spoken language, and Amoraic Hebrew (also called Late Rabbinic Hebrew or Mishnaic Hebrew II), which was a literary language. Until then, most Jews had spoken Hebrew Extinct as a regularly spoken language by the 4th century CE, but survived as a liturgical and literary language; revived in the 1880s in Israel and Judea, however, by the destruction of the Second Temple The Second Temple stood between 516 BCE and 70 CE, during which time it was the center of Jewish sacrificial worship. It was the second temple in Jerusalem, built to replace the First Temple which was destroyed in 586 BCE when the Jewish nation was exiled to Babylon, most had already shifted to speaking Aramaic Aramaic is a Semitic language belonging to the Afroasiatic language family. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic subfamily, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic group of languages, which also includes Canaanite languages such as Hebrew and Phoenician. Aramaic script was widely adopted for other languages and is, with a significant number in the large diaspora speaking Koine Greek Koine Greek is the popular form of Greek which emerged in post-Classical antiquity (c.300 BC – AD 300). Other names are Alexandrian, Hellenistic, Patristic, Common, Biblical or New Testament Greek. Original names were koine, Hellenic, Alexandrian and Macedonian (Macedonic); all on the contrast to Attic dialect. Koine was the first common supra-. To cater for their needs, the Bible had been translated into the Aramaic Targum A targum , referred to in critical works by the abbreviation 𝔗, is an Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) written or compiled from the Second Temple period until the early Middle Ages (late first millennium). The two major genres of Targum reflect two geographical and cultural centers of Jewish life during the period of their and the Greek Septuagint The Septuagint , or simply "LXX", referred to in critical works by the abbreviation , is the Koine Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, translated in stages between the 3rd and 2nd Centuries BC in Alexandria. It was begun by the third century BC and completed before 132 BC. As Jews emigrated to far-flung countries, and as the languages of the countries they were in changed, they often adopted the local languages, and thus came to speak a great variety of languages. During the early Middle Ages, Aramaic continued to be the principal Jewish language. Most of the Talmud is written in Aramaic. Rashi wrote in Hebrew with references to the French language of his day. Later in the Middle Ages, most Jewish literary activity was carried out in Judeo-Arabic, which was Arabic written in the Hebrew alphabet; this is the language Maimonides wrote in.
Hebrew itself remained in vigorous use for religious and official uses such as for all religious events, Responsa, for writing Torah scrolls, and along with Aramaic, retained a position of importance for the writing of marriage contracts and other literary purposes.
An 11th century CE Tanakh with targum, an Aramaic translation alongside the Hebrew.As time passed, these Jewish dialects often became so different from the parent languages as to constitute new languages, typically with a heavy influx of Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords and other innovations within the language. Thus were formed a variety of languages specific to the Jewish community; perhaps the most notable of these are Yiddish in Europe (mainly from German) and Ladino (from Spanish), originally in al-Andalus but spreading to other locations, mainly around the Mediterranean, due to the 1492 expulsion of practicing Jews from Spain and the persecution by the Inquisition of the conversos.
Jews in the diaspora have tended to live in segregated communities. This segregation was partly enforced on them by the wider communities, and partly by choice in an endeavor to maintain their own culture. These sociological factors contributed to the formation of dialects that often developed and diverged to form separate languages.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Yiddish was the main language of Jews in Eastern Europe (thus making it the language spoken by the majority of Jews in the world), while Ladino was widespread in the Maghreb, Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece; smaller groups in Europe spoke such languages as Judeo-Italian, Yevanic, or Karaim. The Jews of the Arab world spoke Judeo-Arabic varieties, while those of Iran spoke Dzhidi (Judeo-Persian); smaller groups spoke Judeo-Berber, Judeo-Tat or even, in Kurdistan, Judeo-Aramaic. The Beta Israel were abandoning their Kayla language for Amharic, while the Cochin Jews continued to speak Malayalam.
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