Talk:Jewish languages

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Could someone please explain somewhere what the term qeltu means? --Jpgordon 21:57, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Please review Dialects of Arabic#General varieties. Tomer^TALK 07:23, 28 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

• Does anyone mind if we put the alphabetical list first? I suspect that would be more useful to most people.
• In the writing I am familiar with, the normal spelling of many of these is Judaeo-X. I have never seen anything else in academic writing. Does anyone know why the article titles are all "Judeo-"? Dovi 04:41, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

Actually they appear to be a mix, some Judaeo, some Judeo. As far as I know, Judeo is American, Judaeo is British. This site [1], for example, uses Judeo. Some quick google searches show that Judeo is more common on websites, at least. That said, they should all be one or the other. Jayjg 05:18, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The Greek suffix '-αίο', when the it belongs to the first half of a compound word, becomes '-aeo' in British and '-eo' in American English:

• Ιουδαίο- -> Judaeo- (EN-UK), Judeo- (EN-US)
• Αρχαίο- -> Archaeo- (EN-UK), Archeo- (EN-US) (ie archaeologist and archeologist)

Etz Haim 05:47, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I went through and changed all the Judeo-s to Judæo-s, for the sake of consistency. If anyone objects, please make any changes consistent throughout...including in the templates. TShilo12 04:30, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Would (or should) anyone attempt to categorize Yeshivish among other Jewish languages? Etz Haim 08:35, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I believe it should. I have observed yeshiva bokhers from different areas of the country communicate and this is at least a pidgin, if not a full blown dialect, that merits attention. --Briangotts 12:44, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've just completed the article on Aramaic language, and I'm wanting to expand on it. I'm wondering whether it would be useful to have an article on 'Jewish Aramaic' to discuss the features of Targumic, Midrashic, Documentary, Talmudic and other 'dialects' of Aramaic. I would also like to so an article on Neo-aramaic languages, and I'm wondering whether to do one big one on 'Jewish Neo-aramaic' or little articles for every dialect. I suppose a main article with small individual ones might be a good 'belt and braces' approach. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions for this?

Gareth Hughes 17:43, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure who here has enough expertise to help you; perhaps Olve? Jayjg 18:37, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Would someone mind adding a blurb about Yinglish if any scholarly study can be found on it, as well as substantially upgrading the Yinglish page?

Also, please see my note on the Yiddish_language talk page: "So...How many people really speak yiddish?" TShilo12 08:33, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Should we keep both templates, or just the "Jewish languages" one (as in Yiddish)? Hasdrubal 22:40, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've taken the bull by the horns and deleted the Jew template. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:59, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've heard of Jewish English, and there is an article on it on the Jewish Languages Research Site, but there doesn't appear to be one on here, and I don't know near enough about it to write an article on it. Gringo300 01:45, 31 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

See Yeshivish and Yinglish. Tomer ^TALK 02:50, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

Those articles cover just PART of a bigger picture. Gringo300 08:49, 8 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps, but it's the primary part. Because of the cultural influence and numeric preponderance of ashkenazim, even many sfaradim etc. end up well within the spheres of the phenomena discussed in the Yeshivish and Yinglish articles. Tomer ^TALK 23:51, 3 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

I've heard of Hebrew English, which consists of talking in Hebrew and incorporating words from English, due to the lack of knowledge about certain words. For example: Skateboard in hebrew is Gulgeshet (U sounds like "uh"), but many people call it "skateboard" or "skatboard". And there are changes to English words, like "Burger" from the word Hamburger, turns to Boorger (there is a fast food beef burger chain called burger ranch, which they spell Boorger Ranch, which people change to "Boorger Runch")

Those are just a few examples, since there are many things that don't have adequate translations in Hebrew (like Gamer which is discussed nowadays). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.132.208.171 (talk) 08:32, 18 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

The longer I've thought about this, I've been thinking that such concepts as Jewish English would have to overlap with such concepts as American English, English English, Canadian English, Australian English, etc.. I've been told that these variations of English are properly referred to as "national varieties" rather than as "dialects". I've learned a lot about linguistics in the last few years. When I look back at comments and questions I left on Wikipedia talk pages several years ago, it blows my mind how much I've learned since then. Gringo300 (talk) 21:12, 6 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

American, Australian, British, Canadian, Irish, New Zealand, and South African Jews speak the standard English of the countries in which they live. The English-speaking Jews do not distinguish themselves linguistically from the gentile population. The only way in which a "Judeo-English" could form is if English-speaking Jews were to emigrate to non-English-speaking countries and maintain their old English language that evolves differently from other standard dialects of English. It obviously has not happened yet. Future possibility, but only a possibility. Thus it is moot even if a huge percentage of Jews speak English and will do so indefinitely. Pbrower2a (talk) 22:36, 10 November 2014 (UTC)Reply

Another thing: I just came across a Wikipedia article on the Khazar language, but on this article main page it isn't on the... well, I think it's what's refered to as a "template". Well, whatever it's called, shouldn't the Khazar language be on there? Gringo300 01:51, 31 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

While as many as 1/3 of the Khazars are reported to have converted to Judaism, there is no evidence that any subset of the Khazar language was significantly affected to warrant its description as a Jewish language. The second-to-last substantive sentence of the Khazar language article as much as says that the only extant inscription in this language is written in Turkic runiform, rather than in an adaptation of the Hebrew alefbet. The last sentence of the article should probably be deleted, as it seems to be purely speculative. Tomer ^TALK 02:59, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

The "æ" grapheme is difficult to type; as our own article notes, it is "falling into disuse." This can be demonstrated through a few simple searches on Google:

To Tomer: I don't think using the most clear and easily readable rendering is "anti-scholarly," not do I think that it violates any of Wikipedia's policies. On a side note I find your outrage rather disproportionate to the situation. Hopefully we can work this out together. Keep in touch. Warmest regards --Neutrality^talk 19:08, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

Uf. Your cut and paste was faster than my actually typing up my gripes. I'm not outraged, as I said, I'm just irritated that this was done without so much as a word of discussion, and as such, done so incompletely. If you have US-International kbd on your computer, æ is not even mildly difficult to type. There is no evidence presented, even by you, that -e- is "easier to read" than -æ-. Quoting a WP article claim that the ligature is "falling into disuse" is the same as Sirkumsize' quoting "Igor" (see Talk:Anti-Semitism#I am tired of your bullshit). The vast majority of linguistics research, as with pretty much everything else, is still published in printing houses with ink on paper, not on google-accessible webpages, so when it comes to brainy subjects especially, as well as for various other reasons (some of which are touched upon below) the number of google hits is pretty irrelevant. The relevant WP guidelines or policies that your unilateral undiscussed moves violate are Wikipedia:Consensus and Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English. For more, please see below. Tomer ^TALK 19:39, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

I hate to say this, but see arguments on both sides. Frankly, "æ" looks more scholarly, but "e" is easier. Jayjg ^(talk) 19:41, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This was covered briefly, albeit with very little discussion, several months ago, at #Two details. User:Neutrality has, apparently using Template:Jewish languages as a resource, moved 7 Jewish language articles whose names began with Judæo- to corresponding articles (overwriting redirects at each location in the process) named Judeo-, using, as justification, the number of google hits each of these names, comparatively, get, as shown in the table above, and further arguing that the assertion at æ that the grapheme is falling into disuse. While it is certainly true that the number of google hits is greater for the one than the other, the fact that there are numerous WP mirrors out there is ignored as is the fact that the vast majority of websites "out there" are neither scholarly nor encyclopedic, and additionally, the vast majority of webpages and sites in English are generated in the US by people who are either unaware or unconcerned with using ligatures, or are unfamiliar with how to set up their computers to type extended ascii. That said, my main gripe wrt Neutrality's moving these 7 articles is that the movement was done in an incredibly inconsistent and slipshod fashion. Text in the articles was not changed, there's no evidence that the moves were backchecked for redirects, and there are still articles out there that were not included in the template, named Judæo-X. My other big gripe is that I went through the work of uniformizing articles' names and texts and all the wikilinks, and extensive work writing redirects, to consistently use the ligature several months ago, after discussion, and now, bli shum davar, this is done. Tomer ^TALK 19:25, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

OK, but lets move on from Neutrality's "bold" edit, and figure out what the preferred version is going forward. Jayjg ^(talk) 19:58, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yesyesyes. If you look at the history a bit, you'll see that we both presented our cases at the same time. What I wrote above is simply the same thing I had said in its own separate section, merged with minor rewording (since I took out the table already produced in Neutrality's statement) into the section above it. Tomer ^TALK 01:59, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

I'm replacing the ligatures for a number of reasons. First, there are people (such as myself) who have laptop keyboards with which the only way one can really type out the ligatures is with the character map or to constantly be switching between languages in the language toolbar. Secondly, "academic" sources aside, as can be seen from the articles on fetus, encyclopedia, aesthetics, etc, it would be more consistent to stick with standard orthography, as per the Manual of Style. Lastly, besides being falling out of use, it is, quite frankly, an eyesore. Keeping it would be like preserving 'ſ': it would be dated and would only be an annoyance for modern readers. If you have any objections, please feel free to revert along with an explanation Lehi (talk) 09:12, 21 December 2009 (UTC)Reply

I think this sentence does not belong here, it belongs to the "Jews" page. Doesn't have too much to do with languages:

"The largest Jewish population in the world is in the United States, and there are also large, substantial communities in Canada (a majority of Canadian Jews speak English, not French), the United Kingdom, Australia, and South Africa. Ireland and New Zealand also have small English-speaking Jewish communities."

Urgent: see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Hebrew) to add your opinions about this important matter. Thank you. IZAK 18:13, 11 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

What is the language most associated with being called 'Jewish'? If someone said "I speak Jewish" Which language would they most likely be referring to? This is just curiosity on my part not for anything pertaining to the article. --Hellahulla 19:04, 18 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

Depends who you're talking to, and what period of history you're talking about. If it's an Ashkenazi he could mean Yiddish (which means "Jewish"). If it's a second-century Babylonian Jew, then probably Judaeo-Babylonian Aramaic --Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 19:23, 18 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

If I recall it right, Ottoman Turks understood Spanish as the "Jewish language" since that is what they heard when the Sephardis of the Ottoman Empire talked. --Error 01:27, 3 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

nowadays it's Hebrew, but saying "i speak jewish" is wrong, it's like saying "I speak american". Jews are all over the world and speak many languages. The languages I know of that were spoken in jewish communities:

Yiddish, since hebrew was sacred in and just bible. German, Spanish,Russian, Arabic and Morocco type arabic which my grandmother spoke. Israel is a place that gathered many people from all over the place, and there were a lot of languages talked. Check history books on the foundation of the country - there was a big debate between schools about which language to teach. Nowadays the first language taught is Hebrew. After that English. After that Arabic for a few years and then it becomes a chosen language (you can choose to continue with it or not) and the same with french, which you start to learn instead of arabic if you choose to. And Spanish is also an option in some schools. So: 1.Hebrew 2.English 3.Arabic/French/Spanish sometimes Hebrew you learn all the time under the name "lashon" which freely translated means "tounge". You learn the different laws of the Hebrew language. After that English. Those two are a must, but english is split to groups, like math, for beginners, advanced and english speakers. I can't remember if the groups are there from the start. Then Arabic, French and Spanish. Arabic spreads across a few years (you don't learn all the letters in one year) so you're basically catching up to a level of a small child. I never took French or Spanish.--217.132.208.171 (talk) 08:23, 18 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

It's pretty contentious whether or not a LANGUAGE could be considered Jewish. I generally would argue that since certain languages are spoken predominantly by Jews and contain influence on them found almost exclusively in such languages, this can serve as a useful distinction.

But since wikipedia has deleted the article on the comparable phenomenon in the Muslim world, I guess I'm forced to agree with those who question the existence of Jewish languages. DELETE THIS PAGE —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.136.231.156 (talk) 10:05, 12 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

• Really depends on context. If you said it to an Israeli, they'd assume you meant Hebrew (and were a bit thick). A European Jew might assume Yiddish. But really, it would be like going up to a random believer in Islam, and declaring "I speak Muslim." 84.92.117.93 (talk) 22:10, 19 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Somewhere in the article, it says that "The combined number of Jews who have spoken or now speak Hebrew or English is greater than that of Jews who have spoken Yiddish." While this sounds plausible, it begs for a reference, but that's not my point. Instead, I wonder what's the point to lump together English and Hebrew in one category and compare them with Yiddish. Among secular Jews outside Israel, speakers of Modern Hebrew are a minority dwarfed by the number of Jewish speakers of English (and other languages, depending on where they live). Also, linguistically, English and Hebrew have fairly little in common - while Yiddish and Hebrew are both specifically Jewish languages, and Yiddish and English are both Germanic languages. Thus, forming a combined class for English and Hebrew and then pointing out that it's bigger than Yiddish strikes me as fairly odd. It smacks of the old argument between advocates of Yiddish and Hebrew about what should be the proper Jewish language, as if someone wanted to hammer it home that Yiddish is heading south. (That internal Jewish quarrel is quite tasteless, btw. as large portions met their deaths in the Holocaust.) So unless someone can explain the factual (not political) point of this sentence for the article, I suggest to get rid of it. Jimmy Fleischer (talk) 18:13, 13 December 2009 (UTC)Reply

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I have added the following section and User:Largoplazo has been reverting it. I leave it here in case somebody else considers it relevant to the page.

Due to their experiences of persecution, at least two Jews have tried to promote inter-ethnic understanding by an auxiliary language. The most known is L.L. Zamenhof's Esperanto, presented in 1887 featuring influences of the principal European languages of his time. His experiences as a former Zionist and a modernizer of Yiddish led him to propose a new language as a benefit mostly for Jews. However, Jews were a minority among Esperanto speakers.^{[1] [2]} The exile of Charles K. Bliss in the Shanghai ghetto inspired him to create Blissymbolics, a written language that has found more use as an aid to communication with persons with cerebral palsy.

--Error (talk) 21:23, 21 December 2018 (UTC)Reply

Beyond any question, Esperanto was never designed to be specifically a Jewish language. Nothing says that Hebrew words cannot be introduced (with appropriate modifications), but the same is possible for such a language as Japanese. Esperanto is no more a Jewish language than relativity is "Jewish physics" even though both were introduced by Jews. Heck, the case that standard English is a Jewish language because of much Jewish discussion of Judaism in English is far stronger -- and the idea that Standard English in several major dialects is a Jewish language (which I suggested) is much deprecated. Pbrower2a (talk) 10:14, 11 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

Furthermore, Esperanto was not designed to imitate Hebrew morphology or grammar or to incorporate Hebrew words as core vcabulary. Obviously concepts from Judaism could be adapted with words of Hebrew origin (but adapted to Esperanto in phonology and grammar) to fit specific use. This said, so could Islamic and Buddhist concepts, or technical words of Greek origin. Knowledge of Hebrew will not help one with learning Esperanto. If one did not know that Esperanto was an artificial language, then one would recognize it as a hybrid language between two different languages of different IE families (Romance and Germanic) due to some strange history -- somewhat similar to English in that respect. Esperanto could easily adopt words like kosher, seder, and Pesach into its norms... but it could also incorporate such words as chocolate (ultimately Nahuatl), samurai (Japanese), robot (Czech), sauna (Finnish), and kangaroo. Pbrower2a (talk) 03:44, 11 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

If a large community of Jews had adopted Esperanto as Zamenhof had foreseen and used it to communicate among themselves, then it could be called a Jewish language as such. But they didn't, so it isn't. Therefore, including a section about it in the article is a WP:COATRACK digression. Largoplazo (talk) 10:47, 11 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

I concur. Jews invented modern psychology (Freud), twelve-tone music (Schoenberg) and Esperanto (Zamenhof) and discovered relativity (Einstein). Those are no longer "Jewish property" if they ever were such. Like the Torah they are legacies of a people, legacies that gentiles can accept or reject.

Esperanto is not a Jewish language. Pbrower2a (talk) 03:58, 12 May 2022 (UTC)Reply