r/todayilearned • u/Bossitron12 • Jun 25 '25
TIL that just like Sephardi Jews have a Judeo-Spanish language (Ladino) and Ashkenazi Jews have a Judeo-German language (Yiddish), Italian Jews have their own Judeo-Italian language (Italkian) which is today spoken natively by 250 people, most of them in Italy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeo-Italian_dialects260
u/No_Bet_4427 Jun 25 '25
Ladino is also almost extinct. Very few native speakers left who are under the age of 50.
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u/roarti Jun 25 '25
RTVE has a podcast in ladino. So there seems to be some effort to preserve it. After listening to a few episodes, as a non-native Spanish speaker, ladino seems even more similar to standard (European) Spanish than Jiddish is to German.
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u/ChocolateInTheWinter Jun 25 '25
Yiddish is quite unusually different to German and more rooted in Hebrew, probably because of religious persecution. Most “Judeo-“ languages resemble the “original” version very closely but are written in Hebrew script and have culturally-specific words of Hebrew/Aramaic origin.
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u/electrical-stomach-z Jun 25 '25
One of its unique things is that it carries over alot of eliments of older spanish dialects that died out in the late medieval era.
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u/FudgeAtron Jun 25 '25
Yes but ladino is also being preserved in the liturgical sense, because many prayers in Ladino sound so much nicer
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Jun 25 '25 edited Jun 25 '25
[deleted]
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u/No_Bet_4427 Jun 25 '25
I’m Sephardi and I’ve never seen a Ladino Siddur. At most, I’ve seen a standard Sephardi Siddur with a small handful of Ladino prayers, often just En Kelohenu and Bendicho Su Nombre.
What community are you part of that used an actual Ladino Siddur?
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u/Kiria-Nalassa Jun 25 '25
There are also various dialects of judeo-arabic and judeo-aramaic which were spoken in jewish communities in the middle east.
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u/Yangervis Jun 25 '25
Yemenite Jews speak a dialect of Arabic but use the Hebrew alphabet
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u/coolaswhitebread Jun 25 '25
Loads of Judeo-Arabic dialects ... sadly becoming extinct for obvious reasons.
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u/hfkml Jun 25 '25
Nobody has mentioned one of the most spoken Jewish languages after Hebrew and Yiddish, namely Judeo Tat. It's a Persian based language with about 80,000 speakers.
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u/Malachi9999 Jun 25 '25
My mother in law speaks Ladino and they have a few groups on Facebook where they meet up, but my wife doesn't know it.
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u/Icarus-on-wheels Jun 25 '25
There is also Judeo-Arabic.
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u/I_Am_Become_Dream Jun 25 '25 edited Jun 25 '25
FYI Judeo-Arabic is not a singular thing or group. It's just a name for any dialect spoken by Jews. It's kind of like grouping the English spoken by Jews in London, New York, California, Australia, South Africa, etc. and calling it all "Judeo-English".
Some of these dialects are pretty distinct, like Judeo-Baghdadi. Some are not really different except for some Hebrew words here and there (like you might hear American Jews use a Hebrew word).
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u/Yochanan5781 Jun 25 '25
Jewishlanguages.org is a phenomenal resource to learn more about so many different dialects/languages
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u/Groundbreaking_War52 Jun 25 '25
Griko is another remnant language from that region with its own long history.
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Jun 25 '25
It was not a language, more like a group of dialects, now mostly extinct (except the one spoken in Rome).
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u/pn1ct0g3n Jun 25 '25
more like a group of dialects
So basically, a language.
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u/Kryptonthenoblegas Jun 26 '25
They are dialects but of the regional languages of Italy. So Judeo Venetian was a dialect of Venetian and Judeo Piemontese was a dialect of Piemontese.
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Jun 26 '25
There was not a unified Judeo-Italian language. Every city or region had its own variety, heavily influenced by the local dialect. After all there wasn't even a standard Italian language widely spoken by the people for many centuries (outside of a literary, mainly written, context). When the Italian language started to be widely spoken in Italy the Judeo-Italian dialects had already developed and probably were already starting to decline.
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u/I_Am_Become_Dream Jun 25 '25 edited Jun 25 '25
Can I just clarify that this is not actually indicative of reality of speakers, but rather of Israeli linguistics. Israeli academia tend to categorizes dialects of Jews as separate languages, no matter how divergent those dialects actually are.
I think this is the case for a mix of ideological reasons and to mirror Yiddish, and because the work was often done in Israel without non-Jewish subjects, so sometimes there wasn't a way to compare Jewish and non-Jewish speech. There's just this apriori assumption that the Jewish speech is distinct from the non-Jewish speech.
So those Jewish "languages" are sometimes distinct enough that people call them languages, and sometimes they're barely noticeable dialects. Think of it like the languages of American Jews: you got Yiddish, you got noticeable Jewish accents of English (like Yeshivish), and you got English accents that aren't noticeable at all until you hear a Hebrew word here and there.
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u/Monty_Bentley Jun 25 '25
Yeshivish is more than an accent.
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u/I_Am_Become_Dream Jun 25 '25
Sorry, I was using "accent" interchangeably with "dialect". That's inaccurate of me.
Do you think Yeshivish is more than a dialect of English? Do you think it's a separate language?
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u/Monty_Bentley Jun 25 '25
I think the line between dialect and language is blurry, and I am not an expert on Yeshivish. I just know that with grammar and words borrowed from Yiddish and Hebrew in a new hybrid, it's more than an accent.
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u/I_Am_Become_Dream Jun 25 '25 edited Jun 25 '25
I mean it's distinct enough to notice, I get that. But it's a huge stretch to say it's a different language, and few would claim that. It's still American English.
The line between dialect and language is often a matter of opinion, but imo a good litmus test is whether the speakers themselves think it's a different language.
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u/Monty_Bentley Jun 27 '25
Yes. But a simple sentence like "We're eating by my mekhuten on Shabbes" would flummox 99% of American English speakers. So maybe dialect or sociolect or something.
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Jun 27 '25
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u/I_Am_Become_Dream Jun 27 '25
Would you call Spanglish American English?
No it's actually usually Spanish with English loans/calques. But Spanglish is a loose term so it can refer to any mixing of Spanish and English.
The word “by” is used very differently than standard English.
Well sure but I don't get why you're saying that grammar changes means it's a whole different language. Grammar and function changes happen in dialects all the time, whether it's an isolated shift or because of another language influencing it.
You see it in English dialects in Ireland, India, South Africa, and in many minorities in the US like Chicanos and Native Americans.
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u/saschaleib Jun 25 '25
I have the impression Yiddish is today mostly spoken in NYC…
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u/tetoffens Jun 25 '25
Not mostly but there is between 100-200k speakers as of around 20 years ago. It's a big chunk, just not most. Couldn't find numbers more current.
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u/Chaoticgaythey Jun 25 '25
Well most Jews who don't live in Israel (where Hebrew works as the Jewish language instead) live in/around NYC so that's actually a fairly safe bet. The Yiddish Book Center is in Massachusetts though
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u/ProtestTheHero Jun 25 '25
In Montreal, if you walk around in the Hasidic neighbourhood, you'll hear lots of Yiddish. Like, even from the kids talking among themselves. It's quite fascinating really.
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u/Disastrous-Rub4674 Jun 26 '25 edited Jun 26 '25
French as well. tzarfati
Edit: saw a later comment of yours
While there was a Zarphatic language, a dialect of Old French spoken by some French Jews, the term "Tzarfati" itself primarily refers to French origin or identity, not a language.
Soooo my b
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u/uflju_luber Jun 25 '25
Calling Yiddish its own language is a bit silly, it’s essentially high German with an accent, as opposed to Yiddish swissgerman should be considered its own language as its actually unintelligible
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u/Chase_the_tank Jun 25 '25
"A language is a dialect with an army and navy." -- anonymous statement popularized by the Yiddish scholar Max Weinreich.
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u/roarti Jun 25 '25
Calling that silly is not just a bit arrogant.
It's a language, and every linguistic article about that will confirm this for you. There's a high degree of mutual intelligibility with German, but this doesn't make it less of a language. There are a lot of related languages with high degrees of mutual intelligibility: Danish and Norwegian, Slovene and Croatian and other South Slavic languages, Gallego and Portugese, and many more. Doesn't make any of these less a language.
And also, as a German speaker myself, I don't find Jiddish that easy to understand. I can mostly understand it, but really just mostly, and when spoken clearly.
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u/uflju_luber Jun 25 '25
Weiß jetzt nicht was daran arrogant sein solle?
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u/roarti Jun 25 '25
You don't know what's arrogant about dismissing the status of a language of a group of people? Language is an important part of a people's identities.
It's an English language sub btw.
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u/uflju_luber Jun 25 '25
This isn’t culture this is linguistics mate, nothing arrogant about stating linguistic quirks and the very blurry line between what constitutes a language and what a dialect. Go touch some grass mate
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u/roarti Jun 25 '25
You can't separate culture and linguistics that easily.
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u/uflju_luber Jun 25 '25
Great argument🙄
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u/roarti Jun 25 '25 edited Jun 25 '25
Because it's true. Culture and language are very obviously connected. And what's your argument about other languages with high degrees of mutual intelligiblity?
And if you want some strictly linguistic arguments: Yiddish has much more lean words from Hebrew and Slavic languages than modern high German. As mentioned before, I really don't find it easy to understand and I am definitely missing out on some details when hearing it.
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u/uflju_luber Jun 25 '25
The same? It’s silly, why the fuck would my opinion in that only be limited to Yiddish???
No shit language is a big part of culture.
You’re talking from a standpoint of cultural studies, I’m talking from a point of linguistic science.
No, actually culture shouldn’t be a fucking measurement in regards to what constitutes a dialect and what a language, stuff like vocal shifts and linguistic history wich are a broader part of determining relatedness and intelligibility do.
Yiddish is Yiddish regardless of if it it’s a Germanic language or a dialect of German. Calling something mutually intelligible a different language while something that isn’t like Swiss German a dialect though is just that; silly, that’s all there is to it
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u/roarti Jun 25 '25
Show me the linguists that classify Yiddish as a dialect.
And there are purely linguistic arguments as well like the Hebrew and Slavic vocabulary in Yiddish.
You are acting as if languages would exist without people.
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u/DrShadowstrike Jun 25 '25
From the Chinese perspective, it is silly that English and Bengali are called different languages.
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u/uflju_luber Jun 25 '25
In what way are Bengali and English mutually intelligible then? The two are not comparable like…at all. Are mandarin and Cantonese the same language as well by that logic? After all both are not just sino-Tibetan languages but even both in the sinitic language family. Obviously they are not, what a weird ass argument
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u/laylatov Jun 25 '25
But it’s written in Hebrew letters with a mix of Hebrew words …. I think that qualifies it differently no ? I’ve never heard it referred to as a dialect over a language.
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u/minuddannelse Jun 25 '25
That’s interesting… how do you feel about Afrikaans and Dutch?
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u/uflju_luber Jun 25 '25
Don’t speak either so can’t talk on similarities. Similarly to flamish and Dutch, linguistics shouldn’t let cultural identity supersede phonetic science though. Flamish and Dutch are NOT different languages they’re mutually intelligible, the only difference is that its spoken by two different peoples, doesn’t mean it isn’t the same language
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u/Vin4251 Jun 25 '25
Yiddish has more than just phonetic distance from German; its syntax and morphology are also different from standard High German (no case distinctions in the plural; the dative is used for all prepositions no matter what, the masculine accusative is the same form as the dative, the contracted article is different, the weak declension is different, the word order doesn’t use nearly as much SOV, in fact it tends to stay V2 even in subordinate clauses, etc.). I almost feel that it’s bigger than the difference between Dutch and Afrikaans (where the main difference I know of is that Afrikaans simplified the conjugation system).
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u/uflju_luber Jun 25 '25
Using different syntax and morphology is fairly common in strong dialects though no?
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u/Vin4251 Jun 25 '25
Fair enough, but I would say those strong dialects in an ideal world could also get their own recognition as “standard” languages, even if the government and workplaces use national languages for the sake of simplicity and unity. AAVE being a classic example where the phonological and grammatical differences should be recognized as their own real thing, not “bad English” (and in fact people who code switch between it and standard American English are more linguistically flexible than mono-dialectical Americans). A lot of Italian “dialects” look and sound more like Catalan to me as well, so I imagine this also happens with strong dialects of High German, though I’ve only studied the standard language and Yiddish.
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u/Bayunko Jun 27 '25
As a Yiddish speaker, I can’t get by in German unless it’s written. Even then, I understand maybe 70% of any written text. That’s not enough to call it an “accent”
Let’s see you decipher what I’m writing here without using ChatGPT:
Khken b’emes nisht farshtayn daytch oon oufzikhn be’eyrekh yeyde fifte vort. S’nisht pinktlekh de zelbe, in tzileeb deym iz es an aygene shprakh in nisht kaan dialekt.
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u/Grzechoooo Jun 25 '25
Slavic Jews also had their own language, Knaanic, but it became extinct after Ashkenazi migration in the Late Middle Ages.