In 2,000 years, there have been at least thirty Jewish languages, each reflecting unique histories of migration and resilience. However, Jewish linguistic diversity was nearly destroyed by migrations violence in the 20th century, as ancient communities across Europe, Africa, and Asia were displaced.

Today, with the exception of Yiddish, Ladino, and revitalized Hebrew, Jewish languages are under-documented, under-resourced, and spoken by aging populations, with few public resources to keep these languages alive. In other words, Jewish linguistic diversity—and all the history it represents—is critically endangered, with little time to safeguard it for the next generation. If not now, when? Donate to this project. 

Short film by Alan Niku

Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages and Wikitongues, two nonprofits for a multicultural world, have a proven track record of supporting grassroots language documentation. Together with a global network of volunteers, we’ve safeguarded video oral histories and launched online Living Dictionaries in over 720 languages, publishing to a monthly audience of 850,000 people. We’ve teamed up with Jewish Language Project to expand the documentation efforts for Jewish languages around the globe. We’re also breaking new ground in language revitalization by maintaining free, standardized resources for language activists to kickstart projects in their communities.

As the 19th century revival of Hebrew teaches us, endangered and even dormant languages can be saved when focused, grassroots efforts are supported. With support from partner organizations, we can help shape a thriving future for languages of the Jewish diaspora. Working with the last living speakers and their descendants, we will produce rigorous, freely available materials that support grassroots revitalization programs: up to eight hours of annotated oral history videos and a 3,000-word Living Dictionary for every endangered Jewish language.

To mitigate the risk of exposure to COVID-19, we will work remotely and will minimize travel by staggering our work in phases, starting locally in New York City and the surrounding northeast regions, where Wikitongues is based and up to a third of all Jewish languages are spoken.  We will eventually expand within the regional reach of our staffers in the U.S. Southeast, Northeast,  Northern Europe and Canada.

Our second phase will focus on Montreal, which is home to languages spoken by North Africa’s historic Jewish communities, and pockets of Europe where the critically endangered Karaim, Krymchak, and Judeo-Italian languages remain will be areas of focus. In a third phase, we will expand to Israel, where elders who speak almost every Jewish language are found, especially the languages of Sephardic and Mizrahi communities. As we grow, we anticipate building capacity to directly support young Jewish people seeking to learn and revitalize their ancestral languages.

By the end of 2022, our goal is to produce eight hours of transcribed oral histories and free, online Living Dictionaries for four Jewish languages: Kivruli (Judeo-Georgian), Bukhari (Judeo-Tajik), Juhuri (Judeo-Tat), and Haketía, an endangered variety of Ladino historically spoken by Sephardic communities in North Africa. We also have evidence that, in Brooklyn, there are speakers of Judeo-Aleppine Arabic, a language of Syrian Jews, as well as the endangered western variety of Yiddish, which was almost eradicated by the Holocaust; and we may be able to work with local speakers of these languages, too.

In the long-term, we plan to safeguard all Jewish languages (and dialects) from the past two-hundred years, outlined below. For our purposes, vibrant languages are actively used and learned by children; at risk or endangered languages are no longer learned by children and, in some cases, spoken by only a few living elders; recently dormant languages went ‘extinct’ (inactive) in the past century, with cultural descendants who may be interested in revitalization; and emergent languages are ‘new’, having developed in recent decades. Historical languages like Judeo-French, which went extinct in the 14th century, aren’t included in this list.

Vibrant Jewish Languages
Hebrew
Standardized Yiddish
Eastern Yiddish
Israeli Sign Language

At Risk or Endangered Jewish Languages
Judeo-Arabic (varieties: Iraqi, Moroccan, Tripolitanian, Tunisian, Yemeni, Aleppine)
Judeo-Aramaic
Yevanic (Judeo-Greek)
Judeo-Persian
Bukhari (Judeo-Tajik)
Juhuri (Judeo-Tat)
Judeo-Shirazi
Judeo-Median
Lotera’i
Ladino (varieties: Judezmo and Haketía)
Judio-Italian (varieties: Roman, Venetian, Livornese [with dialect Emilia-Romagnan], Piedmontese, Florentine)
Western Yiddish
Judeo-Malayalam
Karaim
Krymchak
Judeo-Berber
Ghardaia Sign Language
Judeo-Quimant (varieties: Qwara, Kayla)

Recently Dormant Jewish Languages (Inactive)
Judeo-Portuguese
Judeo-Occitan
Udmurtish Yiddish
Palestinian Yiddish

Emergent Jewish Languages
Judeo-Amharic
Jewish Latin Spanish
Jewish Swedish
Jewish English
Judeo-Hungarian
Jewish Russian

 

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Read more on the Wikitongues website

Questions? Contact Anna Luisa Daigneault annaluisa@livingtongues.org