Handbook of Jewish Languages PDF Download

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004359540
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 780

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Book Description
This handbook, the first of its kind, includes descriptions of the ancient and modern Jewish languages other than Hebrew, including historical and linguistic overviews, numerous text samples, and comprehensive bibliographies.

Author: Martin Goodman
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks Online
ISBN: 9780199280322
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1060

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies reflects the current state of scholarship in the field as analyzed by an international team of experts in the different and varied areas represented within contemporary Jewish Studies. Unlike recent attempts to encapsulate the current state of Jewish Studies, the Oxford Handbook is more than a mere compendium of agreed facts; rather, it is an exhaustive survey of current interests and directions in the field.

Author: Lily Kahn
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004376585
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Jewish Languages in Historical Perspective is devoted to the diverse array of spoken and written language varieties that have been employed by Jews in the Diaspora from antiquity until the twenty-first century. It focuses on the following five key themes: Jewish languages in dialogue with sacred Jewish texts, Jewish languages in contact with the co-territorial non-Jewish languages, Jewish vernacular traditions, the status of Jewish languages in the twenty-first century, and theoretical issues relating to Jewish language research. This volume includes case studies on a wide range of Jewish languages both historical and modern and devotes attention to lesser known varieties such as Jewish Berber, Judeo-Italian, and Karaim in addition to the more familiar Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic, Yiddish, and Ladino. "On top of Brill’s Journal of Jewish Languages and a number of recent publications providing systematic overviews of Jewish languages as well as related theoretical discussions, this volume is a valuable addition to the increasing interest in Jewish languages and linguistics." -Wout van Bekkum, Groningen, Bibliotheca Orientalis LXXVI 3-4 (2019)

Author: Aaron D. Rubin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351043439
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Jewish Languages from A to Z provides an engaging and enjoyable overview of the rich variety of languages spoken and written by Jews over the past three thousand years. The book covers more than 50 different languages and language varieties. These include not only well-known Jewish languages like Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino, but also more exotic languages like Chinese, Esperanto, Malayalam, and Zulu, all of which have a fascinating Jewish story to be told. Each chapter presents the special features of the language variety in question, a discussion of the history of the associated Jewish community, and some examples of literature and other texts produced in it. The book thus takes readers on a stimulating voyage around the Jewish world, from ancient Babylonia to 21st-century New York, via such diverse locations as Tajikistan, South Africa, and the Caribbean. The chapters are accompanied by numerous full-colour photographs of the literary treasures produced by Jewish language-speaking communities, from ancient stone inscriptions to medieval illuminated manuscripts to contemporary novels and newspapers. This comprehensive survey of Jewish languages is designed to be accessible to all readers with an interest in languages or history, regardless of their background—no prior knowledge of linguistics or Jewish history is assumed.

Author: Paul Wexler
Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag
ISBN: 9783447054041
Category : Hebrew language
Languages : en
Pages : 966

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Book Description
The present volume brings together 34 articles that were published between 1964 and 2003 on Judaized forms of Arabic, Chinese, German, Greek, Persian, Portuguese, Slavic (including Modern Hebrew and Yiddish, two Slavic languages "relexified" to Hebrew and German, respectively), Spanish and Semitic Hebrew (including Ladino - the Ibero-Romance relexification of Biblical Hebrew) and Karaite. The motivations for reissuing these articles are the convenience of having thematically similar topics appear together in the same venue and the need to update the interpretations, many of which have radically changed over the years. As explained in a lengthy new preface and in notes added to the articles themselves, the impetus to create strikingly unique Jewish ethnolects comes not so much from the creativity of the Jews but rather from non- Jewish converts to Judaism, in search (often via relexification) of a unique linguistic analogue to their new ethnoreligious identity. The volume should be of interest to students of relexification, of the Judaization of non-Jewish languages, and of these specific languages.

Author: Stefan Weninger
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110251582
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1298

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Book Description
The handbook The Semitic Languages offers a comprehensive reference tool for Semitic Linguistics in its broad sense. It is not restricted to comparative Grammar, although it covers also comparative aspects, including classification. By comprising a chapter on typology and sections with sociolinguistic focus and language contact, the conception of the book aims at a rather complete, unbiased description of the state of the art in Semitics. Articles on individual languages and dialects give basic facts as location, numbers of speakers, scripts, numbers of extant texts and their nature, attestation where appropriate, and salient features of the grammar and lexicon of the respective variety. The handbook is the most comprehensive treatment of the Semitic language family since many decades.

Author: W. Randall Garr
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 1575063727
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Volume 1: Periods, Corpora, and Reading Traditions; Volume 2: Selected Texts Biblical Hebrew is studied worldwide by university students, seminarians, and the educated public. It is also studied, almost universally, through a single prism—that of the Tiberian Masoretic tradition, which is the best attested and most widely available tradition of Biblical Hebrew. Thanks in large part to its endorsement by Maimonides, it also became the most prestigious vocalization tradition in the Middle Ages. For most, Biblical Hebrew is synonymous with Tiberian Biblical Hebrew. There are, however, other vocalization traditions. The Babylonian tradition was widespread among Jews around the close of the first millennium CE; the tenth-century Karaite scholar al-Qirqisani reports that the Babylonian pronunciation was in use in Babylonia, Iran, the Arabian peninsula, and Yemen. And despite the fact that Yemenite Jews continued using Babylonian manuscripts without interruption from generation to generation, European scholars learned of them only toward the middle of the nineteenth century. Decades later, manuscripts pointed with the Palestinian vocalization system were rediscovered in the Cairo Genizah. Thereafter came the discovery of manuscripts written according to the Tiberian-Palestinian system and, perhaps most importantly, the texts found in caves alongside the Dead Sea. What is still lacking, however, is a comprehensive and systematic overview of the different periods, sources, and traditions of Biblical Hebrew. This handbook provides students and the public with easily accessible, reliable, and current information in English concerning the multi-faceted nature of Biblical Hebrew. Noted scholars in each of the various fields contributed their expertise. The result is the present two-volume work. The first contains an in-depth introduction to each tradition; and the second presents sample accompanying texts that exemplify the descriptions of the parallel introductory chapters.

Author: Bernard Spolsky
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139917145
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Historical sociolinguistics is a comparatively new area of research, investigating difficult questions about language varieties and choices in speech and writing. Jewish historical sociolinguistics is rich in unanswered questions: when does a language become 'Jewish'? What was the origin of Yiddish? How much Hebrew did the average Jew know over the centuries? How was Hebrew re-established as a vernacular and a dominant language? This book explores these and other questions, and shows the extent of scholarly disagreement over the answers. It shows the value of adding a sociolinguistic perspective to issues commonly ignored in standard histories. A vivid commentary on Jewish survival and Jewish speech communities that will be enjoyed by the general reader, and is essential reading for students and researchers interested in the study of Middle Eastern languages, Jewish studies, and sociolinguistics.

Author: Geoffrey Khan
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004305041
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
Being direct descendants of the Aramaic spoken by the Jews in antiquity, the still spoken Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects of Kurdistan deserve special and vivid interest. Geoffrey Khan’s A Grammar of Neo-Aramaic is a unique record of one of these dialects, now on the verge of extinction. This volume, the result of extensive fieldwork, contains a description of the dialect spoken by the Jews from the region of Arbel (Iraqi Kurdistan), together with a transcription of recorded texts and a glossary. The grammar consists of sections on phonology, morphology and syntax, preceded by an introductory chapter examining the position of this dialect in relation to the other known Neo-Aramaic dialects. The transcribed texts record folktales and accounts of customs, traditions and experiences of the Jews of Kurdistan.

Author: Catherine Hezser
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0199216436
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 712

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Book Description
An indispensable reference compendium on the day-to-day lives of Jews in the land of Israel in Roman times. Written by a distinguished team of scholars, the Handbook covers all the major themes, from clothing and domestic architecture to food and meals, labour and trade, and leisure time activities, in a comprehensive yet easily accessible way.