Judeo-Berber or Judeo-Amazigh ( ber, ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ ⵏ ⵡⵓⴷⴰⵢⵏ ''tamazight n wudayen'', berberit yehudit) is any of several hybrid

Berber Berber or Berbers may refer to: Ethnic group * Berbers, an ethnic group native to Northern Africa * Berber languages, a family of Afro-Asiatic languages Places * Berber, Sudan, a town on the Nile People with the surname * Ady Berber (1913–1 ...

varieties traditionally spoken as a second language in Berber Jewish communities of central and southern

Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to ...

, and perhaps earlier in Algeria. Judeo-Berber is (or was) a contact language; the first language of speakers was

Judeo-Arabic Judeo-Arabic dialects (, ; ; ) are ethnolects formerly spoken by Jews throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Under the ISO 639 international standard for language codes, Judeo-Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage under the code jrb, enco ...

.Chetrit (2016) "Jewish Berber", in Kahn & Rubin (eds.) ''Handbook of Jewish Languages'', Brill (There were also Jews who spoke Berber as their first language, but not a distinct Jewish variety.) Speakers immigrated to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s. While mutually comprehensible with the

Tamazight The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight,, ber, label= Tuareg Tifinagh, ⵜⵎⵣⵗⵜ, ) are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related languages spoken by Berber commu ...

spoken by most inhabitants of the area (Galand-Pernet et al. 1970:14), these varieties are distinguished by the use of Hebrew loanwords and the pronunciation of ''š'' as ''s'' (as in many Jewish Moroccan Arabic dialects).

Speaker population

According to a 1936 survey, approximately 145,700 of Morocco's 161,000 Jews spoke a variety of Berber, 25,000 of whom were reportedly monolingual in the language.

Geographic distribution

Communities in

where Jews spoke Judeo-Berber included: Tinghir, Ouijjane, Asaka, Imini, Draa valley, Demnate and Ait Bou Oulli in the Tamazight-speaking

Middle Atlas The Middle Atlas (Amazigh: ⴰⵟⵍⴰⵙ ⴰⵏⴰⵎⵎⴰⵙ, ''Atlas Anammas'', Arabic: الأطلس المتوسط, ''al-Aṭlas al-Mutawassiṭ'') is a mountain range in Morocco. It is part of the Atlas mountain range, a mountainous regio ...

and High Atlas and Oufrane, Tiznit and Illigh in the Tashelhiyt-speaking Souss valley (Galand-Pernet et al. 1970:2). Jews were living among tribal Berbers, often in the same villages and practiced old tribal Berber protection relationships. Almost all speakers of Judeo-Berber left Morocco in the years following its independence, and their children have mainly grown up speaking other languages. In 1992, about 2,000 speakers remained, mainly in

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

; all are at least bilingual in

Phonology

Judeo-Berber is characterized by the following phonetic phenomena: * Centralized pronunciation of /i u/ as � ʉ* Neutralization of the distinction between /s ʃ/, especially among monolingual speakers * Delabialization of labialized velars (/kʷ gʷ xʷ ɣʷ/), e.g. nəkkʷni/nukkni > nəkkni 'us, we' * Insertion of epenthetic �to break up consonant clusters * Frequent diphthong insertion, as in Judeo-Arabic * Some varieties have q > kʲ and dˤ > tˤ, as in the local Arabic dialects * In the eastern Sous Valley region, /l/ > in both Judeo-Berber and Arabic

Usage

Apart from its daily use, Judeo-Berber was used for orally explaining religious texts, and only occasionally written, using Hebrew characters; a manuscript

Pesah Passover, also called Pesach (; ), is a major Jewish holiday that celebrates the The Exodus, Biblical story of the Israelites escape from slavery in Egypt, which occurs on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan, the first month of Aviv, o ...

Haggadah The Haggadah ( he, הַגָּדָה, "telling"; plural: Haggadot) is a Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder. According to Jewish practice, reading the Haggadah at the Seder table is a fulfillment of the mitzvah to each Je ...

written in Judeo-Berber has been reprinted (Galand-Pernet et al. 1970.) A few prayers, like the Benedictions over the Torah, were recited in Berber.

Example

Taken from Galand-Pernet et al. 1970:121 (itself from a manuscript from Tinghir): :יִכְדַמְן אַיְיִנַגָא יפּרעו גְמַצָר. יִשוֹפִגַג רבי נּג דְיְנָג שוֹפוֹש נִדְרע שוֹפוֹש יִכיווֹאַנ :''ixəddamn ay n-ga i pərʿu g° maṣər. i-ss-ufġ aġ əṛbbi ənnəġ dinnaġ s ufus ən ddrʿ, s ufus ikuwan.'' :Rough word-for-word translation: servants what we-were for Pharaoh in Egypt. he-cause-leave us God our there with arm of might, with arm strong. :Servants of Pharaoh is what we were in Egypt. Our God brought us out thence with a mighty arm, with a strong arm.

References

Bibliography

* P. Galand-Pernet & Haim Zafrani. ''Une version berbère de la Haggadah de Pesaḥ: Texte de Tinrhir du Todrha (Maroc)''. Compress rendus du G.L.E.C.S. Supplement I. 1970. * Joseph Chetrit. "Jewish Berber," ''Handbook of Jewish Languages'', ed. Lily Kahn & Aaron D. Rubin. Leiden: Brill. 2016. Pages 118–129.

External links

Judeo-Berber, by Haim Zafrani

{{DEFAULTSORT:Judeo-Berber Language Berber Jews Berber languages Berbers in Morocco Jews and Judaism in Morocco Jews and Judaism in the Maghreb Languages of Morocco Maghrebi Jews Sephardi Jewish culture in North Africa Language contact