Talk:List of Jewish diaspora languages

"Doubted languages"

Why is there a section called "doubted languages"? If a language in this section is documented, then why is it doubted? If it isn't documented, why are we listing a language that may or may not have existed? That includes the case where the question is whether a sample is a distinct Judeo-version of another language or simply that language written in Hebrew letters. If it's the latter, then it isn't a different language. If it's, in that light, the case that we don't know that there ever was a genuine Jewish variant of it, then, again, it's speculation and shouldn't be here. Largoplazo (talk) 15:58, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Reviewing the list

An IP user who has contributed a number of entries to the list sourced a number of them to a 2006 collection by Paul Wexler: Jewish and Non-Jewish Creators of "Jewish" Languages: With Special Attention to Judaized Arabic, Chinese, German, Greek, Persian, Portuguese, Slavic (Modern Hebrew/Yiddish), Spanish, and Karaite, and Semitic Hebrew/Ladino ; a Collection of Reprinted Articles from Across Four Decades with a Reassessment.[1] I checked this source after an edit in which the user based two entries on it, Judeo-Median and and Judeo-Elamite, and discovered them in the book's index—which pointed to a page listing "potential" languages that have been posited but that I have eliminated ... here since we cannot be certain that a separate Jewish variant was ever created from them. Since the point was that we have no positive evidence that these languages existed, I removed them. For other reasons, I removed several other entries the user added in the same batch of edits.

I'm now noticing that the same IP user was the contributor of a very large number of entries over time, and that six others are sourced to the same work. Of these, Judeo-Basque, Judeo-Danish, Judeo-Dutch, and Judeo-Hungarian are on the same list of languages the existence of which we don't have sufficient reason to believe. The mention in the work of Judeo-Frisian is fuzzy as to whether it's actually declaring that language to have existed. The discussion of Judeo-Sorbian is entirely hypothetical, set in the context of the larger, fringe conjecture that Yiddish began as a Judeo-Slavic language that was later relexified with a German vocabulary. This being the case, I'm removing all these entries.

Further, I've also previously reverted some of this editor's contributions based on the absence of a source and my inability to find any mention of them in a Google search. In addition, these and others are all in a section the contributor created titled "Doubted languages". The blue links in this section are all to the purported base languages, none of them leading to articles on Jewish languages derived from them. A few are sourced. For these reasons, I have a great deal of suspicion regarding the user's other entries, both the entire "Doubted languages" section and the following entries above it:

• Judeo-Andalusian Arabic (extinct)
• Karaite Egyptian Arabic, based on old Egyptian Arabic
• Kareo-Aramaic (a Karaite variety of Aramaic) (extinct)
• Judeo-Phoenician (extinct)
• Judeo-Punic (extinct)
• Judeo-Ugaritic (extinct)
• Judeo-Coptic (extinct)
• Judeo-Malayalam (almost extinct)
• Judeo-Telugu, a variety of Telugu
• Jewish English languages
• Judeo-Kurmanji (mostly as a second language in addition to Judeo-Aramaic)
• Judeo-Pahlavi (extinct)
• Judeo-Andalusian (extinct)
• Judeo-Navarro-Aragonese with a significant Jewish koiné of Tudela (extinct)
• Judeo-Asturleonese (extinct)
• Judeo-Valencian (extinct)
• Judeo-Emilian-Romagnol (almost extinct)
• Judeo-Franco-Provençal (including the Savoyard dialect) (extinct)
• Judeo-Gascon (also was used by latest Sephardic migrants) (extinct)
• Judeo-Ligurian (almost extinct)
• Judeo-Lombard (almost extinct)
• Judeo-Neapolitan (including the zone of so-called Meridionali (Intermediate Southern Italian) dialects) (almost extinct)
• Judeo-Sicilian (including the zone of so-called Meridionali Estremi (Far Southern) dialects of Sicily, Calabria and Apulia) (extinct)
• Judeo-Koiné Greek, based on Koine Greek
• Karaite Greek, a Karaite variety of Greek
• Judeo-Georgian
• Judeo-Mingrelian (e.g. Bandza and Senaki Jews in Western Georgia, but the tendence is to switch to Judeo-Georgian or to standard Georgian) (almost extinct)
• Judeo-Azerbaijani (dialect of previously Aramaic-speaking Jews of Miyandoab)
• Judeo-Turkish
• Kareo-Turkish (a Karaite variety of Ottoman Turkish)

I'm going to review all of these. Largoplazo (talk) 13:42, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

A Response

Some researchers do have a word combination potentially Jewish languages, it’s a kind of scientific prediction: if we have an old-settled diaspora and a wide used, estimated language, we can make a hypothesis: something like a Judeo-version of this language can occur. Sometimes it hasn’t got a big amount of distinctive features, sometimes it does. Our aim is to mention the possibility of existence of language or variety for the future researchers and, doubtless, note the level of this possibility. Some of these languages are mentioned in modern editions, such as contemporary Jewish English, French, Spanish or Portuguese. The divergence is still not too big and we can document it. So, maybe, there is no use to add them here, but only maybe.
You are responsible for deletion of Judeo-Napoletan, but most of the facts of history and sociolinguistics can make us quite sure, that this language or even variety existed for some time. 
You are responsible for being in doubt because of listing here Judeo-Koiné Greek: hundreds of researchers were and are sure, that it does exist because of the language of translation of the New Testament and, before that, of the Old Testament, as well.
There are lots of researches on Judeo-Malayalam, e.g.
Finally, if there is or was only a language spoken or written by Jews in some country, but there is no further information on it, or even if any more or less significant scientist asked a question about their existence, we must also note this fact. But where should we do this besides this page, I wonder? 83.149.240.100 (talk) 14:05, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

That isn't our aim, just as the aim of List of clarinetists isn't to include every person who somebody imagines might play or might have played the clarinet. (By "we" and "us" I assume you mean Wikipedia.)

If I find no sources documenting the existence of Judeo-Neapolitan, the where are these facts of history and sociolinguistics that are making anybody sure of its existence, and what people have been made sure of its existence? By any chance, are you saying that you have concluded that this distinct language existed? And the same for all the others? If that's the case, you need to acquaint yourself with the material at WP:No original research.

I kept Judeo-Malayalam. Wikipedia even has an article on it.

Why must we note that a scientist at some point wondered whether a language exists? Quite precisely the opposite is true, unless that scientist having wondered about that possibility has itself risen to the level of well noted and discussed hypothesis. Largoplazo (talk) 17:35, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

References

On Jewish Andalusian Arabic

Judeo-Andalusian Arabic is called as Jewish Ibero-Arabic by David M. Bunis in JEWISH AND ARAB MEDIEVAL IBERO-ROMANCE : TOWARD A COMPARATIVE STUDY (p. 20), and it isn't doubted. 94.25.171.101 (talk) 12:43, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

On Jewish Andalusian Spanish vs. Jewish Castilian

In the very same paper, David M. Bunis noted the differences between, at least, two separate writing traditions in al-Andalus and Christian Iberia. (p. 21). 94.25.171.101 (talk) 13:03, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

On Judeo-Armenian

Earlier, I removed the reference to Judeo-Armenian, giving as grounds in my edit summary that "The source cited for Judeo-Armenia is expressly talking about languages being written in Hebrew characters with no implication that they're distinct languages." An article I'm looking at, "On an Armenian word list from the Cairo Geniza", by James R. Russell, declares positively that there is no Judeo-Armenian, as distinct from purely Armenian text written in Hebrew script. On the first and second pages Russell writes,

This study deals with a short text on a small piece of paper found in the Cairo Geniza. It is likely to be nearly a millennium old, and consists of a list of twenty Judaeo-Arabic words and phrases with their equivalents in Armenian written in Hebrew script. Very few such documents are known and there are good reasons that they are highly unusual. For although small numbers of Jews have lived in Armenia over the centuries, the country has no indigenous Jewish community in the sense that all the nations surrounding it do. There are Judaeo-Georgian, Judaeo-Persian, Judaeo-Kurdish, Mountain Jewish Turkic and other ethnolects, but there is no dialect that can properly be called Judaeo-Armenian.

Largoplazo (talk) 18:09, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

References

On Judeo-Kyrgyz

The article mentions the existence of ″Judeo-Krygyz (also known as Rainalimi a Krygyz-Uzbek-Tagalog mixed language spoken in the Philippines, Israel, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan almost extinct)″. Is there any evidence such a language exists? I did some preliminary research, and the only sources I am finding for this claim are websites that ripped their information from this article. No other evidence for Judeo-Kyrgyz exists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.4.36.75 (talk) 20:16, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I see no evidence of such a thing and, especially given the apparent nonsense about Tagalog and the Philippines, I've removed it. Largoplazo (talk) 21:29, 2 November 2021 (UTC)