Judeo-Malayalam

Judeo-Malayalam
യെഹൂദ്യമലയാളം (yehūdyamalayāḷaṃ)
Native toKerala, Israel
EthnicityCochin Jews
Native speakers
8,000 (2009)[1]
Dravidian
Koleluttu script (Malayalam alphabet)
Hebrew alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
Glottologjewi1241  Jewish Malayalam
Judeo-Malayalam speaking communities in Kerala (largely historical) and Israel (current)

Judeo-Malayalam (Malayalam: യെഹൂദ്യമലയാളം, yehūdyamalayāḷaṃ; Hebrew: מלאיאלאם יהודית, malayalam yəhūḏīṯ) is the traditional language of the Cochin Jews (also called Malabar Jews), from Kerala, in southern India, spoken today by a few dozen people in Israel and by fewer than 25 people in India. Judeo-Malayalam is the only known Dravidian Jewish language.[a]

Since it does not differ substantially in grammar or syntax from other colloquial Malayalam dialects, it is not considered by many linguists to be a language in its own right, but rather a dialect, or simply a language variation. Judeo-Malayalam shares common features with other Jewish languages like Ladino, Judeo-Arabic and Yiddish. For example, verbatim translations from Hebrew to Malayalam, archaic features of Old Malayalam, Hebrew components agglutinated to Dravidian verb and noun formations and special idiomatic usages based on its Hebrew loanwords. Due to the lack of long-term scholarship on this language variation, there is no separate designation for the language (if it can be so considered), for it to have its own language code (see also SIL and ISO 639).

Unlike many Jewish languages, Judeo-Malayalam is not written using the Hebrew alphabet. It does, however, like most Jewish languages, contain many Hebrew loanwords, which are regularly transliterated, as much as possible, using the Malayalam script. Like many other Jewish languages, Judeo-Malayalam also contains a number of lexical, phonological and syntactic archaisms, in this case, from the days before Malayalam became fully distinguished from Tamil. In spite of claims by some Paradesi Jews that their ancestors' Ladino influenced the development of Judeo-Malayalam, so far no such influence, not even on the superficial lexical level, is found. There is, however, affiliation with Mappila Malayalam, especially of North Malabar, in words such as khabar or khabura (grave), and formations such as mayyattŭ āyi (മയ്യത്ത് ആയി) used by Muslims and śālōṃ āyi (ശാലോം ആയി) used by Jews for died (മരിച്ചു പോയി, mariccu pōyi in standard Malayalam). As with the parent language, Judeo-Malayalam also contains loanwords from Sanskrit and Pali as a result of the long-term affiliation of Malayalam, like all the other Dravidian languages, with Pali and Sanskrit through sacred and secular Buddhist and Hindu texts.

Because the vast majority of scholarship regarding the Cochin Jews has concentrated on the ethnographic accounts in English provided by Paradesi Jews (sometimes also called White Jews), who immigrated to Kerala from Europe in the sixteenth century and later, the study of the status and role of Judeo-Malayalam has suffered neglect. Since their emigration to Israel, Cochin Jewish immigrants have participated in documenting and studying the last speakers of Judeo-Malayalam, mostly in Israel. In 2009, a documentation project was launched under the auspices of the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem. Digital copies can be obtained for any scholar who wishes to study Judeo-Malayalam.

Features

  • Present tense marker is -aṇŭ like in central Kerala, unlike standard -unnu, eg. JM peyyaṇŭ, std. peyyunnu.
  • Accusative case is -(n)a like in central/north Malayalam and Kodava, unlike standard -(y)e, e.g. std. āna-ye, JM, CM. āna-na; std. avaḷ-e, JM, CM. avaḷ-a. -(n)a is also used as a genitive case JM avaḷ-a, ummā-na, std. avaḷ-uṭe, umma-yuṭe.
  • Past relative participle -a is -e, eg. nalla > nalle; vanna > vanne.
  • Dative forms of terms ending with -n is usually -ŭ in standard form but JM uses the common -ikkŭ, eg. avanikkŭ like in west kochi, std. avanŭ; JM. jīvanikkŭ, std. jīvanŭ. -nŭ form can act as the nominative.
  • Judeo-Malayalam used to made <ḻ> into t intervocalically, eg. katiccu < kaḻiccu and s before another t, eg. vāst- < vāḻt-, there are also cases of hypercorrection like kaḻa < katha, but they are only attested in writing and wasn't present during aliyah. This was also done by certain northern Thiyya speakers affirming the affinity of Judeo Malayalam and northern Malayalam.[3][4]
  • Malayalam-Hebrew compounds are found like mayyi-beṟāxa, ‘dusk-blessing’, first part Malayalam and second Hebrew.
  • There are some semantic differences like retaining terms like śīṟiya even though the √cīṟu- has faded in normal malayalam, change in meanings like guṇam std. "benefit", JM. "luck"; dōṣam std. "disadvantage" JM. "character". Even Hebrew terms have meaning differences like sūṟa std. "form", JM "beauty".

Loanwords

Over the centuries, Malayalam borrowed Hebrew words. A few of them are given below:

Original Hebrew Malayalam derivative Meaning Notes [5]
ner tamid (נר תמיד‎) ner tamid the "Eternal Light" from the cognate (נר תמיד‎)
Nāṣrani Nasrani Follower of Nazarene tradition Original term for the Nazarene sect at Qumran
Bimah (בּימה), Bema Altar from the cognate Bima
Tamar (Hebrew: תָּמָר) Tamara Upright beauty from the cognate Tmr (Hebrew: תָּמָר) "Date Palm" ( of Upright Beauty), as described in Song of Songs chapter 7. Implies Stature (Posture) and upright beauty. implying upright and resilient plant in adverse environment. Like (upright Date Palm in the hostile desert) and (upright Lotus in murky water (malayalam)). Similar characteristics of resilience across diverse environments.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Telugu is another Dravidian language spoken regularly by a Jewish community, the Telugu Jews. Because of the long period in which the Telugu Jews did not practice Judaism, they did not develop any distinctly identifiable Judeo-Telugu language or dialect.

References

  1. ^ Gamliel, Ophira (2009). Jewish Malayalam – Women's Songs (PDF) (Thesis). Hebrew University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 March 2017. Retrieved 19 May 2015.
  2. ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian (24 May 2022). "Jewish Malayalam". Glottolog. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Archived from the original on 12 November 2022. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
  3. ^ Gamliel, Ophira. "Fading memories and Linguistic Fossils in the religiolect of Kerala Jews".
  4. ^ Gamliel, Ophira (2013). "Voices Yet to be Heard: On Listening to the Last Speakers of Jewish Malayalam". Journal of Jewish Languages. 1: 135–167. doi:10.1163/22134638-12340004.
  5. ^ Gamliel, O. (2009) Oral literary forms in Jewish Malayalam. Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies, 10, pp. 47-60

Bibliography

allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo-Malayalam