Judeo-Berber language

Its speakers immigrated to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s. While mutually comprehensible with the Tamazight 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/, contrary to Judeo-Moroccan Arabic.

History

The first indication of Jews speaking any Berber language only appears in the early 19th century and it's of rural Jews in Jebel Nefusa and Saharan Ghardaia.

As of 1912, about 8,000 of Moroccan Jews spoke Judeo-Berber. The language was spoken in the country's Berber or partly Berber rural and mountainous areas. According to a 1936 survey, approximately 145,700 of Morocco's 161,000 Jews spoke a variety of Berber (though not specifically Judeo-Berber), 25,000 of whom were reportedly monolingual in a Berber language.

Due to the mass migration of Moroccan Jews after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the number of speakers declined as the language was not passed down to new speakers, leaving it with only about 200 speakers left in France and Israel as of 2023.

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Usage

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

Geographic distribution

Communities in Morocco where Jews spoke Judeo-Berber included Tinghir, Ouijjane, Asaka, Imini, Draa valley, Demnate and Ait Bou Oulli in the Tamazight-speaking Middle Atlas 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.

Phonology

Judeo-Berber is characterized by the following phonetic phenomena:

Centralized pronunciation of /i u/ as [ɨ 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 [ə] 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/ > [n] in both Judeo-Berber and Arabic

Lexicon

The lexicon of Judeo-Berber is the same as that of regular Shilha, except it has Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic loanwords. This lack of differentiation from Shilha means it is not a language but rather a dialect. Judeo-Berber lexicon also influenced Judeo-Arabic.

Sample text

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

servants

what

n-ga

we-were

for

pərʿu

Pharaoh

g°

maṣər.

Egypt.

i-ss-ufġ

he-cause-leave

aġ

əṛbbi

God

ənnəġ

our

dinnaġ

there

with

ufus

arm

ən

ddrʿ,

might,

with

ufus

arm

ikuwan.

strong.

Servants of Pharaoh is what we were in Egypt. Our God brought us out thence with a mighty arm, with a strong arm.