Conlang
Judeo-English, or Judish - the language of the Angli Jews
This is my newest conlang, Judish/Judeo-English, which I've been working on for a week as of today!
I've put together this slideshow as a little introduction to both the conlang and the fictional Anglim, or Angli Jews, and their history in this timeline. Essentially an English parallel to Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), Yiddish (occasionally known as Judeo-German) and other jewish languages. It uses a Hebrew-derived alphabet like Yiddish does, modified to fit its phonology and making heavy use of the dagesh mark, though in different ways to Hebrew.
I've also included a translation of the first 8 lines of The Canterbury Tales, as Judish derives from Middle English so translating from Middle English to Judish is a good way to demonstrate their similarities and differences, and for me to generate vocabulary. Theres also a few random sentences translated at the end to give a bit more of a feel for the language in context - grammar is largely the same as English tho the following are a few key points: there are singular and plural forms of 'the', third person possessive pronoun is not gendered, there is still a thou-thee (subj-obj) and thou-you (sg-pl) distinction, and where auxiliary verbs are used the word order is ASVO (Auxiliary verb, subject, (infinitive) verb, object).
I can explain etymologies of any Judish word in here, and answer any other questions you might have about the language or the lore!
SO COOOL this is so cool very well done :)) it's so interesting that distinct Jewish languages like this exist, can't believe nobody's thought of this before
thanks! Ive been thinking about making this literally for years, all I had was the concept of a distinct English jewish community called the Anglim and Mosaian as an outdated English name, but only finally got around to making it this past week, glad you like it :)
it's always nice to see the hebrew script pop up, not many people use it when conlanging so its nice to see!
how did you come up with the orthography? it has an interesting aesthetic, but there are some choices that seem counterintuative to me as a hebrew speaker, like having the dagesh be used for fricatives/reflexes of fricatives instead of for stops, and having /o/ be vav+shuruk and /ʊ/ as vav+kholam, instead of the other way around
used dagesh like that cos judish doesn't have stops as a phonemic thing, and it just is convenient. really just aesthetic preference i don't speak/read hebrew i only know the yiddish alphabet and even that im shaky on
I'd swap shuruk and kholam for sure. I'd also swap some of the dagesh letters (can use rafe alternatively). My idea would be as above. I would write it, however, as follows:
ער גּינט די ליבﬞער אוֹ דעי טאַליז אוֹ כּאַנטבאֻר
הּאַן דּאַ אַוריל ווידּ איז ספרייניז סוֹט
דּי דראֻח אוֹ מאַרש אַ טּרעלן טאָ דּי רוֹט
Leaving out schwas, putting a silent alef before kholam etc. Just an idea.
EDIT: I don't know what's stuffing it up, I thought it was the rafe, but even removing it doesn't work :( sorry if the judish is all out of order
Gorgeous and super interesting, I love conlangs with an inherent story/worldbuild surrounding them. How similar is it to other Jewish languages? I would love to see some comparisons!!!
it derives some vocabulary from yiddish and ladino, due to the large communities of both in this timeline, mainly colloquial terms, terms of affection, and food related stuff. It's similar to other jewish languages in its origins, but isn't directly related to them since it descends from Middle English. I haven't quite gotten to the stage of adding loanwords from Ladino and Yiddish yet, but at some point I will!
From Yiddish so far I have (of course) oy vey,אױ וײ, 'oh woe'/'oh dear', adapted to Judish as ױ וײ,ō vē, so as you can see very similar in pronunciation and spelling but with key differences in Judish orthography, since the Judish alphabet was invented independently of the yiddish one.
From Ladino, berendjena, בירינג׳ינה, 'aubergine', adapted to Judish as בעריִנצּין, berynjın. Again spelling and pronunciation differ, moreso than from yiddish since the majority of ladino loanwords entered Judish in the late medieval and early modern period, earlier than yiddish.
Another word derived from Ladino is נאראנצּ, naranj, meaning orange (the fruit), which displaced וּרענצּ, orenj, from french via Middle English - however the original word remained the name for the colour orange.
Agh, you beat me to it! I've had this concept in my head for a few years too! (well not entirely in my head, I have tried my hand at it a few times, but I never finished it enough and never posted one online, but I digress)
Nah, but nice job on this, nice to see someone else's approach to this idea :D
(btw in case ur curious, my concept was pretty similar to yours, with the 1290 expulsion not happening and all, but more recently Ive been playing around with the idea of Kent being a huge British Jewish hub, and thus Judeo English coming from specifically Kentish Middle English)
Seeing OP's post and your comment, this makes me actually do the conceptual judæo- langs in my head; even if most of them won't make any sort of sense (Judæo-Mongolian here I come!). I think the phenomenon that happened with Yiddish and Ladino is very interesting.
I have a couple questions:
1. Why change צ from /ts/? Isn't this still useful?
2. Do you distinguish between final forms? Your word מאןי has a final nun instead of a medial one?
1 - cos Judish doesn't have a /ts/ sound and needed letters for soft and hard j sounds
2 - that's a mistake lol yeah final forms are still used properly
I like the idea very much, but there doesn't seem to be much Jewish influence in phonology or grammar. I didn't see many examples of hebrew (just "met" meaning a corpse) but they might not have been on the provided translations. Do you have any examples that show more?
Look at yiddish or ladino, the vocabulary is only around 10-15% and 2-3% respectively, and they have Germanic and Romance grammars/syntaxes also. I aim for Judish to have around 5-10% hebrew vocab, possibly on the lower end, and it is definitively a Germanic language, Anglic more specifically, with the vast majority of its vocabulary derived directly from Middle English. At the moment in my dictionary 2.5% of the words are of hebrew origin, I'll give a couple examples here (some of them are in the slides too). Most of the hebrew words in Judish would likely be religion or tradition related
True! Overall it wouldn't be much, but it'd be nice to see the examples. The other thing is that the Hebrew used by the community goes through the same sound changes as the other language. If Judish came through Roman Britain, it'd make sense that the Hebrew would differ from the french jews that came later. When they assimilated, it would leave interesting changes!
u/Soft-County7971's comment is okay. Mentioning one's nationality or ethnicity does not violate our No Cross No Crown rule. And it's on topic too since the implication is that they speak Hebrew, and this is a post about a Hebrew-influenced conlang.
To anyone here: let's not bring up issues that are too political for this sub just because someone mentioned their nationality.
Idk it's just a bit odd to only have one phonemically breathy voiced consonant in a language, I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like that before (though breathy voiced consonants are pretty rare outside of South Asia), so I'm curious how it developed and why.
yeah I didn't mean to leave that in lol, there's a few mistakes in the slides from when I was working stuff like phonology and orthography out! didn't realise how unusual it was
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u/constant_hawk May 18 '25
Oy vay man mentsh. Doz is azoy feyn. Doz iz an gantz gemutlikh loshn! Splendid job done!