Judeo-Zo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Judeo-Zo | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Israel, India |
| Ethnicity | Bnei Menashe |
Native speakers | ~5,000 (ethnic community)[1] |
| Latin (Mizo alphabet) | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | None |
Judeo-Zo is an umbrella term for the Hebrew-influenced varieties of Kuki-Chin languages, most notably Mizo and Thadou Kuki, spoken by the Bnei Menashe immigrant community in Israel.
The Bnei Menashe are a community of speakers of several closely related Tibeto-Burman languages of Northeast India, Bangladesh and Myanmar who identify as descendants of a Lost Tribe of Israel.[2] Since the 1990s, over five thousand residents of Mizoram, Manipur and Chin State have converted to Orthodox Judaism and immigrated to Israel under the Law of Return.[3]
Many Bnei Menashe immigrants to Israel continue speaking their ethnic languages at home, while using Hebrew at work and when interacting with other Israelis outside the community. This leads to frequent code-mixing and an influx of Hebrew loanwords and loan translations to the Tibeto-Burman languages they brought from India and Myanmar.[1]
Characteristics
Loanwords are often adapted to conform to the phonology of the Bnei Menashe's ethnic languages. For example, Hebrew mishtara "police" becomes mistara because Mizo lacks the voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/. Hebrew loanwords take native case suffixes and postpositions just like other Mizo nouns. Judeo-Zo is also characterized by an ongoing convergence of Mizo, Thadou Kuki, Paite, Vaiphei and other related languages and dialects since in Israel, Bnei Menashe people from different states of India live close to each other, frequently interact and intermarry.[1]