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Judeo-Malayalam
 
 
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Judeo-Malayalam is the traditional language of the Cochin Jews
Cochin Jews

Cochin Jews, also called Malabar Jews are the ancient Jews and their descendants of the former Kingdom of Cochin in South India, including the present day port city of Kochi ....
 (also called Malabar Jews), from Kerala
Kerala

Kerala is a Indian Union States and territories of India located in the southwestern part of India. With an Arabian Sea coastline on the west, it is bordered on the north by Karnataka and by Tamil Nadu on the south and east....
, in southern India
India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
, spoken today by about 8,000 people in Israel
Israel

Israel officially the State of Israel , is a country in the Middle East located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area....
 and by probably fewer than 100 in India.

Judeo-Malayalam is the only known Dravidian
Dravidian languages

The Dravidian Language families and languages includes approximately 73 languages and are mainly spoken in South India and northeastern Sri Lanka Tamils , as well as certain areas in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and eastern and central India, as well as in parts of Afghanistan, Iran, and overseas in other countries such as Malaysia and Si...
 Jewish language
Jewish languages

The Jewish languages are a set of languages and dialects that developed in various Jewish communities around the world, more notably in Europe, West Asia, and North Africa....
. (The only other Dravidian language spoken regularly by a Jewish community is Telugu
Telugu language

Telugu or Telegu is one of the four classical languages of India. It is a South-Central Dravidian languages mostly spoken in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, where it is the official language....
, spoken by the small, and only very newly observant Jewish community of east-central Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh , abbreviated A.P.,is a state situated on eastern coast of India. It is India's List of states of India by area and List of states of India by population....
.






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Judeo-Malayalam is the traditional language of the Cochin Jews
Cochin Jews

Cochin Jews, also called Malabar Jews are the ancient Jews and their descendants of the former Kingdom of Cochin in South India, including the present day port city of Kochi ....
 (also called Malabar Jews), from Kerala
Kerala

Kerala is a Indian Union States and territories of India located in the southwestern part of India. With an Arabian Sea coastline on the west, it is bordered on the north by Karnataka and by Tamil Nadu on the south and east....
, in southern India
India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
, spoken today by about 8,000 people in Israel
Israel

Israel officially the State of Israel , is a country in the Middle East located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area....
 and by probably fewer than 100 in India.

Judeo-Malayalam is the only known Dravidian
Dravidian languages

The Dravidian Language families and languages includes approximately 73 languages and are mainly spoken in South India and northeastern Sri Lanka Tamils , as well as certain areas in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and eastern and central India, as well as in parts of Afghanistan, Iran, and overseas in other countries such as Malaysia and Si...
 Jewish language
Jewish languages

The Jewish languages are a set of languages and dialects that developed in various Jewish communities around the world, more notably in Europe, West Asia, and North Africa....
. (The only other Dravidian language spoken regularly by a Jewish community is Telugu
Telugu language

Telugu or Telegu is one of the four classical languages of India. It is a South-Central Dravidian languages mostly spoken in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, where it is the official language....
, spoken by the small, and only very newly observant Jewish community of east-central Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh , abbreviated A.P.,is a state situated on eastern coast of India. It is India's List of states of India by area and List of states of India by population....
. See related article: Telugu Jews.)

Because it does not differ substantially in grammar
Grammar

Grammar is the field of linguistics that covers the conventions governing the use of any given natural language. It includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics....
 or syntax
Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing Sentence s in natural languages. In addition to referring to the discipline, the term syntax is also used to refer directly to the rules and principles that govern the sentence structure of any individual language, as in "the Irish syntax"....
 from normative Malayalam
Malayalam language

Malayalam is a Dravidian language used predominantly in the States and territories of India of Kerala, in South India India. It is one of the 22 List of national languages of India, and it is used by around 36 million people....
, it is not considered by many linguists to be a language
Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
 in its own right, but either a dialect
Dialect

A dialect is a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class....
, or simply the same language written using a different orthography
Orthography

The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Orthography is derived from Greek language ????? orth?s and ???fe?? gr?phein ....
. This view is sufficiently prevalent that 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
SIL International

SIL International is a United States, worldwide Evangelicalism non-profit organization, whose main purpose is to study, develop and document lesser-known languages, in order to expand linguistics knowledge, promote literacy and aid minority language development....
 and ISO 639
ISO 639

ISO 639 is the set of International Organization for Standardization that lists short language code for language names. It was also the name of the original standard, approved in 1967 and withdrawn in 2002....
).

Unlike most Jew
Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
ish languages, Judeo-Malayalam is not written using the Hebrew alphabet
Hebrew alphabet

The Hebrew alphabet consists of 22 letters used for writing the Hebrew language. Five of these letters have a different form when appearing as the last letter in a word....
. It does, however, like most Jewish languages, contain a large number of Hebrew
Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic languages of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Modern Hebrew is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Classical Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jews communities around the world....
 loanword
Loanword

A loanword is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept whereby it is the Meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself....
s, which are regularly transliterated, as much as possible, using the Malayalam script
Malayalam script

The Malayalam script is an abugida of the Brahmic family, used to write the Malayalam language. From the Brahmi script script, the Grantha script emerged as one of the earliest Southern scripts....
. Like many other Jewish languages, Judeo-Malayalam also contains a number of lexical
Vocabulary

A person's vocabulary is the set of words they are familiar with in a language. A vocabulary usually grows and evolves with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and learning....
, phonological
Phonology

Phonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system....
 and syntactic
Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing Sentence s in natural languages. In addition to referring to the discipline, the term syntax is also used to refer directly to the rules and principles that govern the sentence structure of any individual language, as in "the Irish syntax"....
 archaisms, in this case, from the days before Malayalam became fully distinguished from Tamil
Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has Official language in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore....
.

In addition to the substrata of Tamil
Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has Official language in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore....
, Malayalam and Hebrew, are other linguistic influences from later immigrants to the community, who brought their own Jewish languages with them, including Ladino. As with the parent language, Judeo-Malayalam also reflects substantial influence from Sanskrit, as a result of its extensive exposure to the surrounding predominant Hindu
Hinduism

'Hinduism' is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as , a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal dharma", by its practitioners....
 culture.

Because the vast majority of scholarship regarding the Cochin Jews has concentrated on the Paradesi Jews
Paradesi Jews

Paradesi Jews, who became a major component of the Cochin Jews population are the ancient Jews and their descendants from the Middle East and Europe, including the present day Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands....
 (sometimes also called White Jews), who are relative latecomers to Kerala, the study of the status and role of Judeo-Malayalam has suffered a great deal of neglect. As a result of their singular identity in Israel, Cochin Jewish immigrants have taken pride in participating in something of a renaissance for Judeo-Malayalam. That notwithstanding, a thorough study of the language remains to be conducted.