One alphabet – many languages
Jews living around the world in the diaspora have used a variety of languages. Apart from Hebrew, which remained the language of liturgy and rabbinical scholarship, they have also learned local vernaculars. In many cases, they developed Jewish varieties of these, including Hebrew and Aramaic loan words, and modifying their grammatical features. Sometimes the difference between the Jewish and non-Jewish variety of a language is significant, sometimes not.
When writing in vernacular languages, Jews have often retained the Hebrew alphabet. These are called Judeo-languages (e.g. Judeo-Arabic). Varieties that are not written in the Hebrew script are called Jewish languages (e.g. Jewish Georgian). The Rylands holds a range of manuscripts written in various Judeo-languages.
