Religiolect

A religiolect is the language variety belonging to a specific religious or secularized community with its own history and development.^[1][2] Coined by Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies Benjamin Hary in his 1992 book Multiglossia in Judeo-Arabic, the term was originally applied to the Jewish linguistic spectrum, but has been expanded to other religious contexts. In contrast to an ethnolect, which marks its speakers as members of a shared ethnic group, a religiolect does not involve ethnic background but rather religious background.^[1]

Religiolects have been studied in the context of a number of religious communities: Judaism, Islam,^[3] Christianity (Christianese), the Christian Haugean movement,^[4] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonese),^[5][6] Islamic and Christian communities in post-Soviet Russia,^[7] Baháʼí,^[8] Buddhism, and others.

See also

• Sacred language
• Shibboleth
• Sociolect
• Speech community
• Sprechbund