Yevanic language
Yevanic | |
---|---|
Romaniyot, Judaeo-Greek | |
יעואני גלוסא, γεβανί γλώσσα yevani glosa | |
Native to | Originally Greece, recently Israel, Turkey, United States |
Native speakers | "A few semi-speakers left in 1987 [in Israel], and may be none now [as of 1996 or earlier]. There may be a handful of elderly speakers still in Turkey."[1] |
Hebrew alphabet Greek alphabet | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | yej |
Glottolog | yeva1238 |
ELP | Yevanic |
Linguasphere | 56-AAA-am |
Yevanic, also known as Judaeo-Greek, Romaniyot,
Origin of name
The term Yevanic is an artificial creation from the
Geographical distribution
A small number of Romaniote Jews in the United States, Israel, Greece, and Turkey have some knowledge of the Judaeo-Greek language. The language is highly endangered and could completely die out. There are no preservation programs to promote or to revive the language,[7] but starting in April, 2022, the Oxford School for Rare Jewish languages will be offering a beginner's course.[8] In 1987, there were 35 speakers left in Israel, the majority located in Jerusalem. This population may have died out.[9]
As of 2019[update], a few elderly Jews in Ioannina, Greece still speak the language.[10]
As of 2021 there is a small population of speakers in Iran.[11]
Historical background
Greece, Constantinople, Asia Minor, Southern Italy, the Balkans and Eastern Europe had originally a Greek-speaking Jewish community. After the arrival of Jewish refugees into these areas from the Iberian Peninsula, Northern Italy, and Western Europe, the Greek-speaking Jewish communities began to almost disappear while integrating into the group of the newcomers, which did not constitute in every area of their new homeland the majority.[12][13][14]
The immigration of Italian and Spanish-speaking people into Greece in the late 15th century altered the culture and vernacular of the Greek Jews. A lot of locales picked up on Judeo-Spanish language and customs, however some communities in Epirus, Thessaly, the Ionian Islands, Crete, Constantinople and Asia Minor kept the old, so-called "Romaniote minhag" and the Judaeo-Greek language.
At the start of
Features
Yevanic is based on Greek, but it contains large amounts of influence from Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic. It also used a different alphabet than Greek using Hebrew letters instead of Greek letters.[16] The languages also has loan translations from Ladino.[16]
Current status
The
The Jews have a place of note in the history of Modern Greek. They were unaffected by Atticism and employed the current colloquial vernacular which they then transcribed in Hebrew letters. The Romaniotes were Jews settled in the Eastern Roman Empire long before its division from its Western counterpart, and they were linguistically assimilated long before leaving the Levant after Hadrian's decree against them and their religion. As a consequence, they spoke Greek, the language of the overwhelming majority of the populace in the beginning of the Byzantine era and that of the Greek élite thereafter, until the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Some communities in Northern Greece and Crete maintained their specific Romaniote practices since these communities were either geographically apart from the Sephardim or had different synagogues, and because their liturgies differed greatly.[19][20] At the end of the 19th century, the Romaniote community of Greece made an effort to preserve the Romaniote liturgical heritage of Ioannina and Arta, by printing various liturgical texts in the Hebrew printing presses of Salonika.[21] There is
Yevanic has some samples on the internet but it lacks translations or spell checking, unlike larger more established languages.[22]
Literature
There is a small amount of literature in Yevanic dating from the early part of the modern period, the most extensive document being a translation of the
Sample Text
Yevanic[25] | Transliteration[25] | English[25] |
---|---|---|
קֵאִיטוֹן פְרוֹפִיטִיאָהקִירִיאוּ פְּרוֹשׁ יוֹנָה אִיוּ אֲמִתָּי טוּאִיפִּין׃ אַנַשְׁטָאפּוֹרֶבְגוּ פְּרוֹשׁ נִנְוֶה טִין בּוֹלִי טִין מֶגָלי יאָלָלִישֶידִֿקֶ אִיפִּי אַפְטִין אוֹטִי אֶנֶבִין קָקִיאָהאִי אַפְטִין אֶנוֹפִּיאוֹמוּ | Ke itοn prοfitía Kiriu pros Iona iu Amitaï tu ipin: "Anásta, pοrevghu pros Ninve tin poli tin megháli ke dialálise epi aftin oti enevin i kakia aftin enopion mu." | The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, "Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me." |
See also
References
- ^ Yevanic at Ethnologue (13th ed., 1996).
- ^ Spolsky, B., S. B. Benor. 2006. "Jewish Languages." In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 120-124. http://legacy.huc.edu/faculty/faculty/benor/Spolsky%20and%20Benor%20jewish_languages%20offprint.pdf Archived 2018-10-03 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ "¿Sabías que el Yevanic es una lengua clasificada como". Idiomas en peligro de extinción. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
- ^ Wexler, P. Jewish and Non-Jewish Creators of "Jewish" Languages, p. 17. 2006
- ^ Dalven, R. Judeo-Greek. In: Encyclopedia Judaica. 1971:426
- ^ Johannes Niehoff-Panagiotidis. Language of Religion, Language of the People: Medieval Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, p. 31, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2006
- ^ Vlachou, Evangelia, Papadopoulou, Chrysoula, Kotzoglou, Georgios. Before the flame goes out: documentation of the Yevanic dialect. 2014. Sponsored by the Latsis Foundation.
- ^ "Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages". Oxford Centre for Hebrew & Jewish Studies. Retrieved 2021-09-26.
- ^ "Yevanic". ethnologue.com. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
- ^ Peklaris, Achilles M. (11 June 2019). "'They Claimed I Was Connected to the Mossad': Meet Greece's First-ever Jewish Mayor". Haaretz. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
- ^ a b c "Six Jewish languages". Jewish Voice for Labor. March 4, 2021. Retrieved January 20, 2024.
- ^ Bowman, Steven (1985). "Language and Literature". The Jews of Byzantium 1204-1453. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press. p. 758.
- ^ "Greece's Romaniote Jews remember a catastrophe and grapple with disappearing - Jewish Telegraphic Agency". www.jta.org. April 2014. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
- ^ Avigdor Levy; The Jews of the Ottoman Empire, New Jersey, (1994)
- ^ a b "Jewish Languages". Archived from the original on 2005-10-23. Retrieved 2004-09-22.
- ^ a b "Language". Jewish Community of Rhodes - Official Website. Retrieved 2024-01-20.
- ^ "Holocaust - Jewish languages". www.projetaladin.org. Archived from the original on 2 July 2017. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
- ^ Bonfil, Robert (2011). Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures. Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture. Brill.
- ^ Zunz, Leopold "Ritus. 1859. Eine Beschreibung synagogaler Riten".
- ^ Luzzato, S. D. Introduction to the Mahzor Bene Roma, p. 34. 1966
- ^ The Jewish Museum of Greece, The Jewish Community of Ioannina: The Memory of Artefacts, p. 40 (Booklet). 2017
- ^ "Yevanic | Ethnologue Free". Ethnologue (Free All). Retrieved 2024-01-20.
- ^ Natalio Fernandez Marcos, The Septuagint in Context: Introduction to the Greek Versions of the Bible (2000) p 180. The Greek text is published in D. C. Hesseling, Les cinq livres de la Loi (1897).
- ^ Lockwood, W. B. 1972. "A Panorama of Indo-European Languages." Hutchinson. London.
- ^ a b c "Yevanic alphabet, pronunciation and language". www.omniglot.com. Retrieved 2024-01-20.
Further reading
- Balodimas-Bartolomei, Angelyn, Nicholas Alexiou. 2010. "The Inclusion of Invisible Minorities in the EU Member States: The Case of Greek Jews in Greece." In Changing Educational Landscapes, 155-182.
- BimBaum, Soloman A. 1951. "The Jewries of Eastern Europe." In The Slavonic and East European Review, 29(73), 420-443.
- Connerty, Mary C. Judeo-Greek: The Language, The Culture. Jay Street Publishing, 2003. ISBN 1-889534-88-9
- Dalven, R. Judeo-Greek. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 10, pp. 425–227, Jerusalem: Keter. 1971
- Davis, Barry. 1987. "Yiddish and the Jewish Identity." In History Workshop, 23, 159-164.
- Gkoumas, P. Bibliography on the Romaniote Jewry, 2016. ISBN 9783741273360
- Gold, David L. (1989). "A sketch of the linguistic situation in Israel today". Language in Society. 18 (3): 361–388. S2CID 143028333.
- Krivoruchko, Julia G. (2011). "Judeo-Greek in the era of globalization". Language & Communication. 31 (2): 119–129. .
- Naveh, Joseph, Soloman Asher Bimbaum, David Diringer, Zvi Hermann Federbsh, Jonathan Shunary & Jacob Maimon. 2007. "Alphabet, Hebrew." In Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 1, pp. 689-728.
- Spolsky, Bernard, Elana Goldberg Shohamy. 1999. The Languages of Israel: Policy, Ideology, and Practice. Multilingual Matters. UK.
- Spolsky, Bernard. The Languages of the Jews: A Sociolinguistic History (Cambridge: CUP, 2014). Ch. 11, "The Yavanic area: Greece and Italy" (pp. 159–170; notes on pp. 295sq.).
External links
On Judaeo-Greek
- Jewish Language Research Website: Judeo-Greek Archived 2005-10-23 at the Wayback Machine
- Yevanic Language Endangered Languages Project Website
- Hebrew Writing System of Yevanic
- The Greek Bible in Byzantine Judaism
On Karaeo-Greek
- on Turkish newspaper Shalom
- pdf-document Archived 2018-07-13 at the Wayback Machine
- On a blog
- On a blog
- A recording