Judæo-Romance languages

Judæo-Romance languages are those languages derived from Romance languages, spoken by the various Jewish communities, and altered to such an extent to gain recognition as languages in their own right, joining the great number of other Jewish languages.

Languages

Catalanic

Catalanic, or Judæo-Catalan, remains vestigially in the speech of the Crypto-Jewish communities of northern and eastern Spain, as well as in the Balearic Islands

Italkian

Italkian, or Judæo-Italian, is today spoken fluently by fewer than 200 people. These speakers represent the last remnant of the widely variant Judæo-Italian dialects spoken throughout Italy and along the eastern shores of the Adriatic and Ionian Seas.

Judæo-Latin or La‘az

Technically "Judæo-Italic" rather than "Judæo-Romance", Judæo-Latin is the form of Latin once spoken by the Jewish communities of the Roman Empire.

Judæo-Portuguese or Lusitanic

Judæo-Portuguese is the language of the scattered Crypto-Jewish population of Portugal. Like most Jewish languages, it preserves a number of archaisms which are no longer found in Portuguese. It remains extant mostly only in vestigial forms in the speech of Crypto-Jewish communities in mainland Portugal itself, notably around Belmonte in the north, and in Algarve.

Ladino

Known by a number of names, and found in many varied regional dialects, the Ladino language is the modern descendant of the Spanish language as spoken by the Sephardim, descendants of Spain's large and influential Jewish population prior to the expulsion from Spain.

Shuadit

Shuadit, or Judæo-Provençal, is the Hebrew-influenced Occitan Jewish language that developed, not only in Provence, but in all of mediæval southern France. It exhibits a number unique phoneme changes in Hebrew loanwords.

Zarphatic

Zarphatic, or Judæo-French, is the extinct Jewish language of northern modern France, the Low Countries, and western Germany.

History and Development

The exact development of the Judæo-Romance languages is unclear. The two predominant theories are that they are either descended from Judæo-Latin, and that their development parallelled that of Latin's daughter languages or that they are independent outgrowths of each individual language community. Another theory adopts parts of both, proposing that certain of the Judæo-Romance languages (variously, Zarphatic, Shuadit, Italkian and Catalanic) are descended from Judæo-Latin, but that others (variously, Zarphatic, Catalanic, Ladino, Judæo-Portuguese) are the product of independent development.

Present status

Judæo-Latin, Zarphatic and Shuadit are all extinct. Judæo-Latin since ancient times, Zarphatic in the Middle Ages, and Shuadit, upon the death of its last speaker in 1977.

Judæo-Portuguese and Catalanic remain primarily only as vestiges in the speech of the Crypto-Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands.

Italkian, spoken only two generations ago by as many as 5,000 Italian Jews is, today, spoken by fewer than 200, mostly elderly.

Ladino is spoken by the remaining Sephardic communities of the Maghreb in northern Africa, and in the Middle East, especially in Turkey, by as many as 150,000 people, the vast majority of whom are at least bi-lingual.

Like most Jewish languages, the future of the Judæo-Romance languages is uncertain. Given the rise to dominance of Hebrew as a means of communication among Jewish communities in the Middle East, and the increasing prestige of English, as well as the economic importance of local vernaculars (esp. Turkish), the situation appears grim.

Reference

• The Jewish Languages project