Judaeo-Romance languages are Jewish languages derived from Romance languages, spoken by various Jewish communities (and their descendants) originating in regions where Romance languages predominate, and altered to such an extent to gain recognition as languages in their own right. The status of many Judaeo-Romance languages is controversial as, despite manuscripts preserving transcriptions of Romance languages using the Hebrew alphabet, there is often little-to-no evidence that these "dialects" were actually spoken by Jews living in the various European nations.
Languages
Judaeo-Aragonese
Judaeo-Aragonese was spoken in north-central Spain from the around the mid-8th century to around the time of the Alhambra Decree, which expelled Jews from Spain. Later, it either merged with the various Judeo-Spanish dialects or fell out of use, to be replaced by the far more influential Judeo-Spanish dialects from Southern Spain, especially in the areas occupied by the modern lands of Valencia, Murcia and Andalucia.
Jewish Brazilian Portuguese
Jewish Brazilian Portuguese is a variety of Brazilian Portuguese incorporates Hebrew and Yiddish phrases. Sephardi communities also borrow from Ladino.
Judaeo-Catalan
Judaeo-Catalan also known as Catalanic, was a Catalan dialect in Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands that was spoken before the 1492 expulsion of the Alhambra Decree. It is unknown when Jews abandoned the language. While numerous Catalan texts written in the Hebrew alphabet survive, whether or not they truly represent a dialect is debated. Some scholars, while conceding that the evidence for the language is scarce, still defend Judaeo-Catalan's status as a language, whereas other scholars deny such a language ever truly existed, or, contend that the evidence is too limited to take any position on the matter at all.
Jewish French
Jewish French is an ethnolect of French spoken by 200-300 French Jews. Unlike most other Judeo-Romance languages, it is considered not to be in decline, but instead is doing well. It contains some influence from Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew, as well as from Judeo-Arabic introduced by Mizrahi Jews who moved to France after being expelled from North Africa. Today there exist both digital and print media in Jewish French.
Judaeo-Italian
Judaeo-Italian, sometimes called "Italkian", a term coined by Solomon Birnbaum in 1942, has gone extinct except for one variety, now spoken fluently by fewer than 200 people. They speak the last remnant of the widely variant Judaeo-Italian languages spoken throughout Italy and Corfu and along the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea and the Ionian Sea. The language may have had some influence on the development of Yiddish. The language is not as well preserved as larger Jewish languages like Ladino and much of what is documented was made to preserve the language. It had several varieties which were:
Judaeo-Latin
Judaeo-Latin is a hypothetical language covering a range of geographical and register varieties of Latin. It is postulated to have been spoken in specific Jewish communities of the Roman Empire. A small corpus of Latin texts from the Middle Ages written in the Hebrew alphabet exist, but they are insufficient to indicate a commonly spoken ethnolect, and thus the existence of a veritable Jewish Latin language is pure conjecture.
Judaeo-Piedmontese
Judaeo-Piedmontese was a language spoken by Jews in Piedmont, Northwest Italy from around the 16th century to the Second World War. It was based on Piedmontese, a Gallo-Italian language close to Provençal, with many loanwords from Classical Hebrew. Italian author Primo Levi, who was born within the Piedmontese Jewish community, describes the language briefly in the opening chapter of his book The Periodic Table. It went extinct circa 2015 Though extinct many works in it were written by Guido Bedarida. It contained many loanwords from Spanish, Portuguese, and Ladino. There are also poems in Judeo-Roman by Crescenzo del Monte.
Other varieties
Other varieties of Judeo-Italian are:
Judaeo-Occitan
There exists three distinct, now extinct varieties of the Occitan language spoken by Jews.
Judaeo-Provençal
was the language that developed in Provence and in the rest of medieval southern France. Judaeo-Occitan had several unique phonemic changes in Hebrew loanwords. Use of Judaeo-Provençal began to decline following the expulsion of the Jews from France in 1498 and continued with the spread of French language in the southern parts of the country. This decline accelerated with the emancipation of the Jews during the French Revolution which enabled Provençal Jews to migrate and settle outside of Provence. it finally died when the last speaker Armand Lunel, died in 1977. But Lunel only remembered a few words of the language. It had influence on Southern Jewish French with about 850 words a some morphological and grammatical changes from various languages being transferred to Southern Jewish French through Judeo-Gascon. It is mainly spoken by Sephardic Jews by only 133,000 of 1,000,000 Sephardic Jews speak it and it is classified as Definitely Endangered. Many of its speakers were killed during the Holocaust and most others would switch into the main languages of their countries. The largest Ladino speaking communities are in Israel (125K) and Turkey (8K) though tiny communities in Greece and Bosnia Herzegovina also exist with 12 and 4 speakers respectively. It is differentiated by other dialects by its presence of Arabic influence. Unlike other Ladino dialects, Haketia does not have a literary tradition. Teutani is a subdialect of Haketia historically spoken in the Algerian city of Oran.
Zarphatic
Zarphatic, also known as Judeo-French, was a Jewish language of Northern France, Norman England, the Low Countries, and western Germany. It was used in a limited sense by Rashi. There is a debate over how different Judaeo French was from Old French, some believe it was a sociolect, dialect, or separate language. comes from the Hebrew name for France, Tzarfat (צרפת)
History and development
The exact development of the Judeo-Romance languages is unclear. The two predominant theories are that they are either descended from Judeo-Latin, and that their development paralleled 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 Judeo-Romance languages (variously, Zarphatic, Shuadit, Italkian and Catalanic) are descended from Judeo-Latin, but that others (variously, Zarphatic, Catalanic, Ladino, Judeo-Portuguese) are the product of independent development.
Present status
Most Judaeo-Romance languages are extinct or facing serious risks of extinction. Assuming they actually existed, Judaeo-Latin died out in ancient times, while Judaeo-French and Judeo-Aragonese disappeared in the Middle Ages. Judeo-Portuguese ceased being used in Portugal in the 16th century, but survived in the Jewish diaspora until the late 18th century. Judaeo-Catalan died sometime between the Middle Ages and the Second World War, when most of its speakers would have been exterminated in the Holocaust. Judaeo-Occitan became extinct when its last native speaker, Armand Lunel, died in 1977. Judaeo-Spanish is spoken by the remaining Sephardic communities of the Maghreb in northern Africa, in the Middle East, especially in Turkey and Israel, which accounts for as many as 160,000 people; however, nearly all of this number speak at least one other language. While Jewish French and Jewish Latin America Spanish break the trend and are described as "Vibrant" and are facing no threat of extinction.