If we take a look at the ESO or Baccalaureate textbooks used in Spain in the subject of Spanish Language and Literature in the last twenty years, we will discover the lack of information about Judeo-Spanish.
With luck, we will only find a few lines in the Bachillerato books within the topic dedicated to the languages of Spain and the varieties of Spanish.
This gap explains the general ignorance that exists among the Spanish population, since a large part of it has never heard of something as Hispanic as Judeo-Spanish.
Ladino, as it is also called, “is the descendant language of the one spoken by the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, for not wanting to convert to Christianity,” according to one of these class manuals from a few years ago.
The text gave a few more details: “The language spoken by Sephardic Jews, unrelated to peninsular Castilian for centuries and used only in the family circle, was maintained through the generations with little change.
For this reason, the fundamental characteristic of Judeo-Spanish is its archaism, since it was not even affected by the phonological readjustment of the 16th century”.
Judeo-Spanish and its speakers
The above definition leaves open many questions that need to be clarified or completed. The first thing to know is that Judeo-Spanish is not a language derived directly from Latin, but rather is the product of the evolution of Spanish outside the borders of the Peninsula.
The second question refers to the fact that it is not only spoken, but also written by the Sephardic population.
And who are the Sephardim? They are the descendants of the Jews from Spain (or Sefarad) who were expelled from the territories of the crowns of Castile and Aragon in 1492.
These Sephardim have continued to maintain the Spanish language as a sign of identity, generation after generation, throughout their history and to this day.
Characteristics of Judeo-Spanish and its varieties
However, although its archaism can be pointed out as a characteristic of Judeo-Spanish, it is a mistake to understand that the Sephardic language has remained practically intact after more than five centuries.
All living languages are constantly changing.
It is true that Ladino retains elements of the past; for example, old words or voices unused in today’s general Spanish, such as conducho (“supplies”), mancebo (“young, boy”) or preto (“black”).
The existence of 15th-century Spanish forms is also evident (ferida “wound”; vido “saw”, estó “I am”). Judeo-Spanish sounds like what is commonly known as Old Castilian, but it is not.
Archaism is not its only peculiarity. As in all languages, Judeo-Spanish has undergone an internal and external evolution, thanks in the latter case to contact with other foreign languages.
The relationship with these other languages has been of a different nature. On the one hand, Judeo-Spanish came into contact with the languages of the countries where the Sephardim settled after the Expulsion (especially the Mediterranean basin and the Balkans).
On the other hand, it has been culturally influenced by different prestigious modern languages (Italian, French, English). And finally, it has been influenced by the language of its spiritual and religious heritage, Hebrew.
Judeo-Spanish has not been and is not homogeneous, quite the opposite, since its main characteristic feature is polymorphism (“it can have different or multiple forms”). In fact, it is not uncommon to find variants of the same phenomenon that alternate in the same text.
In addition, within it, different dialectal varieties can be pointed out, which are grouped into two large families: the North African (or Haquitía) and the Eastern, which can in turn be subdivided into three large areas.
The first, the central area, occupies the southern Balkans, Turkey and Egypt. The three great Sephardic cultural centers are located here: Istanbul, Thessaloniki and Izmir.
The second, the European peripheral area, occupies the north and west of the Balkans.
Lastly, the extra-European peripheral area, corresponding to Israel, constitutes a new koiné (“common language resulting from the unification of certain varieties”) of elements from the other zones.
the chronology
In the history of Judeo-Spanish, different stages have been identified.
In the first place, we have a formative or pre-classical period (from the end of the 15th century to the end of the 17th); then a phase of plenitude is reached, that of traditional or classic Judeo-Spanish (18th century and mid-19th century), where it can already be considered as the own language (and culture) of the Sephardim; and, finally, we find the period of decline, late or modern Judeo-Spanish (since the mid-nineteenth century), in which the greatest influences from other modern languages, especially French, occur.
The future of Judeo-Spanish
As has been shown, Judeo-Spanish is not unique, but rather diverse and multiple.
Where its future is heading is difficult to know, it will depend on its speakers and the interest it arouses in the new generations.
The exact number of people who speak it today is not known. In 2018, the Ethnologue website noted that there were 133,000 Ladino speakers worldwide (125,000 in Israel).
The Holocaust, emigration and the existence of weak social networks, the influence of modern Spanish itself and the lack of interest of some Sephardim in maintaining their own language, among other reasons, contributed to the progressive abandonment of Judeo-Spanish in the 20th century.
However, the revitalization that it is experiencing in recent times, especially thanks to the internet, as well as the appearance of multiple courses, conferences or workshops -which have proliferated especially during the COVID-19 pandemic- are making more and more people interested in learning or recovering it.
Therefore, it cannot be affirmed that Judeo-Spanish has disappeared and that today it is not a living language in the world.
*Elisabeth Fernández Martín is a professor and researcher in the Spanish Language Area, University of Almería.
*This article was originally published on The Conversation and is published on BBC Mundo under a Creative Commons license. You can read the original version here
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-59939394, IMPORTING DATE: 2022-01-16 14:30:06
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