From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Judeo-Italian languages are the Italo-Romance
linguistic varieties used between the 10th and the 20th centuries
in Italy and Corfu.
The term
"Judaeo-Italian"
The glossonym type giudeo-italiano is of academic and
relatively late coinage. In English, Judæo-Italian was
first used by Lazaro Belleli in 1904 for his article Judæo-Greek and
Judæo-Italian in the Jewish Encyclopedia (vol. 7,
310-313), describing the languages of the Jews of Corfu.
In Italian, Giuseppe Cammeo referred to a Gergo
giudaico-italiano in his 1909 article Studj
dialettali (Vessillo Israelitico 57 (1909); the term first
appears on p. 169). That same year, Umberto Cassuto used the term
giudeo-italiano, in the following:
- Actually, while the existence of a Judeo-German dialect is
universally known, almost nobody beyond the Alps
suspects that the Italian Jews have, or at least had, not to say a
dialect of their own, but at least a way of speaking with peculiar
features. True, in practice its importance, limited to the everyday
use of some thousand people, is almost nothing versus that of
Judeo-German, spoken by millions of individuals that often do not
know any other language, and has its own literature, its own
journalism, its own theater, and thus, almost the
importance of a real language... It is almost nothing, if you will,
even compared with other Jewish dialects, Judeo-Spanish for
instance, that are more or less used literarily; all this is true,
but from the linguistic point of view, Judeo-German is worth as
much as Judeo-Italian [giudeo-italiano], to name it so,
since for the glottological
science the different forms of human speech are important in
themselves and not by its number of speakers or the artistic forms
they are used in. Moreover, a remarkable difference between
Judeo-German and Judeo-Italian [giudeo-italiano], that is
also valuable from the scientific point of view, is that while the
former is so different from German as to constitute an independent
dialect, the latter by contrast is not essentially a different
thing from the language of Italy, or from the individual dialects
of the different provinces of Italy...
- 256:
- ...It was natural that the Judeo-Italian jargon [gergo
giudeo-italiano] would disappear in a short while.
- (Umberto
Cassuto “Parlata ebraica.” Vessillo Israelitico 57 (1909):
255-256)[1]
Other
designations
- Historically, Italian Jews referred to their vernaculars as
"La`az" (לעז), Hebrew for "foreign language"
(i.e., specifically, "non-Hebrew language"). The Italian
Jewish rite is sometimes called minhag ha-lo'azim, and
linguists use lo'ez as a description of words of Romance
origin in Yiddish. This may be connected with the Germanic use of
the word wälsch
(literally, "foreign") for Romance peoples and languages (as in
"Welsh", "Walloon" and "Wallachian"): the Italian (and Sephardic)
Hebrew script for Torah scrolls is known as "Velsh" or
"Veilish".
- In 1587, David de Pomi uses the word "italiano" in reference to
the Italian glosses in his trilingual
dictionary. The Hebrew title of the 1609 Venice Haggadah uses the
word "italiano" for the language of Leone Modena's translation (u-fitrono
bi-leshon iṭalyano ופתרונו בלשון איטליאנו).
- Other historic descriptions are "Latino" and
"Volgare", both of which were commonly used in the Middle
Ages to mean Italian in general.
- After the institution of the Ghetto forced Jewish communities throughout
Italy into segregation, the term ghettaiolo was
identified with local Jewish varieties of regional dialects.
- Another native name type is giudeesco (e.g.,
Judeo-Florentine iodiesco; < *IUDÆĬSCU[M], or an
assimulation of the hiatus /aˈe/ *giudaesco < *IUDAĬSCU[M]).
- The neologism Italkian was coined in 1942 by
Solomon Birnbaum (see References), who modelled the word on
the modern Hebrew adjective ית-/אטלקי italki(t),
“Italian”, from the middle Hebrew adjective איטלקי (<
ITALICU[M]), “Italic”, “Roman”.
Dialects
Judeo-Italian regional dialects (ghettaioli
giudeeschi), including:
Also
At least two Judeo-Italian varieties, based on Salentino
and Venetian varieties were also used in
Corfu.[1]
Characteristics
All the spoken varieties used a unique (among Jewish
languages, although there are arguably parallels in Jewish English usage) combination of Hebrew verb
stems with Italian conjugations (e.g.,
"axlare", to eat; "gannaviare", to steal; "dabberare", to speak;
"lekhtire", to go). Similarly there are abstract nouns such as
"tovezza", goodness.
Also common are lexical incorporations from Hebrew,
particularly those applicable to daily life. Terms from other
Jewish languages such as Yiddish and Ladino were also
incorporated.
Bagitto, the dialect of Livorno (Leghorn), is particularly rich in loanwords from Judeo-Spanish and Judeo-Portuguese.
It was claimed by Cassuto that most Judeo-Italian dialects
reflect the Italian dialect of places further to the south, as
since the expulsion of the Jews from the Kingdom of Naples the
general direction of Jewish migration in Italy has been
northward.
Number of
speakers
Fewer than 4000 people today have basic knowledge of Italkian,
and of these, only a small number are able to speak the language
fluently.
Library of Congress/ISO
information
"Italkian" is not used by the Library of Congress as a subject
heading, neither does it figure as a reference to Judeo-Italian.
The authorized subject heading is "Judeo-Italian language".
Subheadings are:
- Judeo-Italian language: Glossaries, vocabularies, etc.
- Judeo-Italian language: Grammar.
- Judeo-Italian language: Italy Livorno Glossaries, vocabularies,
etc.
- Judeo-Italian language: Texts.
The subject reference is: Judeo-Italian dialect. LC-MARC uses
the following language codes : Judeo-Italian Assigned
collective code [ita] (Italian).
This is in compliance with the International
Organization for Standardization language code ISO 639-2 code
(roa).
See also
References
and notes
- ^ Infatti, mentre
è universalmente nota l’esistenza di un dialetto giudeo-tedesco,
quasi nessuno sospetta oltr’alpe che gli ebrei italiani abbiano
pure, o almeno abbiano avuto, non dirò un loro dialetto, ma almeno
una loro parlata con peculiari caratteri. Certo, praticamente
l’importanza di essa, limitata all’uso quotidiano di poche migliaia
di persone, è pressoché nulla di fronte a quella del
giudeo-tedesco, il quale è parlato da milioni di individui che bene
spesso non conoscono altra lingua, ed ha una propria letteratura,
un proprio giornalismo, un proprio teatro, sì da assumere quasi
l’importanza di una vera e propria lingua a sé … è pressoché nulla,
se si vuole, anche a paragone di altri dialetti giudaici, del
giudeo-spagnuolo ad esempio, che sono più o meno usati
letterariamente; è vero tutto questo, ma dal punto di vista
linguistico tanto vale il giudeo-tedesco, quanto il
giudeo-italiano, se così vogliamo chiamarlo, giacché di fronte alla
scienza glottologica le varie forme del parlare umano hanno
importanza di per sé e non per il numero di persone che le usano o
per le forme d’arte in cui vengono adoperate. Piuttosto, una
notevole differenza fra il giudeo-tedesco e il giudeo-italiano, che
ha valore anche per il riguardo scientifico, è che, mentre quello è
tanto diverso dalla lingua tedesca da costituire un dialetto a sé
stante, questo invece non è essenzialmente una cosa diversa dalla
lingua d’Italia, o dai singoli dialetti delle varie provincie
d’Italia … ; 256: … era naturale che il gergo
giudeo-italiano in breve volger di tempo sparisse… (Umberto Cassuto
“Parlata ebraica.” Vessillo Israelitico 57 (1909): 255-256)
- Birnbaum,
Solomon. "Jewish Languages", in Essays in Honour of the
Very Rev. Dr. J. H. Hertz, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew
Congregations of the British Empire, on the Occasion of His
Seventieth Birthday, September 25, 1942 (5703). Ed. I.
Epstein, E. Levine, C. Roth. London, E. Goldston, [1944]. 51-67
(63, 67).
- Cassuto,
Umberto. "Parlata ebraica". Vessillo Israelitico 57
(1909): 254-260.
- Ferretti Cuomo, Luisa. "Italchiano versus giudeo-italiano
versus 0 (zero), una questione metodologica", in Italia: studi
e ricerche sulla storia, la cultura e la letteratura degli Ebrei
d'Italia 3.1-2 (1982): 7-32.
- Fortis, Umberto. La parlata degli ebrei di Venezia e le
parlate giudeo-italiane. La Giuntina, 2006. ISBN
88-8057-243-1.
- Fortis, Umberto and Zolli, Paolo, La parlata
giudeo-veneziana: Assisi/Rome 1979 ISBN 88-85027-07-5
- Gold, David L. "The Glottonym Italkian", in Italia: studi e
ricerche sulla storia, la cultura e la letteratura degli Ebrei
d'Italia 2.1-2 (1980): 98-102.
- Mayer Modena, Maria Luisa, “Le parlate giudeo-italiane”, in
Storia d'Italia. Gli ebrei in Italia, a cura di Corrado
Vivanti, vol. II, Dall'emancipazione a oggi, Einaudi, Torino 1997,
pp. 939-963.
- Merzagora, Giovanna Massariello, Giudeo-Italiano
Profilo dei dialetti italiani 23: Pisa 1977
- Pomi, David de, 1525-ca. 1593. Tsemaḥ David. Dittionario novo hebraico,
molto copioso, dechiarato in tre lingue. Venetijs: Apud
Ioannem de Gara, 1587.
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