Judeo-Gascon

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Jewish sociolect of the Gascon language
Judeo-Gascon
RegionBordeaux,Bayonne, South ofLandes
EthnicitySpanish and Portuguese Jews
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3–

Judeo-Gascon is asociolect of theGascon language, formerly spoken among theSpanish and Portuguese Jews who settled during the 16th century in the cities ofBordeaux,Bayonne and in the south-west part ofLandes of Gascony (most notably inPeyrehorade andBidache).Judeo-Gascon, asJudeo-Provençal, the other majorJewish sociolect ofOccitan, is now practically extinct.

Until recently, Judeo-Gascon was probably one of the least known dialects of Gascon andOccitan and the least studied from a linguistic point of view. Its first coverage in scholarship has been inNahon (2017); its linguistic characteristics have been investigated in depth inNahon (2018), alongside comprehensive critical editions of the surviving Judeo-Gascon texts.

History

After theexpulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, some Iberian Jews, who were originally speakers of Portuguese and/or Spanish, settled in the South-West of France in Gascon-speaking areas. In the course of time, these Jews were linguistically assimilated to their Gascon-speaking environment, though Spanish was kept, alongside Hebrew, as a written language for administrative, liturgical, and literary purposes.The variety of Gascon spoken by the Jews, in a situation of diglossia with these languages, received a strong linguistic imprint that caused it to diverge from the Gascon dialects spoken by the coterritorial Christian populations. Additional influences ofJudeo-Italian,Judeo-Provençal andWestern Yiddish occurred too, due to immigration of Jews from other communities to Gascony.[1]

Judeo-Gascon was still spoken in the early 20th century but disappeared quickly after theSecond World War.[2]

It was superseded by a variety of French that retains a large number of lexical and morphological influences from Judeo-Gascon.[3] This variety of French with Judeo-Gascon substrate is still spoken nowadays by a few dozens of speakers, some of which still know a few sentences in Judeo-Gascon.[4]

Phonetics

The main phonetic feature of Judeo-Gascon, especially its Bayonne variety, is the realization as [e] of stressed and unstressed /e/, in contrast with its [œ] realization in the surroundingWestern Gascon (also calledgascon negue). This has been attributed by Nahon as an influence from the inland dialects ordiglossia with Spanish.[5]

Lexical features

The most prominent feature of Judeo-Gascon is the high influx of loanwords fromHebrew,Spanish andPortuguese, adapted to the phonology of Gascon.Hebrew loanwords includecheman Israël 'goodness!' (Hebr.šema yisrael),haroche orharocho ‘disgusting, unpleasant’ (Hebr.ḥarosetcharoset),vécimento ‘blessed!’ (Hebr.besiman ṭob ‘in a good omen’),sabbat ‘Saturday’ (Hebr.šabbat). Ibero-Romance loanwords includeenridou ‘tangle’ (Sp./Port.enredo),bobou ‘stupid’,amoundeguille 'meat ball' (Sp.albondiguilla), and many others.[6]

Works

The synagogue ofBayonne, built in 1837

Most texts written in Judeo-Gascon date from the 19th and early 20th century. The only known earlier material are a few 18th-century Gascon nicknames borne by Jews in Gascony.[7] All the other documents have been published and commented by Nahon. They include:

  • three pieces of para-liturgical poetry, sang at the occasion of thePurim holiday. Two of them have been collected orally by Nahon in the 2010s, and are the last surviving specimens of Judeo-Gascon oral literature.[8]
  • several satirical works in verse and prose, including an important satire composed in 1837 for the inauguration of the main synagogue of Bayonne
  • a Jewish holiday calendar (Calende yudiu) dated 1928, the last printed work in Judeo-Gascon.[9]
  • private correspondence.

Sources

See also

References

  1. ^Nahon 2018, p. 24-25, 353-355.
  2. ^Nahon 2018, p. 96-97.
  3. ^Nahon 2018, p. 85-323.
  4. ^Nahon 2020, p. 94-95.
  5. ^Nahon 2018, p. 50-51.
  6. ^Nahon 2018, p. 50, 68, 71.
  7. ^Beider 2019, p. 287.
  8. ^Nahon 2018, p. 71-77.
  9. ^Nahon 2018, p. 77-79.
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