Yevanic language

Yevanic, also known as Judæo-Greek or Romaniyot,^[3] is a Greek dialect formerly used by the Romaniotes and by the Karaite Jews of Constantinople (In this case the language is called Karaitika or Karæo-Greek^[4]).^[5] The Romaniotes are a group of Greek Jews whose presence in the Levant is documented since the Byzantine period. Its linguistic lineage stems from the Jewish Koine spoken primarily by Hellenistic Jews throughout the region, and includes Hebrew and Aramaic elements. It was mutually intelligible with the Greek dialects of the Christian population. The Romaniotes used the Hebrew alphabet to write Greek and Yevanic texts.

Origin of name

The term Yevanic is an artificial creation from the Biblical word Yāwān referring to the Greeks and the lands that the Greeks inhabited. The term is an overextension of the Greek word Ἰωνία (Ionia in English) from the (then) easternmost Greeks to all Greeks.

Geographical Distribution

A small number of Romaniote Jews in the USA, Israel, Greece and Turkey have small knowledge of the Judaeo-Greek language. The language is highly endagered and could die completely out. There are no preservation programes to promote or to revive the language.^[6]

Current status

There are no longer any native speakers of Yevanic, or have less than 50 speakers, for the following reasons:

• The assimilation of the tiny Romaniote communities by the more numerous Ladino-speaking Sephardi Jews;
• The emigration of many of the Romaniotes to the United States and Israel;
• The murder of many of the Romaniotes during the Holocaust;
• The adoption of the majority languages through assimilation.

The Jews have a place of note in the history of Modern Greek. They were unaffected by Atticism and employed the current colloquial vernacular which they transcribed in Hebrew letters. The Romaniots were Jews settled in the Eastern Roman Empire long before its division from its Western counterpart, and they were linguistically assimilated long before leaving the Levant after Hadrian's decree against them and their religion. As a consequence, they spoke Greek, the language of the overwhelming majority of the populace in the beginning of the Byzantine era and that of the Greek élite thereafter, until the fall of the Ottoman Empire. There was no reason for Ladino assimilation since the communities were either geographically apart or had different synagogues, and because their liturgies differed greatly. Rather, Ladino speakers were linguistically assimilated in Greek speaking areas and Ladino use dwindled to elderly jargon by the 50s. The term ‘Yavanitic Language’ is but a coined one.

Literature

There is a small amount of literature in Yevanic dating from the early part of the modern period, the most extensive document being a translation of the Pentateuch. A polyglot edition of the Bible published in Constantinople in 1547 has the Hebrew text in the middle of the page, with a Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish) translation on one side and a Yevanic translation on the other.^[7] In its context, this exceptional cultivation of the vernacular has its analogue in the choice of Hellenistic Greek by the translators of the Septuagint and in the New Testament.^[8]

See also

• History of the Jews in the Byzantine Empire
• Jewish languages

References

Further reading

• Balodimas-Bartolomei, Angelyn, Nicholas Alexiou. 2010. "The Inclusion of Invisible Minorities in the EU Member States: The Case of Greek Jews in Greece." In Changing Educational Landscapes, 155-182.
• BimBaum, Soloman A. 1951. "The Jewries of Eastern Europe." In The Slavonic and East European Review, 29(73), 420-443.
• Connerty, Mary C. Judeo-Greek: The Language, The Culture. Jay Street Publishing, 2003. ISBN 1-889534-88-9
• Davis, Barry. 1987. "Yiddish and the Jewish Identity." In History Workshop, 23, 159-164.
• Gkoumas, P. Bibliography on the Romaniote Jewry, 2016. ISBN 9783741273360
• Gold, David L. 1989. "A sketch of the linguistic situation in Israel today." In Language in Society, 13(3), 361-388.
• Krivoruchko, Julia G. 2011. "Judeo-Greek in the era of globalization." In Language & Communication, 31(2), 119-129.
• Naveh, Joseph, Soloman Asher Bimbaum, David Diringer, Zvi Hermann Federbsh, Jonathan Shunary & Jacob Maimon. 2007. "Alphabet, Hebrew." In Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 1, pp. 689-728.
• Spolsky, Bernard, Elana Goldberg Shohamy. 1999. The Languages of Israel: Policy, Ideology, and Practice. Multilingual Matters. UK.
• Spolsky, Bernard. The Languages of the Jews: A Sociolinguistic History (Cambridge: CUP, 2014). Ch. 11, "The Yavanic area: Greece and Italy" (pp. 159–170; notes on pp. 295sq.).

External links

• Jewish Language Research Website: Judeo-Greek
• Yevanic Language Endangered Languages Project Website
• The Greek Bible in Byzantine Judaism

Languages of Greece
Official language	Greek
Minority languages	Albanian Arvanitika Armenian Aromanian Bulgarian Ladino Macedonian Romani Turkish
Greek varieties	Cretan Cappadocian Pontic Maniot Tsakonian Yevanic
Sign languages	Greek Sign Language

Judaism in Greece
Communities	Romaniotes Sephardi Jews
History	Hellenistic Jews Byzantine Jews Jews of Cyprus Internment camps Ottoman Jews Jews of Rhodes Jews of Thessaloniki The Holocaust
Culture	Greek citron Jewish Koine Greek Yevanic language Ladino language Hebrew Political Union Maccabi Thessaloniki
Synagogues	Delos Synagogue Synagogue in the Agora of Athens Kahal Shalom Synagogue Etz Hayyim Synagogue Monastir Synagogue (Thessaloniki) Beth Shalom Synagogue (Athens, Greece)
Notable people	Mary the Jewess Sabbatai Zevi Avraam Benaroya Gina Bachauer Mordechai Frizis Raphaël Salem Roza Eskenazi Karolos Koun Albert Cohen Salamo Arouch
Museums	Jewish Museum of Greece Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki Jewish Museum of Rhodes Kehila Kedosha Janina
Antisemitism	Rhodes blood libel Don Pacifico affair and case National Union of Greece