View source for Yevanic language

{{Short description|Endangered Greek dialect}}
{{Infobox language
|name          = Yevanic
|altname       = Romaniyot, Judaeo-Greek
|nativename    = {{script|Hebr|יעואני גלוסא}}, {{lang|yej-Grek|γεβανί γλώσσα}} {{Transliteration|yej|yevani glosa}}
|pronunciation = 
|states        = Originally [[Greece]], recently Israel, [[Turkey]], United States
|region        = 
|speakers      = "A few semi-speakers left in 1987 [in Israel], and may be none now [as of 1996 or earlier]. There may be a handful of elderly speakers still in Turkey."<!--the 15 in Turkey Eth.18 match a 1971 figure from the USA in Eth.12; the possibly 35 in Israel date from at least Eth.12-->
|date          = NA
|ref           = e13<!--Quote not in e12.-->
|familycolor   = Indo-European
|fam2          = [[Hellenic languages|Hellenic]]
|fam3          = [[Greek language|Greek]]
|fam4          = (disputed) 
|fam5          = [[Attic Greek|Attic]]–[[Ionic Greek|Ionic]]
|fam6          = [[Attic Greek|Attic]]
|fam7          = [[Koine Greek|Koine]]
|script        = [[Hebrew alphabet]]
|iso3          = yej
|linglist      = yej
|lingua        = 56-AAA-am
|glotto        = yeva1238
|glottorefname= Yevanic
}}

'''Yevanic''', also known as '''Judaeo-Greek''', '''Romaniyot''',<ref>Spolsky, B., S. B. Benor. 2006. "Jewish Languages." In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 120-124. http://legacy.huc.edu/faculty/faculty/benor/Spolsky%20and%20Benor%20jewish_languages%20offprint.pdf {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181003224331/http://legacy.huc.edu/faculty/faculty/benor/Spolsky%20and%20Benor%20jewish_languages%20offprint.pdf |date=2018-10-03 }}.</ref> '''Romaniote''', and '''Yevanitika''',<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/3201?hl=es|title=¿Sabías que el Yevanic es una lengua clasificada como|website=Idiomas en peligro de extinción|access-date=3 April 2018}}</ref> is a [[Hellenic languages|Greek dialect]] formerly used by the [[Romaniotes]] and by the [[Constantinopolitan Karaites]] (in whose case the language is called '''Karaitika''' or '''Karaeo-Greek''').<ref>Wexler, P. Jewish and Non-Jewish Creators of "Jewish" Languages, p. 17. 2006</ref><ref>Dalven, R. Judeo-Greek. In: Encyclopedia Judaica. 1971:426</ref> The Romaniotes are a group of [[History of the Jews in Greece|Greek Jews]] whose presence in [[the Levant]] is documented since the [[Byzantine period]]. Its [[linguistics|linguistic]] lineage stems from the [[Jewish Koine Greek|Jewish Koine]] spoken primarily by [[Hellenistic Jews]] throughout the region, and includes [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]] and [[Aramaic language|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. Judaeo-Greek has had in its history different spoken variants depending on different eras, geographical and sociocultural backgrounds. The oldest [[Modern Greek]] text was found in the [[Cairo Geniza]] and is actually a Jewish translation of the [[Book of Ecclesiastes]] (Kohelet).<ref>Johannes Niehoff-Panagiotidis. Language of Religion, Language of the People: Medieval Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, p. 31, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2006</ref>

==Origin of name==
The term ''Yevanic'' is an artificial creation  from the [[Biblical]] word {{lang|hbo|יון}} ({{Transliteration|hbo|Yāwān}}) referring to the [[Greeks]] and the lands that the Greeks inhabited. The term is an overextension of the Greek word {{lang|grc|Ἰωνία}} ([[Ionia]] in English) from the (then) easternmost Greeks to all Greeks. The word for Greece in [[Hebrew]] is {{Transliteration|he|Yavan}}; likewise, the word {{Transliteration|he|yevanit}} is used to refer to the Greek language in [[Hebrew]].

==Geographical distribution==
A small number of [[Romaniote Jews]] in the [[United States]], [[Israel]], [[Greece]], and [[Turkey]] have some knowledge of the Judaeo-Greek language. The language is highly endangered and could completely die out. There are no preservation programs to promote or to revive the language,<ref>Vlachou, Evangelia, Papadopoulou, Chrysoula, Kotzoglou, Georgios. Before the flame goes out: documentation of the Yevanic dialect. 2014. Sponsored by the Latsis Foundation.</ref> but starting in April, 2022, the Oxford School for Rare Jewish languages will be offering a beginner's course.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages|url=https://www.ochjs.ac.uk/language-classes/oxford-school-of-rare-jewish-languages/|access-date=2021-09-26|website=Oxford Centre for Hebrew & Jewish Studies|language=en-GB}}</ref> In 1987, there were 35 speakers left in [[Israel]], the majority located in [[Jerusalem]]. This population may have died out.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.ethnologue.com/language/yej|title=Yevanic|website=ethnologue.com|access-date=3 April 2018}}</ref>

{{as of|2019}}, a few elderly Jews in [[Ioannina]], Greece still speak the language.<ref name=haaretz2>{{cite news |last1=Peklaris |first1=Achilles M. |title='They Claimed I Was Connected to the Mossad': Meet Greece's First-ever Jewish Mayor |url=https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium-meet-the-man-who-just-became-greece-s-first-ever-jewish-mayor-1.7358302 |access-date=12 June 2019 |work=Haaretz |date=11 June 2019 |language=en}}</ref>

As of 2021 there is a small population of speakers in Iran.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |date=March 4, 2021 |title=Six Jewish languages |url=https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/six-jewish-languages/ |access-date=January 20, 2024 |website=Jewish Voice for Labor}}</ref>

==Historical background==
Greece, Constantinople, Asia Minor, Southern Italy, the Balkans and Eastern Europe had originally a Greek-speaking Jewish community. After the arrival of Jewish refugees into these areas from the Iberian Peninsula, Northern Italy, and Western Europe, the Greek-speaking Jewish communities began to almost disappear while integrating into the group of the newcomers, which did not constitute in every area of their new homeland the majority.<ref>Bowman, Steven (1985). "Language and Literature". The Jews of Byzantium 1204-1453. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press. p. 758.</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.jta.org/2014/04/01/news-opinion/world/greeces-romaniote-jews-remember-a-catastrophe-and-grapple-with-disappearing|title=Greece's Romaniote Jews remember a catastrophe and grapple with disappearing - Jewish Telegraphic Agency|date=April 2014|website=www.jta.org|access-date=3 April 2018}}</ref><ref>Avigdor Levy; The Jews of the Ottoman Empire, New Jersey, (1994)</ref>

The immigration of Italian and Spanish-speaking people into Greece in the late 15th century altered the culture and vernacular of the Greek Jews. A lot of locales picked up on Judeo-Spanish language and customs, however some communities in Epirus, Thessaly, the Ionian Islands, Crete, Constantinople and Asia Minor kept the old, so-called "Romaniote minhag" and the Judaeo-Greek language.<ref name=":1" /> During the 19th century Yevanic switched from Hebrew to letters to Greek letters.<ref name=":0" /> By the early 20th century, the Jews living in places such as [[Ioannina]], [[Arta (regional unit)|Arta]], [[Preveza]], and [[Chalkida]] still spoke a form of Greek that slightly differentiated the Greek of their Christian neighbors. These differences, semantically, do not go beyond phonetic, intonational, and lexical phenomena. It is different from other Jewish languages, in that there is no knowledge of any language fragmentation ever taking place.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web | url=http://www.jewish-languages.org/judeo-greek.html | title=Jewish Languages | access-date=2004-09-22 | archive-date=2005-10-23 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051023230839/http://www.jewish-languages.org/judeo-greek.html | url-status=dead }}</ref>

At the start of [[World War II]] [[Northern Greece]] alone had ten thousand speakers, but the language was almost totally annihilated during the [[Holocaust]] with only 149 speakers surviving.<ref name=":0" />

== Features ==
Yevanic is based on Greek, but it contains large amounts of influence from [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]], [[Arabic]], and [[Aramaic]]. It also used a different alphabet than Greek using Hebrew letters instead of Greek letters.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |title=Language |url=https://jewishrhodes.org/language/ |access-date=2024-01-20 |website=Jewish Community of Rhodes - Official Website |language=en-US}}</ref> The languages also has [[Calque|loan translations]] from [[Judaeo-Spanish|Ladino]].<ref name=":2" />

==Current status==

The [[cultural assimilation|assimilation]] of the Romaniote communities by the [[Ladino language|Ladino]]-speaking [[Sephardi]] Jews, the [[emigration]] of many of the Romaniotes to the United States and Israel, and the murder of many of the Romaniotes during the [[Holocaust]] have been the main reasons of the decline of Judaeo-Greek. The survivors were too scant to continue an environment in which this language was dominant and more recent generations of the survivors have moved to new locations such as Greece, Israel, and the United States and now speak the respective languages of those countries: [[Standard Modern Greek]], [[Hebrew]], and [[English language|English]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.projetaladin.org/holocaust/en/a-muslims-guide-to-judaism/jewish-culture/jewish-languages.html|title=Holocaust - Jewish languages|website=www.projetaladin.org|access-date=3 April 2018|archive-date=2 July 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170702194238/http://www.projetaladin.org/holocaust/en/a-muslims-guide-to-judaism/jewish-culture/jewish-languages.html|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>[[Robert Bonfil|Bonfil, Robert]] (2011). Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures. Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture. Brill.</ref>

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 then transcribed in Hebrew letters. The Romaniotes 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. Some communities in Northern Greece and Crete maintained their specific Romaniote practices since these communities were either geographically apart from the Sephardim or had different synagogues, and because their liturgies differed greatly.<ref>Zunz, Leopold "Ritus. 1859. Eine Beschreibung synagogaler Riten".</ref><ref>Luzzato, S. D. Introduction to the Mahzor Bene Roma, p. 34. 1966</ref> At the end of the 19th century, the Romaniote community of Greece made an effort to preserve the Romaniote liturgical heritage of Ioannina and Arta, by printing various liturgical texts in the Hebrew printing presses of Salonika.<ref name="Greece p. 40">The Jewish Museum of Greece, The Jewish Community of Ioannina: The Memory of Artefacts, p. 40 (Booklet). 2017</ref>

Yevanic has some samples on the internet but it lacks translations or spell checking, unlike larger more established languages.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Yevanic {{!}} Ethnologue Free |url=https://www.ethnologue.com/language/yej/ |access-date=2024-01-20 |website=Ethnologue (Free All) |language=en}}</ref>

==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 [[Istanbul|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.<ref>Natalio Fernandez Marcos, ''The Septuagint in Context: Introduction to the Greek Versions of the Bible'' (2000) p 180. The Greek text is published in D. C. Hesseling, ''Les cinq livres de la Loi'' (1897).</ref>
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]].<ref>Lockwood, W. B. 1972. "A Panorama of Indo-European Languages." Hutchinson. London.</ref>

== Sample Text ==
{| class="wikitable"
|+
!Yevanic<ref name=":3">{{Cite web |title=Yevanic alphabet, pronunciation and language |url=https://www.omniglot.com/writing/yevanic.htm |access-date=2024-01-20 |website=www.omniglot.com}}</ref>
!Transliteration<ref name=":3" />
!English<ref name=":3" />
|-
|קֵאִ יטוֹן פְרוֹפִיטִיאָה קִירִיאוּ פְּרוֹשׁ יוֹנָה אִיוּ אֲמִתָּי טוּ אִיפִּין׃ אַנַשְׁטָא פּוֹרֶבְגוּ פְּרוֹשׁ נִנְוֶה טִין בּוֹלִי טִין מֶגָלי יאָלָלִישֶידִֿקֶ אִיפִּי אַפְטִין אוֹטִי אֶנֶבִין קָקִיאָהאִי אַפְטִין אֶנוֹפִּיאוֹמוּ
|Ke itοn prοfitía Kiriu pros Iona iu Amitaï tu ipin: "Anásta, pοrevghu pros Ninve tin poli tin megháli ke dialálise epi aftin oti enevin i kakia aftin enopion mu."
|The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, "Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me."
|}

==See also==
* [[History of the Jews in the Byzantine Empire]]
* [[Jewish languages]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
* Balodimas-Bartolomei, Angelyn, Nicholas Alexiou. 2010. "[https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-90-481-8534-4_10 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. "[https://www.jstor.org/stable/4204248 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}}
* Dalven, R. Judeo-Greek. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 10, pp.&nbsp;425–227, Jerusalem: Keter. 1971
* Davis, Barry. 1987. "[https://www.jstor.org/stable/4288755 Yiddish and the Jewish Identity]." In ''History Workshop'', 23, 159-164.
* Gkoumas, P. ''Bibliography on the Romaniote Jewry'', 2016. {{ISBN|9783741273360}}
* {{cite journal|doi = 10.1017/S0047404500013658|title = A sketch of the linguistic situation in Israel today|journal = Language in Society|volume = 18|issue = 3|pages = 361–388|year = 1989|last1 = Gold|first1 = David L.| s2cid=143028333 }}
* {{cite journal|doi=10.1016/j.langcom.2010.08.004 |title=Judeo-Greek in the era of globalization |journal=Language & Communication |volume=31 |issue=2 |pages=119–129 |year=2011 |last1=Krivoruchko |first1=Julia G. }}
* Naveh, Joseph, Soloman Asher Bimbaum, David Diringer, Zvi Hermann Federbsh, Jonathan Shunary &  Jacob Maimon. 2007. "Alphabet, Hebrew." In ''Encyclopaedia Judaica'', [http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?action=interpret&id=GALE%7CCX2587500876&v=2.1&u=new67449&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w&authCount=1 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: [[Cambridge University Press|CUP]], 2014). Ch. 11, "The Yavanic area: Greece and Italy" (pp.&nbsp;159–170; notes on pp.&nbsp;295''sq''.).

==External links==
'''On Judaeo-Greek'''
* [http://www.jewish-languages.org/judeo-greek.html Jewish Language Research Website: Judeo-Greek] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051023230839/http://www.jewish-languages.org/judeo-greek.html |date=2005-10-23 }}
* [http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/3201 Yevanic Language Endangered Languages Project Website]
* [https://www.omniglot.com/writing/yevanic.htm Hebrew Writing System of Yevanic]
* [https://www.gbbj.org/ The Greek Bible in Byzantine Judaism]

'''On Karaeo-Greek'''
* [http://www.salom.com.tr/haber-105812-turkiyenin_kaybolan_dillerinden_karaitika.html on Turkish newspaper Shalom]
* [http://tehlikedekidiller.com/turkce/wp-content/uploads/3-HABER-%C4%B0ST-KARAYLAR.pdf pdf-document] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180713023205/http://tehlikedekidiller.com/turkce/wp-content/uploads/3-HABER-%C4%B0ST-KARAYLAR.pdf |date=2018-07-13 }}
* [http://qaraimtili.blogspot.de/2013/07/istanbul-karaylar-karaitika-dili.html On a blog]
* [http://qaraimtili.blogspot.de/2013/08/istanbul-karaylar-futbol-mac-ve-karay_21.html On a blog]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q1_Ya-OKDw A recording]

{{Jews and Judaism|state=expanded}}
{{Jews in Greece}}
{{Jewish languages}}
{{Greek language}}
{{Languages of Greece}}

[[Category:Varieties of Modern Greek]]
[[Category:Jewish languages]]
[[Category:Jews and Judaism in Greece]]
[[Category:Languages of Greece]]
[[Category:Languages of Turkey]]
[[Category:Extinct languages of Europe]]
[[Category:Romaniote Jews topics]]
[[Category:Languages of Israel]]
[[Category:Critically endangered languages]]
[[Category:Endangered diaspora languages]]