Judeo-Latin
Judeo-Latin (also Judæo-Latin), La‘az, or Ebraico-Latino is a presumed Jewish language used by Roman Jews, scattered across the Roman Empire, especially those on the Italian Peninsula and in Transalpine Gaul.
"Lo`ez" (לועז) is Hebrew for "foreign language" ("non-Hebrew language"), and in the Middle Ages, it started to refer to Latin or Romance languages.
It is believed that Judeo-Latin is the predecessor of all the Judeo-Romance languages.[1]
Corpus
Few records exist of Judeo-Latin. Leo Levi found some Hebraisms in a few epigraphs in Italy.[2]
Other possible sources are loanwords in other languages, like in Sardinian cenabura [ken'abura] 'Friday' (from Latin cena pura) and caputanni, 'September', a literal translation of Rosh Hashanah.
Judeo-Latin likely influenced not only the Judeo-Romance languages, but also the Yiddish and Rotwelsch languages through its posited daughter languages, Judeo-Italian, Shuadit and Zarphatic.
Related languages
The historical relationships of the various Judeo-Romance languages are subject to debate and are only tenuously demonstrable at best:
- Judeo-Catalan
- Judeo-Italian
- Judeo-Aragonese
- Judeo-Portuguese
- Judeo-Spanish
- Judeo-Provençal
- Judeo-French
References
-
- Blondheim, D. S. 1927. Poèmes judéo-français du Moyen Age. Paris: Champion
- WEINREICH, Max (1956). The Jewish languages of Romance stock and their relation to earliest Yiddish. RPh 9: 403-428.
- Leo Levi, "Ricerca di epigrafia ebraica nell'Italia meridionale," La Rassegna mensile di Israel, vol. 28 (1962), pp. 152-153