Yévanique

The yevanic (of the Hebrew Yawan : Greece, cf Ionie), also known under the names of romaniote and judéo-Greek , was the dialect of the Romaniotes, the Greek Juif S of which the presence in Greece, around the Black Sea and all around the Eastern Mediterranean, is attested in writings since the hellenistic Period, and continued until the 19th century, under the Ottoman Empire.

Its linguistic genealogy the fact of going back to the hellenistic Koinè (Ελληνική Κοινή) and also includes elements of Hebrew. The yévanique one and the Greek spoken by the Christian populations was mutually understandable, but the Jews used an alternative of the Hebrew alphabet to write the yévanique one as well as the Greek.

The yévanique one is now a dead language, for the following reasons:

the Assimilation of the communities romaniotes by the Christian Greeks and the Jews Séfarades from Spain ( Ladinos );
the emigration of much of Romaniotes towards the the United States and Israel;
progression of the Zionism, which supported Hebrew like language common to the Jews, with the detriment of the Jewish Langues of the diaspora (Yiddish, Judéo-espagnol, judéo- Tat - Juhuri - etc);
the annihilation of the major part of the Jewish communities of Greece by the Shoah.

External bonds

Jewish Language Research Website: Judeo-Greek

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