Еврейско-греческий диалект: на грани исчезновения.

Endangered Greek dialect

Yevanic, also known as Judaeo Greek, Romaniyot, Romaniote, and Yevanitika, is a Greek dialect formerly used by the Romaniotes and by the Constantinopolitan Karaites (in whose case the language is called Karaitika or Karaeo Greek). 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. 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).

The term Yevanic is an artificial creation from the Biblical word יון 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. The word for Greece in modern Israeli Hebrew is ; likewise, the word is used to refer to the modern Greek language in Hebrew.

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, but starting in April, 2022, the Oxford School for Rare Jewish languages will be offering a beginner's course. In 1987, there were 35 speakers left in Israel, the majority located in Jerusalem. This population may have died out. as of 2019, a few elderly Jews in Ioannina, Greece still speak the language. As of 2021 there is a small population of speakers in Iran.

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. 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. 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. The languages also has loan translations from Ladino. 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. 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. There is

Yevanic has some samples on the internet but it lacks translations or spell checking, unlike larger more established languages.

+YevanicTransliterationEnglishקֵאִ יטוֹן פְרוֹפִיטִיאָה קִירִיאוּ פְּרוֹשׁ יוֹנָה אִיוּ אֲמִתָּי טוּ אִיפִּין׃ אַנַשְׁטָא פּוֹרֶבְגוּ פְּרוֹשׁ נִנְוֶה טִין בּוֹלִי טִין מֶגָלי יאָלָלִישֶידִֿקֶ אִיפִּי אַפְטִין אוֹטִי אֶנֶבִין קָקִיאָהאִי אַפְטִין אֶנוֹפִּיאוֹמוּKe 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."