Sefardi: Historically Analyzing Judeo-Espanol as a Minority Language
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Authors
Bussell, Lauren Elizabeth
Issue Date
2022-03-01
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
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Abstract
What I have outlined in this thesis is that historically Jewish people have held a significant presence in the Iberian Peninsula which dates back thousands of years. Even with persistent ecclesiastical ostracizing done by primarily Christian thinkers, the Jewish community within the Iberian Peninsula thrived for centuries as a religious minority, especially between the eighth and 14th centuries during the period of strong Islamic rule. However what is also evident from the evidence highlighted in this thesis is that from the time that Christianity was adopted by the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula in the early fourth century C.E. After this point anti-Jewish rhetoric would become a persistent problem, one that we still see the effects of today. This manifests itself in Spanish ignorance and ambivalence towards the history of the Jews in Spain and the idea that the Spanish Jewish community only exists in the obscure past. As is evident from the analysis of both syntax and morphology, Judeo-Espanol has indeed changed from old Spanish and even diverged from older versions of Judeo-Espanol. The information gathered in this thesis makes it clear that although there are certainly similarities between the two languages, especially syntactically, Judeo-Espanol is not an archaic form of Spanish. Despite this being the fact, it is still often misrepresented by Spanish language experts including my Spanish language professor as simply being nothing more than a slightly strange sounding old dialect of the Spanish language. The misrepresentation of this very alive minority language is compounded by the fact that the influence of Jewish culture in Spain, and also the continuity of the Sephardic community outside of Spain is a subject that has been intentionally excluded from Spanish public consciousness due to the historical Anti-Judaism that has been present in Spain for centuries.
Description
iii, 41 p.
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