Shuadit (also spelled ''Chouhadite'', ''Chouhadit'', ''Chouadite'', ''Chouadit'', and ''Shuhadit''), also called Judæo-Occitan or less accurately Judæo-Provençal or Judæo-Comtadin, is an
extinct Occitan dialect historically spoken by
French Jews in the
South of France. Though written in
Hebrew script
The Hebrew alphabet ( he, אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish ...
, the
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...
was
mutually intelligible with the Occitan spoken by non-Jews (Banitt 1963, Pansier 1925, Guttel & Aslanov 2006:560).
[Hammarström (2015) Ethnologue 16/17/18th editions: a comprehensive review: online appendices]
Shuadit is known from documents dating to as early as the 11th century in France. The language suffered drastic declines beginning with the charter of the
Inquisition
The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, ...
in France. Shuadit's
last known speaker, the writer
Armand Lunel, died in 1977.
Literature
Shuadit writings came in two distinct varieties, religious texts and popular prose, and they were written by adapting the Hebrew script.
Religious texts contained a significantly higher incidence of
loanwords from
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
and reflected an overall more "educated" style, with many words also from
Old French
Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intellig ...
,
Provençal,
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
,
Aramaic
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
and
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
. The texts include a fragment of a 14th-century poem lauding Queen
Esther
Esther is the eponymous heroine of the Book of Esther. In the Achaemenid Empire, the Persian king Ahasuerus seeks a new wife after his queen, Vashti, is deposed for disobeying him. Hadassah, a Jewess who goes by the name of Esther, is chosen ...
, and a woman's
siddur
A siddur ( he, סִדּוּר ; plural siddurim ) is a Jewish prayer book containing a set order of daily prayers. The word comes from the Hebrew root , meaning 'order.'
Other terms for prayer books are ''tefillot'' () among Sephardi Jews, '' ...
containing an uncommon blessing, found in few other locations (including medieval
Lithuania), thanking
God
In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...
, in the
morning blessings, not for making her "according to His will" (שעשני כרצונו ''she'asani kirtzono'') but for making her as a woman.
The extant texts comprising the collections of popular
prose
Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the ...
used far fewer borrowings and were essentially
Occitan written with the Hebrew script. This may have simply reflected Jews' then-prevalent avoidance of the
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...
, which was widely associated with oppressive Christian régimes. The texts demonstrate the extent to which the Jewish community of
Provence was familiar with Hebrew as well as the extent to which the community was integrated into the larger surrounding
Christian culture
Christian culture generally includes all the cultural practices which have developed around the religion of Christianity. There are variations in the application of Christian beliefs in different cultures and traditions.
Christian culture has i ...
of the region.
Phonology
Shuadit had a number of
phonological
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
characteristics unlike all other
Jewish languages. The name "Shuadit" literally means "Jewish" and is the
Occitan pronunciation of the Hebrew word "Yehudit" (initial *j became , and *h was often elided between vowels).
In words inherited from Hebrew, the letters ''
samekh'', ''
shin'' and ''
taw'' were all pronounced , the same as ''fe''. The conjecture is that the first two
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...
s merged with the phoneme, which then merged with the phoneme .
In words derived from Latin, there was a tendency to
diphthongise after
plosives and to delateralize to . Also, both and , as well as and , merged to the single phoneme . Thus, the Provençal words ''plus'', ''filha'', and ''jutge'' were respectively ''pyus'', ''feyo'', and ''šuše'' in Shuadit.
Evidence
A fundamental source for inferring information about the
phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
of Shuadit is the comedy ''Harcanot et Barcanot''. (See ''Nahon'' in the
References section.)
Emperor
Pedro II of Brazil recorded a number of
bilingual Hebrew-Shuadit religious
poem
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in ...
s.
Decline
In 1498, the
French Jews were formally
expelled from France. Although the community was not finally compelled to depart until 1501, much of the community had by then become dispersed into other regions, notably
Genoa
Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian census, the Province of ...
, and the underdeveloped regions of
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
. However, the
Comtat Venaissin was then under the direct control of the
Pope
The pope ( la, papa, from el, πάππας, translit=pappas, 'father'), also known as supreme pontiff ( or ), Roman pontiff () or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome (or historically the patriarch of Rome), head of the worldwide Cathol ...
, and a small Jewish community continued to live there in relative isolation. From the time of the
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...
, when French Jews were permitted to live legally anywhere in France as full citizens, the status of Shuadit began to decline rapidly. The last known native speaker,
Armand Lunel, died in 1977.
References
*Blondheim, D. S. 1928. Notes étymologiques et lexicographiques. Mélanges de linguistique et de littérature offerts à M. Alfred Jeanroy par ses élèves et ses amis. Paris: Champion. 71-80.
*Jochnowitz, G. 1978 "Shuadit: La langue juive de Provence." ''Archives juives'' 14: 63-67.
*Jochnowitz, G. 2013. "The Hebrew Component in Judeo-Provençal." In ''Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics'', ed. Geoffrey Khan et al., vol. 2, pp. xxxx. Leiden: Brill.
Link to full-text
*Nahon, P. 2021.
Modern Judeo-Provençal as Known from Its Sole Textual Testimony: Harcanot et Barcanot (Critical Edition and Linguistic Analysis)" ''Journal of Jewish Languages''. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/22134638-bja10014
*Pansier, P. 1925. "Une comédie en argot hébraïco-provençal de la fin du XVIIIe siècle." ''
Revue des études juives
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance, and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own durin ...
'' 81: 113-145.
*Pedro d'Alcantara (Dom Pedro II of Brazil). 1891. Poésies hébraïco-provençales du rituel comtadin. Avignon: Séguin Frères
*Zosa Szajkowski, Dos loshn fun di yidn in di arbe kehiles fun Komta-Venesen (The Language of the Jews in the Four Communities of Comtat Venaissin), New York, published by the author and the Yiddish Scientific Institute—YIVO, 1948.
External links
Oxford course on Judeo-Provençal
{{Romance languages
Judaeo-French languages
Extinct Romance languages
Provençal language
Languages attested from the 11th century
Languages extinct in the 1970s