Yevanic language

Yevanic
Ρωμανιώτικη διάλεκτος, Γεβανικά
Native to	Originally Greece, more recently Israel, Turkey, USA
Native speakers	<50  (date missing)
Language family	Indo-European Hellenic Greek Attic Yevanic
Writing system	Hebrew alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	yej
Linguasphere	56-AAA-am

Yevanic, otherwise known as Judeo-Greek, was the dialect of the Romaniotes, the group of Greek Jews whose presence in Greece is documented since the Hellenistic period. Its linguistic lineage stems from the Hellenistic Koine and includes Hebrew elements. It was mutually intelligible with Greek of the Christian population. The Romaniotes used the Hebrew alphabet to write Greek and Yevanic texts.

The term "Yevanic" is an artificial creation from the Biblical word Yāwān 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.

There are no longer any native speakers of Yevanic, for the following reasons:

• The assimilation of the tiny Romaniote communities by the more numerous Ladino-speaking Sephardi Jews;
• The emigration of many of the Romaniotes to the United States and Israel;
• The murder of many of the Romaniotes during the Holocaust;
• The adoption of the majority languages through assimilation.

Bibliography

• Connerty, Mary C. Judeo-Greek: The Language, The Culture. Jay Street Publishing, 2003. ISBN 1-889534-88-9

External links

• Jewish Language Research Website: Judeo-Greek
• Ethnologue report