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Judeo-Italian giudeo-italiano
Spoken in:	Ferrara, Florence, Mantua, Modena, Piedmont, Reggio Emilia, Rome, Venice, Livorno; Corfu
Total speakers:	200
Language family:	Indo-European  Italic   Romance    Italo-Western     Italo-Dalmatian      Judeo-Italian
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	roa
ISO 639-3:	itk
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Judeo-Italian languages are the Italo-Romance linguistic varieties used between the 10th and the 20th centuries in Italy and Corfu.

Contents 1 The term "Judaeo-Italian" 2 Other designations 3 Dialects 4 Characteristics 5 Number of speakers 6 Library of Congress/ISO information 7 See also 8 References 9 External links

The glossonym type giudeo-italiano is of academic and relatively late coinage. In English, Judæo-Italian was first used by Lazaro Belleli in 1904 for his article Judæo-Greek and Judæo-Italian in the Jewish Encyclopedia (vol. 7, 310-313), describing the languages of the Jews of Corfu. In Italian, Giuseppe Cammeo referred to a Gergo giudaico-italiano in his 1909 article Studj dialettali (Vessillo Israelitico 57 (1909); the term first appears on p. 169). That same year, Umberto Cassuto used the term giudeo-italiano, in the following:

Infatti, mentre è universalmente nota l’esistenza di un dialetto giudeo-tedesco, quasi nessuno sospetta oltr’alpe che gli ebrei italiani abbiano pure, o almeno abbiano avuto, non dirò un loro dialetto, ma almeno una loro parlata con peculiari caratteri. Certo, praticamente l’importanza di essa, limitata all’uso quotidiano di poche migliaia di persone, è pressoché nulla di fronte a quella del giudeo-tedesco, il quale è parlato da milioni di individui che bene spesso non conoscono altra lingua, ed ha una propria letteratura, un proprio giornalismo, un proprio teatro, sì da assumere quasi l’importanza di una vera e propria lingua a sé … è pressoché nulla, se si vuole, anche a paragone di altri dialetti giudaici, del giudeo-spagnuolo ad esempio, che sono più o meno usati letterariamente; è vero tutto questo, ma dal punto di vista linguistico tanto vale il giudeo-tedesco, quanto il giudeo-italiano, se così vogliamo chiamarlo, giacché di fronte alla scienza glottologica le varie forme del parlare umano hanno importanza di per sé e non per il numero di persone che le usano o per le forme d’arte in cui vengono adoperate. Piuttosto, una notevole differenza fra il giudeo-tedesco e il giudeo-italiano, che ha valore anche per il riguardo scientifico, è che, mentre quello è tanto diverso dalla lingua tedesca da costituire un dialetto a sé stante, questo invece non è essenzialmente una cosa diversa dalla lingua d’Italia, o dai singoli dialetti delle varie provincie d’Italia …  ; 256: … era naturale che il gergo giudeo-italiano in breve volger di tempo sparisse… (Umberto Cassuto “Parlata ebraica.” Vessillo Israelitico 57 (1909): 255-256)

• Historically, Italian Jews referred to their vernaculars as "La`az" (לעז), Hebrew for "foreign language" (i.e., specifically, "non-Hebrew language"). The Italian Jewish rite is sometimes called minhag ha-lo'azim, and linguists use lo'ez as a description of words of Romance origin in Yiddish. This may be connected with the Germanic use of the word wälsch (literally, "foreign") for Romance peoples and languages (as in "Welsh", "Walloon" and "Wallachian"): the Italian (and Sephardic) Hebrew script for Torah scrolls is known as "Velsh" or "Veilish".
• In 1587, David de Pomi uses the word "italiano" in reference to the Italian glosses in his trilingual dictionary. The Hebrew title of the 1609 Venice Haggadah uses the word "italiano" for the language of Leone Modena's translation (u-fitrono bi-leshon iṭalyano ופתרונו בלשון איטליאנו).
• Other historic descriptions are "Latino" and "Volgare", both of which were commonly used in the Middle Ages to mean Italian in general.
• After the institution of the Ghetto forced Jewish communities throughout Italy into segregation, the term ghettaiolo was identified with local Jewish varieties of regional dialects.
• Another native name type is giudeesco (e.g., Judeo-Florentine iodiesco; < *IUDÆĬSCU[M], or an assimulation of the hiatus /aˈe/ *giudaesco < *IUDAĬSCU[M]).
• The neologism Italkian was coined in 1942 by Solomon Birnbaum (see References), who modelled the word on the modern Hebrew adjective ית-/אטלקי italki(t), “Italian”, from the middle Hebrew adjective איטלקי (< ITALICU[M]), “Italic”, “Roman”.

Judeo-Italian regional dialects (ghettaioli giudeeschi), including:

• Judæo-Ferraran (giudeo-ferrarese) from Ferrara
• Judæo-Florentine (giudeo-fiorentino, iodiesco) from Florence
• Judæo-Mantuan (giudeo-mantovano) from Mantua
• Judæo-Modenan (giudeo-modenese) from Modena
• Judæo-Piedmontese (giudeo-piemontese) from the region of Piedmont
• Judæo-Reggian (giudeo-reggiano) from the region of Reggio Emilia in Emilia-Romagna
• Judæo-Roman (giudeo-romanesco) from Rome
• Judæo-Venetian (giudeo-veneziano) from Venice.

Also

• Bagitto (giudeo-livornese) from Livorno (includes elements of Judeo-Spanish and Portuguese)

At least two Judeo-Italian varieties, based on Salentino and Venetian varieties were also used in Corfu.[1]

All the spoken varieties used a unique (among Jewish languages) combination of Hebrew verb stems with Italian conjugations (e.g., "axlare", to eat; "gannaviare", to steal; "dabberare", to speak; "lekhtire", to go). Similarly there are abstract nouns such as "tovezza", goodness.

Also common are lexical incorporations from Hebrew, particularly those applicable to daily life. Terms from other Jewish languages such as Yiddish and Ladino were also incorporated.

Bagitto, the dialect of Livorno (Leghorn), is particularly rich in loanwords from Judeo-Spanish and Judeo-Portuguese.

It was claimed by Cassuto that most Judeo-Italian dialects reflect the Italian dialect of places further to the south, as since the expulsion of the Jews from the Kingdom of Naples the general direction of Jewish migration in Italy has been northward.

Fewer than 4000 people today have basic knowledge of Italkian, and of these, only a small number are able to speak the language fluently.

"Italkian" is not used by the Library of Congress as a subject heading, neither does it figure as a reference to Judeo-Italian. The authorized subject heading is "Judeo-Italian language". Subheadings are:

• Judeo-Italian language: Glossaries, vocabularies, etc.
• Judeo-Italian language: Grammar.
• Judeo-Italian language: Italy Livorno Glossaries, vocabularies, etc.
• Judeo-Italian language: Texts.

The subject reference is: Judeo-Italian dialect. LC-MARC uses the following language codes : Judeo-Italian Assigned collective code [ita] (Italian).

This is in compliance with the International Organization of standards language code ISO 639-2 code (roa).

• Italkim
• Judæo-Latin
• Judæo-Romance languages

• Birnbaum, Solomon. Jewish Languages: Essays in Honour of the Very Rev. Dr. J. H. Hertz, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire, on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, September 25, 1942 (5703). Ed. I. Epstein, E. Levine, C. Roth. London, E. Goldston, [1944]. 51-67 (63, 67).
• Cassuto, Umberto. Parlata ebraica. Vessillo Israelitico 57 (1909): 254-260.
• Ferretti Cuomo, Luisa. Italchiano versus giudeo-italiano versus 0 (zero), una questione metodologica. Italia: studi e ricerche sulla storia, la cultura e la letteratura degli Ebrei d'Italia 3.1-2 (1982): 7-32.
• Fortis, Umberto. La parlata degli ebrei di Venezia e le parlate giudeo-italiane. La Giuntina, 2006. ISBN 88-8057-243-1.
• Fortis, Umberto and Zolli, Paolo, La parlata giudeo-veneziana: Assisi/Rome 1979 ISBN 88-85027-07-5
• Gold, David L. The Glottonym Italkian. Italia: studi e ricerche sulla storia, la cultura e la letteratura degli Ebrei d'Italia 2.1-2 (1980): 98-102.
• Mayer Modena, Maria Luisa, “Le parlate giudeo-italiane”, in “Storia d'Italia. Gli ebrei in Italia”, a cura di Corrado Vivanti, vol. II, Dall'emancipazione a oggi, Einaudi, Torino 1997, pp. 939-963.
• Merzagora, Giovanna Massariello, Giudeo-Italiano Profilo dei dialetti italiani 23: Pisa 1977
• Pomi, David de, 1525-ca. 1593. Tsemaḥ David. Dittionario novo hebraico, molto copioso, dechiarato in tre lingue. Venetijs: Apud Ioannem de Gara, 1587.

• Judeo-Italian: Description of Medieval Koine
• Judæo-Greek and Judæo-Italian
• Judæo-Italian at the Rosetta project
• Ethnologue report for Judeo-Italian
• La Ienti de Sion in Italia

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denotes Extinct (†); bolded denotes languages with more than 5 million speakers