Randall Craig Meister and Dr. David Eddington, Department of Linguistics and English Language
“Pero Salonik no kanta mas1,” said an elderly speaker of Judeo-‐Spanish in Thessaloniki, as she reflected with me during a discussion concerning her life as a Sephardic Jew after World War II. This expression embodies the historical and cultural awareness of the dwindling Judeo-‐Spanish speaking Sephardic community in Thessaloniki, Greece2. After 500 years of prevalence in Thessaloniki, Greece, the Spanish-‐ peaking Sephardic Jews have endured centuries of Muslim rule, Greek cultural assimilation, a horrific Holocaust, and starkly diversified linguistic exposure. This plethora of diversity and circumstances has created a dwindling community of speakers, but a community, which embodies the social constructs of endangered languages all over Europe and the world. Given this background, this research set out to understand the status of the language in Thessaloniki today in terms of number of speakers, speaker sociolinguistic, historical, and cultural awareness of the speakers, and current transmission methods of the language today.
The methodology of this research was based in conducting open--ended ethnographic interviews with guiding, directive questions among willing participants based from contacts within the Israeli Community of Thessaloniki and the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki. These participants were, in various capacities, deeply involved with the Sephardic community of Thessaloniki. In the spirit of more holistic overviews of the ethno--linguistic and sociological aspects of the language as spoken today, this research also utilized multiple interviews with volunteering non-Judeo-Spanish speakers of the Sephardic community, who had deep familial or social contact with the language. In utilizing these two community member--types, an intriguing linguistic ethno-consciousness emerged according to the above criteria of this project.
In terms of numbers of speakers available for this study, 16 fluent speakers of the language were available for interview in Thessaloniki from May 1st, 2012 until May 20th 2012. Another 3 were contacted, but not able to interview. Two non-speakers were interviewed due to their interest and willingness to share their experience with Judeo-Spanish. During each of these interviews, a rich social network was uncovered of strong familial ties and social interconnections. This network of individuals, according to all subjects’ input, ranged anywhere from 40 to 50 fluent speakers of Judeo-Spanish with another 40-50 of those who are non-fluent speakers. These estimates come from the opinion and experience of each speaker coupled with the subjects’ mentioning of the number of people with whom they speak the language.
In terms of overall linguistic awareness of the speaker community, each interviewee was asked to “describe their experience with the Judeo-Spanish language.” In each of the 18 interviews conducted, both among speakers and non-‐ speakers, this question was unanimously met with a response of familial connection in their use/exposure to the language together with mentions of the historical prevalence of the language as spoken in the city. This consistent manner of prefacing their responses became the greatest indicator of the linguistic ethno-historical awareness as a byproduct of the language death throughout the city and the Mediterranean. For example, the subjects often expressed a connection to the prominent Sephardic culture during “before the war days” and drew personal comparisons between themselves, their family members, and their community with World War II as a reference point for the actual and perceived turning point in their language’s history. Such a consistent response pattern as an introduction to their personal experience with the language lead me to conclude that, like many other instances of language death (and often in revitalization efforts), linguistic ethno-‐ historical awareness greatly increases as fluent native speakers begin to diminish.
The last quality of interest for this research involved investigating the methods, sentiment, and realities of Judeo-Spanish language transmission within the Judeo-Spanish community. In any critically endangered language such as Judeo-Spanish the linguistic community for language transmission is of utmost interest for the projection of its survival and/or final years. This research found that the transmission of Judeo-Spanish was nearly exclusively intrafamilial and, moreover, from parents to children. The efforts by the Ladino Society of Thessaloniki to perpetuate interest in the language through language speaking and reading classes were widely viewed as noble but unrealistic efforts for practical maintenance of the language as spoken. The youngest of the speakers contacted, around 40 years of age, expressed sentiments of general pride for the Sephardic culture and family heritage in motivations for maintaining the language. Similarly, one mother-‐son double interview conducted revealed a desire to own a “family language” reserved for conversation between themselves and, in turn, keep the language “out of the hands of the younger generation” (3rd generation speakers from the time of WWII). Ultimately, the majority of subjects have adopted the sentiment of passion for the language itself, but a resignation to the death of the language as a reality-‐often mentioned a helplessness in attempts at perpetuating it beyond who already speaks.
In continuation of the above summative conclusions, I am continuing to compile further research conducted on Judeo-Spanish in past years in order to frame the written submissions of this research for possible publication in the Hispania Journal for Hispanic studies. Similarly, I am working with the Ladino society in Thessaloniki in order to post the recordings (edited for privacy) of these interviews on the academic portion of their website in efforts to preserve the sound and stories of this language as spoken today. Thus, this research, in its progression towards further publication opportunities, will provide a useful snapshot of the language in its final years as heard in the mouths of those who speak it natively and from those who experience the language around the speakers in the community.