Six centuries after the Catholic Monarchs expelled the Jews, Spain has for the first time a book written entirely in Judeo-Spanish, the language spoken by Sephardim and which UNESCO considers a language at serious risk of disappearance: ‘El Espanyol Sefardí ‘.
It is a “unique book, the first published and edited in Judeo-Spanish in the entire history of Spain,” explained its author, Manuel Gálvez, who supports this statement in the searches and information that he has compared with all the publishers during the publication process. elaboration.
As the writer emphasizes, this book aims to “make readers fall in love” with Sephardic history, culture and language, but also to prevent this language from disappearing.
Judeo-Spanish or Ladino, the language spoken by the Jews descended from those who were expelled from Spain by the Catholic Monarchs in the 15th century, is currently spoken correctly, according to Gálvez, by no more than 5,000 people and, therefore, is considered by UNESCO as a “language in serious danger of extinction.”
A journey through Sephardic culture and its grammar
‘El Espanyol Sephardí’ aims to provide “a unique vision” of this language and, in the first part of the book, Gálvez takes a journey through the history of the culture and language that the Sephardim spoke long before they were expelled in the 19th century. XV as later.
«The phrase I use is ‘knowing to fall in love’ because I am convinced that those who know the history, culture, music, literature or plays that have been done in Sephardic and that were done not so long ago in Thessaloniki, Greece or Bosnia, they are going to fall in love with it,” explains the author.
For this reason, “I provide them with all the necessary materials, all the didactic resources for their learning,” says the writer, who is a doctor of Medicine and a retired specialist in Family Medicine.
The book also includes a dictionary with 4,300 words “chosen one by one”, notions of grammar for an upper-intermediate level, tables prepared by the author related to the influence of religion on the language, and a summary of all the linguistic loanwords of this “wandering” and “traveling” language that has received influences wherever the Sephardim traveled.
This work, he emphasizes, therefore offers notions for those who want to know the Sephardic culture and also for those who want to learn to start a conversation in this language.
The writer criticizes that Spain lives “with its back turned” to this culture and calls it “inexplicable” that it is “so little” studied in schools and institutes.
That the figures of Ibn Gabirol, a philosopher and poet “famous throughout the world”, or that of Yehuda Ibn Tibón, translator, doctor, philosopher and poet, are little known is, for Gálvez, an example of this unjust forgetfulness.
According to details, one event that contributed to Judeo-Spanish being at risk of disappearance was the Jewish Holocaust.
«The Nazis were really effective and in entire areas of Sarajevo, for example, the population was annihilated in places where only one survivor was left. So there the variant, the Turkish dialect, has remained as the main variant at the present time », he explains.
An easy language for Spanish speakers to understand
Although the book is written entirely in Judeo-Spanish – including the cover, back cover and biography – a Spanish speaker will understand, according to Gálvez, approximately 85% due to its similarity to Spanish.
Words that are currently used in Spanish, such as ‘color’, ‘orchard’, ‘egg’ or expressions such as ‘it is necessary’, are also part, according to Gálvez, of the Ladino lexicon.
‘El Espanyol sefardí’ has a prologue by the academic of the Royal Spanish Academy of Language Paloma Díaz Mas and another by the Israeli linguist Aldo Sevi, and has been corrected by Güler Orgun, co-editor of ‘El Amaneser de Estambol’, one of the only two newspapers published in the world in the Sephardic language. EFE
