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You are here: Home / Language Classes / Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages / Judeo-Provençal

Judeo-Provençal

Teacher: Dr Peter Nahon, University of Neuchâtel

Class Level: Advanced Beginners (reading proficiency in Hebrew alphabet required; elementary knowledge in French or another Romance language is an advantage)

Class Schedule 2022-23: Tuesdays from 15:45-16:45 UK Time

Class Length: 1-term class (Trinity Term 2023)

Class Description: This class is an introduction to Judeo-Provençal and the cognate dialects historically written and spoken by the Jews of Southern France. Southern Gallo-Romance (Occitan/Provençal) documents of Jewish origin fall into two categories: (1) texts written with use of the Hebrew alphabet, which range from the 12th to the 18th century and comprise glosses as well as full-length texts of literary or liturgical nature; (2) texts in Latin letters, spanning from the 16th to the 20th century, that typically represent vernacular varieties characterized with high variation and a strong influx of Hebrew loanwords. The class will cover both corpora: with the help of research tools used in Romance dialectology, participants will be guided to develop skills to read, translate and analyse the texts lexically, morphologically and syntactically. Specificities of Judeo-Provençal in contrast with general Southern French dialects will be also studied within an historical sociolinguistic framework. A couple of sessions will deal with the related Occitan varieties spoken by the Jews in other areas of Southern France (Gascony and Nice).

Reference Materials:
-Nahon, Peter. 2020. La singularisation linguistique des juifs en Provence et en Gascogne: deux cas parallèles ou opposés? La Linguistique 56.1: 87–113.
-Nahon, Peter. 2021. Modern Judeo-Provençal as known from its sole textual testimony: Harcanot et Barcanot (critical edition and linguistic analysis). Journal of Jewish Languages 9, 1–73.
-Minervini, Laura. 2021.  Judeo-Romance in Italy and France (Judeo-Italian, Judeo-French, Judeo-Occitan). Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics.
-Ronjat, Jules. 1930–1941. Grammaire istorique [sic] des parlers provençaux modernes (4 vol.). Montpellier: Société des langues romanes.
-Strich, Adam (with G. Jochnowitz). 2015. Judeo-Occitan (Judeo-Provençal). In L. Kahn & A. D. Rubin (eds.), Handbook of Jewish languages. Leiden-Boston: Brill, pp. 517–551.
Other materials will be supplied during the course.

Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies
Clarendon Institute
Walton Street, Oxford, OX1 2HG
Tel: +44 (0)1865 610422
enquiries@ochjs.ac.uk

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