Abstract

TITLE OF MA THESIS: The influence of Balkan languages to Judeo-Spanish (in prose texts in Belgrade and Sarajevo Sephards periodicals)

THE GOAL AND CONTENTS OF THE THESIS: Balkan Peninsula represents a unique area of languages in contact between languages of different language groups. Centuries of language mixture led to the situation that many authors say that in the explaining of those contacts a term “Balkan languages” must be used, because it is very difficult to establish whether one language phenomenon came, for instance, directly from Turkish or via another language, which already took that word from Turkish.

            The speakers of Judeo-Spanish at the Balkans represent an interesting sociolinguistic phenomenon. They were bilinguals in monolingual environment and with great effort maintained their language, but, nevertheless, did not left immune to the influences of other languages in the zone. The goal of this work is to examine extent and type of these influences.

            Morphological, syntactic, lexical and lexicological influences of Balkan languages, especially Serbian and Turkish, will be examined. Serbian was the language of domicile population and Turkish, due to historical circumstances, is woven into all languages of Balkan Peninsula.

            Methodologically, the work will examine concrete case-study of languages in contact, with recognizing dialectological (because they are two parts of Judeo-Spanish language area) and sociolinguistic influences (the level of influence in respect of education and social position of speaker, whole community as well as individuals).

PREVIOUS RESEARCHES: Generally about Judeo-Spanish language at the Balkans several articles were written: Kalmi Baruh (1936), Edward Stankievich (1964), and Marius Sala (1965). About Judeo-Spanish in Sarajevo Kalmi Baruh wrote PhD Thesis (1930); about the history of the language of Bosnian Sephards wrote Samuel Kamhi (1966); Isak Papo in his study examines the influence of Hebrew (1981); Alica Knezovic in her MA thesis writes about phonetics and phonology (1986), and Muhamed Nezirovic wrote a study about literature and language of Spanish Jews (1992). About Judeo-Spanish in Belgrade no works have been published. Sephard periodicals, until now, were linguistically examined only in the article of Andrea Zinato (1998) – analysis of two stories, one poem and several proverbs.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY: The examination will be based on prose texts in periodicals of Belgrade and Sarajevo Sephards, in order to establish how much Balkan elements penetrated in different parts of Judeo-Spanish speaking area. Text written with both Latin transcription and rashi letters, i.e. Hebrew letters, will be examined. During the examination style and purpose of the text (literal, journalistic, announcements etc) will be taken in consideration. Special attention will be paid to the authors, their education, social status, age etc. As same authors collaborated for many years in mentioned periodicals, it will be also shown how much foreign elements penetrated into the idiolects of individuals during the time.