Yevanic Language
יעואני גלוסא
The Yevanic language, also know as Ρωμανιώτικη or Γεβανικά, is a dialect of Greek spoken by the Romaniote community, Greek Jews. It is almost extinct, with only around 50 or so speakers left. Wikipedia cites how, “The assimilation of the Romaniote communities by the Ladino-speaking Sephardi Jews, the emigration of many of the Romaniotes to the United States and Israel, the murder of many of the Romaniotes during the Holocaust have been the main reasons of the decline of [Yevanic]. The survivors were too scant to continue an environment in which this language was dominant and more recent generations of the survivors have moved to new locations such as Greece, Israel, and The United States and now speak the respective languages of those countries; Standard Modern Greek, Hebrew, and English” (source). It is largely mutually intelligible with modern Greek, but it uses the Hebrew script and has a lot of loans from Hebrew and Aramaic.
Writing script:
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There is also a cursive script (Rashi) that was used.
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Examples:
I posted about this-this morning, but I’m going to go into more detail. Here is a website that has examples of Yevanic. Most seem to come from holy books and are written in both Yevanic and (Koine?) Greek. Personally, I’m having difficulty understanding the layout of them. For example, this is their Jonah 1:1-2 vs Omiglot’s
As you can see, they put קֵאִיטוֹן on the left when it should be on the right. Maybe I just don’t know how to read it, I’m not sure. Regardless, this is a great resource!
Video Resources:
Spoken language example
The language and people
Romaniote Shema
Purim song
(I’ve literally been trying to post this for months, but it refused to post. I literally can’t believe it finally worked!!!!)
