Re: constructed romance languages

On Wed, 20 Jan 1999 20:50:30 -0600 Eric Christopherson <eric@...>
writes:
>Steg Belsky wrote:
>> On the bus home today i was thinking about this, and i got my own
>> conromancelang idea, which i probably will never get around to
>> (especially since i know nothing about Latin) - a Judean
>>romancelang,
>> influenced by Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and/or Arabic.  That would be
>>one heck of an alternate history conEarth, too.
>I have also thought about doing a "Jewish" Romance conlang, but
>unfortunately for me, I know next to nothing about Hebrew and other
>Semitic languages.  You probably already know this, but I will tell it
>for the benefit of the list.  There actually are some Romance
>dialects/languages spoken by Jews with Hebrew roots, such as Ladino,
>which as I understand it is derived from Medieval Spanish and was
>later carried to the Middle East and perhaps some other areas, after
>the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.
Yup.  Although according to the book i read recently about the history of
Hebrew, "Ladino" is the specific name of the dialect(?) or form of
Judeo-Spanish that is used in Biblical translations.  The actual
language's name is Dzhudesmo.  Hrrm...i just noticed, in some places in
the book it calls it Dzudesmo, and in others D^zudezmo, with an
upside-down ^ over the first Z.
Some things that i think are funny (but maybe only to a Hebrew and
Spanish speaker) that i learned about Dzhudezmo from the book:
the adjective _mazalado_, "lucky", from Hebrew mazal + Spanish -ado.
the verb _lamdar_, "to learn", from Hebrew LMD + Spanish -ar.
the plural noun _ladronim_, "theives", from Spanish ladron + Hebrew -im.

I also remember reading somewhere in the book (i can't find the page at
the moment) that the Hebrew word _afilu_ "even" (not the
adjective...."even" as in "not only us, but even spammers can get
email-bombed") seems to appear in almost every Jewish language -
Dzhudezmo, Judeo-Arabic, Yiddish, etc.

>So you're saying your conlang would develop in Judea? That's a very
>interesting idea.
Thanks, i wish i had time for it!


-Stephen (Steg)

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