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Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

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Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#61
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More accurate to say that at the time, there was no language known as "Spanish" - there were speakers of Latin dialects (including what became Spanish and Portuguese and Galician and Catalan &c.), speakers of Arabic, and speakers of Basque.

We are talking about 1492 here, there was already a established Spanish language That same year this was written: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gram%C3%A1tica_de_la_lengua_ca...

The presence of lengua castellana instead of lengua española in the title is exactly GP's point. Remember that Castile and Aragon only just entered personal union at the time! Prior to Spanish unification, Castilian and Aragonese were seen as different from each other as modern people see Spanish and Portuguese (and Aragonese is just as different from Castilian as Portuguese is).

In addition to Castilian and Aragonese, you also had, among others, the Galician language, the Asturian and Leonese languages, and of course in the once-Muslim lands not only Ladino but also Mozarabic (which parallels Ladino in a few ways: Ladino is a close relative of Castilian spoken by Jews in Muslim lands, while Mozarabic is a close relative of Aragonese spoken by Christians in Muslim lands).

Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#62

> ‘Adonaj es mi pastor. No mankare de nada’ (The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want) Mancare in Italian is to miss/need/be lacking, and although mancar in modern Portuguese is to limp, archaic Portuguese used it in the Italian sense. > I had to listen carefully to understand, hearing words like fazer (to do) and lavorar (to work) that sounded more like Portuguese and Italian than modern Spanish. I heard sounds lik…

The etymology for "macabro" goes back to Arabic: "Ma qabr" means "cemetery." I always wondered how "inshallah" became "ojalá". The 'j' sound in 'ojala' is the same as in 'pájaro' which in Ladino-as the article points out--is "pasharo" thus supplying the explanation. How do you say "you" in Ladino? Is "usted" (possibly from Arabic "ustaad") used, or do they use an Italian or Portuguese cognate?

>I always wondered how "inshallah" became "ojalá". The 'j' sound in 'ojala' is the same as in 'pájaro' which in Ladino-as the article points out--is "pasharo" thus supplying the explanation.

You might enjoy, as I did, this explanation of why X is the unknown quantity in Algebra: another case where "sh" got marked as 'x' which is pronounced the same as 'j'. https://www.ted.com/talks/terry_moore_why_is_x_the_unknown

It's a bit of a just-so-story without much in the way of evidence though though, so there's a rebuttal here https://gizmodo.com/why-we-use-x-as-the-unknown-in-math-1657...

Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#63

> ‘Adonaj es mi pastor. No mankare de nada’ (The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want) Mancare in Italian is to miss/need/be lacking, and although mancar in modern Portuguese is to limp, archaic Portuguese used it in the Italian sense. > I had to listen carefully to understand, hearing words like fazer (to do) and lavorar (to work) that sounded more like Portuguese and Italian than modern Spanish. I heard sounds lik…

> Mancare in Italian is to miss/need/be lacking, and although mancar in modern Portuguese is to limp French also uses “manquer”, and there are traces in spanish (such as a manco being a person that lacks an arm).

And English manky.

Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The late 1400s was very far away from Nationalism. You are thinking of the early 1800s. The first truly Nationalist state was France under Napolean or some would say the USA, but even earlier USA barely held itself together for the first 20 years.

No, he's onto something. Don't let popular understanding and terminology blind you, what we're looking at here is the shift from war as the primary driver of polity creation to what we now call popular sovereignty. This shift would have taken hundreds of years and Christianity would have been a huge driver. Agrarian empires like the Roman one were absolutely massive, juggernauts that just couldn't be stopped. Yet the…

I'm not sure about a shift from war, (though maybe this happens also).

I'm not really sure what drives it, honestly. I'm just talking observationally, about what kind of polities ended up emerging, however they emerged.

We are now living in an era of near absolute nationalism. Polity & nation are nearly synonyms for our generation.

I agree with the criticism that 14th-15th century Spain was not really a national state, but (like you) I think that the distinction is mostly a matter of convention. I'm calling it a proto-nation state.

The emerging Spanish language, culture, and pre-existing religious identity became a core part of what Spain is. Minority languages, customs and religions became a (literal and metaphorical) heresy. They were eventually all given the same ultimatuum as the Jews (again, metaphorically and literally), assimilate into the mainstream religion, language and culture or leave.

Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#65
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about 1492 here, there was already a established Spanish language That same year this was written: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gram%C3%A1tica_de_la_lengua_ca...

The presence of lengua castellana instead of lengua española in the title is exactly GP's point. Remember that Castile and Aragon only just entered personal union at the time! Prior to Spanish unification, Castilian and Aragonese were seen as different from each other as modern people see Spanish and Portuguese (and Aragonese is just as different from Castilian as Portuguese is). In addition to Castilian and Aragones…

The Spanish language is still commonly called "castellano" today.

Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#66
post #28

This is slightly tagential, but bare with me... Nationalism and nation states. We live in a nationalist world. All places and all people are politically divided into nations. Nationalism is so dominant that we barely think of it as a thing. Anyway.. ladino & it's speakers are descendants of refugees from the spanish reconquista and inquisition period. It's generally seen though a christian/muslim lens, but this isn't…

Spain is not a particularly great example; I'd categorize it very much as an evolution of the preceding feudal traditions. The country was born out of a marriage alliance between Castile and Aragon, and familial ties continued to govern a significant chunk of Spain's foreign policy throughout the early modern era, whether that is marriages into Portugal, into the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire, or the French Bourbons, or…

Nor Catalonia, Nor Basque Country were medieval kingdoms and indeed their nationalist resurgence started at the end of XIX century.

Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#67
The diaspora of Sefardic jews went even to Trukey and today you can still trace it. I don't know if you access there website:

http://www.istanbulsephardiccenter.com/

But their TW account tweets a word a day and it's awesome:

https://twitter.com/sefaraditurkey

Mos ambezaremos un biervo en Judeo-Espanyol kada dia / Her gün bir Judeo-Espanyol kelime öğrenelim. Let’s learn a word in Judeo-Espanyol every day /Aprenderemos una palavra cada día

Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#68
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he's onto something. Don't let popular understanding and terminology blind you, what we're looking at here is the shift from war as the primary driver of polity creation to what we now call popular sovereignty. This shift would have taken hundreds of years and Christianity would have been a huge driver. Agrarian empires like the Roman one were absolutely massive, juggernauts that just couldn't be stopped. Yet the…

I'm not sure about a shift from war, (though maybe this happens also). I'm not really sure what drives it, honestly. I'm just talking observationally, about what kind of polities ended up emerging, however they emerged. We are now living in an era of near absolute nationalism. Polity & nation are nearly synonyms for our generation. I agree with the criticism that 14th-15th century Spain was not really a national stat…

That's not true at all. In Spain no language was forbidden as was in France and Jews were expelled because

- The pressure of mendicant orders.

- The pope.

Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#69
post #28

This is slightly tagential, but bare with me... Nationalism and nation states. We live in a nationalist world. All places and all people are politically divided into nations. Nationalism is so dominant that we barely think of it as a thing. Anyway.. ladino & it's speakers are descendants of refugees from the spanish reconquista and inquisition period. It's generally seen though a christian/muslim lens, but this isn't…

I think you view is too simplistic. I've talked with Albanian friends about the persecutions/humiliations endured during the ottoman domination. They mentioned catholic people who had to live in the mountains, far from the rivers and in absolute poverty to keep their religion. Let's also not forget the genocidal behavior of the ottoman empire against the Lebanese Christians, the Serbs and the Greeks (mostly in the 19th century).

Re: Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish

#70
post #8

Somehow this article managed to discuss the status of a post-Holocaust European Jewish community without once mentioning Israel - where the largest community of Ladino speakers live, and where public radio has regular broadcasts in Ladino. If Sephardi Jews who take up the Spanish Law of Return don't seem attached to Ladino, it's because they're a self-selected group who have decided not to take up the more famous Law…

While there is a bit of Ladino media in Israel, overall among the Ladino community immigration to Israel has been seen as the death of the language, because there is pressure there to assimilate to the Hebrew mainstream. (This is analogous to the death of Yiddish in many contexts that it had prewar, because all those Yiddish speakers switched to Hebrew after migrating to Israel, except for the Haredim who do not use…

The Haredim do mainly speak Yiddish. They use Hebrew only in prayer and religious study.
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