Everything about Zarphatic totally explained
Zarphatic or
Judæo-French (Zarphatic:
Tsarfatit) is an
extinct Jewish language, formerly spoken among the
Jewish communities of northern
France and in parts of what is now west-central
Germany, in such cities as
Mainz,
Frankfurt am Main, and
Aachen.
Etymology
The word
Zarphatic comes from the
Hebrew name for France,
Tzarfat (צרפת), the
Biblical name for the
Phoenician city of
Sarepta. Some have conjectured that Zarphatic was the original language of the Jews who eventually adopted
Old High German, which led to the development of
Yiddish.
Zarphatic was written using a variant of the
Hebrew alphabet, and first appeared in the
11th century, in
glosses to texts of the
Hebrew Bible and
Talmud written by the great
rabbis
Rashi and
Rabbi Moshe HaDarshan. Constant expulsions and persecutions, resulting in great waves of Jewish migration, brought about the extinction of this short-lived, but important, language by the end of the
14th century.
Distinct features
One feature of Zarphatic spelling, that sets it apart from most other
Indo-European Jewish languages, is that to represent
vowel sounds, rather than using
Hebrew letters with no matching
phonemes in the language, it instead made extensive use of the
Tiberian system of
niqqudot to indicate the full range of
Old French vowels.
Another interesting feature of Zarphatic is that it displays relatively few Hebrew
loanwords. This sets it apart from the vast majority of other
Jewish languages, and may indicate that it isn't actually a distinct
language, rather a
dialect of Old French, or simply Old French, written using a different
orthography. (Old French didn't have a written
standard.)
Further Information
Get more info on 'Zarphatic'.
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