User:Universal Life/Dialects of Judaeo-Spanish

There are 18 living dialects of Judaeo-Spanish, though many of them are under severe threat of extinction. Below is a list of all these dialects in alphabetical order, their original geographical region and the present location of the speakers. It also examines some phonological and morphological features of these dialects.

Albanian Dialect
Albanian dialect is one of the six dialects of the Occidental Branch. Occidental Branch is one of two main brances of the main variant of Judaeo-Spanish (JS), called the Levantine Variant, the other one being the Oriental Branch.

This dialect belongs to the communities that originally lived in the cities of Avlona, Bérat, Durazzo and Elbassán of Albania. Today, it is mainly spoken in two countries; Albania and Israel. Majority of the speakers are located in the capital Tirana and in Tel Aviv, with very few or no remaining speakers in the original cities.

Features of this dialect have not been thoroughly examined. Aldina Quintana gives the reason of not being able to research this dialect as the absence of speakers from Avlona and Durazzo. However we can estimate a strong influence of Portuguese as many anusim from Portugal lived in this region. For example, the word almexa from Avlona means "plum", in Spanish the word is "ciruela" (which is cognate with zirguela, the word for plum in many other dialects), however "almeja" in Spanish means "clam". Quintana estimates that the presence of Portuguese speakers reinforced the Portuguese meaning of the word "ameixa" (which means plum). Almexa for plum, is not unique to the Albanian dialect, it is also used in other dialects where Portuguese had some important influence.

Other known features, also common in other Occidental dialects is the reduction of [e] and [o] in non-stressed position to [i] and [u] respectively. Words that have lost the inicial or post-prefixal "f" in Oriental dialects is also retained. Thus words such as hazer, hijo, hormiga and hogar are pronounced as [fazer], [fiʒu] , [furmiga] and [fugar]. Intervocalic "d" and "g"s are not softened.

Quintana classifies this dialect with others under the group she calls noroccidental in that, it has completely the contrast between /r/ and /ɾ/ and that the metathesis in the consonant group "rd" never happens. So the "r" or "rr" in the words rosa, perra, pera and horno are pronounced the same.

The seven words in JS that have maintained the historical variation of the letter "z", have their historical pronounciation in the Albanian dialect. These words are onze, doze, treze, quatorze, quinze, pozo and entezar. They are respectively pronounced as [ondzi], [dodzi] , [tredzi] , [katordzi] , [kindzi] , [podzu] and [intidzar].

The Hebrew letter צ (ś = tsadik) is pronounced like in the modern day Hebrew. So maśa and miśvá are pronounced as [matsa] and [mitsva].