Re: uskudara, arabic/judeo-arabic

[Judith Cohen <judithrc...>]

Re Daniel's sensible question/comment: I think the answer is "both".But 
first, this is not a case of scholars interpreting anything, it's just 
what happens. And there's certainly no mixture with yiddish in Morocco! 
(also, their Judeo-Spanish is haketia, not djudezmo,a term they don't 
use; they use "Ladino" in the classical sense of the word-for-word 
religious texts translation from Hebrew, not as the spoken vernacular). 
In any case, it's usually much-maligned scholars who can actually 
identify borrowed words, syntax etc as just that, and not as "mistakes"; 
most scholars I've worked with have in fact been very enlightening in 
this regard. In the Moroccan case, one has to distinguish between Jews 
who live/d in former French and Spanish Morocco. The former spoke Arabic 
(yes, Moroccan Arabic) all the time, the women too, as their main daily 
language. The latter used Spanish (under the Spanish Protectorate both 
haketia - Moroccan Judeo-Spanish - and, increasingly, mainland standard 
Spanish - Castlian) and often only knew a little Arabic, the men often 
more than the women. The women, as I understand it from interviewing 
them over the years (re collecting songs) often knew what Arabic they 
did know  mostly from the women who worked for them in their homes. So 
yes, there is certainly a difference between standard and Moroccan 
Arabic but I don't think this is the situation here; and it also 
wouldn't explain their mis-pronunciation of Hebrew. Cheers, Judith 


>From: "daniel lang" <d6l (at) hotmail(dot)com>
>Reply-To: jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
>To: World music from a Jewish slant. <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
>Subject: uskudara, arabic/judeo-arabic
>Date: Mon, 05 Apr 1999 14:59:08 PDT
>
>as i read Judith's post, i found myself wondering whether this was in 
>fact a matter of moroccan jews not understanding the arabic of the 
song, 
>or of a difference between the _arabic_ and the _judeo-arabic_ spoken 
in 
>morocco.  what some scholars interpret as 'clear errors' can turn out 
to 
>simply be a different language or dialect, especially in cases of mixed 
>and hybrid languages like judezmo, judeo-arabic and yiddish.  does 
>anyone on the list have enough knowledge of judeo-arabic (and its 
>similarities and differences from "regular" vernacular arabic) to help 
>out?
>
>daniel lang
>a lurker till now....
>
>>  Arabist go over the words, with some corrections further on in the > 
>text 
>> - the interesting thing here is that, to return to the original 
>> North 
>African thread of these messages, Moroccan Hispano-Sephardi women often 
>didn't understand much local Arabic and when they sing phrases in songs 
>learned by ear often mis-pronounce it (Hebrew too, as in Rossana for 
>Rosh Hashana).The Arabic words in Uskudara may reflect something of the 
>same process. (Not that I think one need be such a purist as to avoid 
>correcting clear errors, which in fact a couple of scholars have 
>advocated in the past)- cheers, Judith
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>

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