La singularisation linguistique des Juifs en Provence et en Gascogne : deux cas parallèles ou opposés ?

Abstract

This article deals with the varieties of French spoken down to our own day by the descendants of the two historic Jewish populations established in Southern France. The first of these two populations was located in Southeastern France and comprised Jews of the former Papal State of Avignon and the adjacent territories formerly known as Comtat Venaissin. The second, located in Southwestern France is of more recent vintage, having been founded in the sixteenth century by descendants of fugitives from the Iberian Inquisitions. Today neither of these two groups numbers more than a few dozen individuals. The unique varieties of French, which they use and which have replaced former varieties of Provençal and Gascon, are teetering on the verge of extinction. Hitherto there has been little systematic study of these dialects. But today, realizing their status as endangered languages, we claim that it is urgent to record and chronicle as much of them as possible. Here we provide a description based upon extant written documents and the results of an ongoing in loco investigation. This is followed by a linguistic analysis of the material, taking into account inter alia the phonetics, the phonology and the constructional morphology of the specific vocabulary. This study is then complemented by a sociolinguistic outline of the situations of use of this heretofore almost neglected linguistic material. The conclusions of our study are that, despite the apparent relationship between these two varieties, their patterns of linguistic divergence are deeply differentiated, hence our doubts about the legitimacy of a single and common denomination, i. e. of “Jewish varieties” or “Jewish languages”, for such unrelated linguistic mechanisms.