Palatal East Meets Velar West: Dialect Contact and Phonological Accommodation in Judeo-Spanish

Abstract

Abstract A key phonological divergence between the varieties of Spanish in Latin America and Spain (labeled here as Western Spanish) and the Judeo-Spanish varieties spoken in the Ottoman Empire and Eastern Mediterranean is the preservation in the latter dialects of the Old Spanish palatals [ʃ], [ʒ], and [dʒ]. In Western Spanish, these palatals evolved into the velar [x]. Increased dialectal contact between these two communities, globalization, immigration, and socioeconomic incentives have resulted in the replacement of [ʃ], [ʒ], and [dʒ] with [x] among the Judeo-Spanish community in Istanbul. I demonstrate that accommodation to [x] can be best described as lexical borrowing, as it only occurs in those palatals that have a [x] equivalent in Western Spanish and in some lexical items more than others. I also analyze the language attitudes and modern sources of dialectal contact that motivate the accommodation to Western Spanish forms in the Judeo-Spanish community in Istanbul.