The Valladolid Taqqanot of 1432: a linguistic study

THE VALLADOLID TAQQANOT OF 1432: A LINGUISTIC STUDY GEORGE K. ZUCKER University of Northern Iowa Was there a Jewish dialect of Castilian before the expulsian of 1492 which might have served as the basis for the extant dialects of Judeo-Spanish, rather than their stemming from "standard" Castilian common to the non Jewish Spaniards of the fifteenth century? Similarities in various contemporary dialects suggest the possible validity of such a conclusion. Across dialects, sorne of those differences from "standard" Castilian are the following: Dios is regularly el Dio; negro means 'evil' and prieto is used for 'black'; the imperfect subjunctive is often notable by its absence. The secondperson singular preterite forms are made to conform to the model of all other second-person singular forms not by adding an -s at the end, but rather by metathesizing the existing -s-, so that amaste becomes amates. Since such morphological, lexical and syntactic variations from non Jewish Castilian are common to Judeo-Spanish dialects scattered throughout the Middle East, Eastem Europe and North Africa, we are left with three possible explanations for their origin. These changes may have developed independently and spontaneously in each of the areas of Sephardic settlement, however much that may strain credulity; similar variants in different areas may be due to the influence of travelers, such as businessmen; or they may reflect the language which was the common base for all of the existing dialects. The first of these possibilities, because of its improbability, may well be discarded, at least until such time as neither of the other explanations proves out. The second altemative, that of the influence of travelers in the various communities of the Sephardic diaspora, seems on the surface to be quite persuasive. However, there is one factor which weakens it considerably, and that is the pronunciation in the Salonica dialect. In 1492, at the time of the Jews' expulsion from Spain, what had been initialfLatín (and, originally, in Spanish) was in the process of changing to h-, first aspirated and then unas- 384 GEORGE K. ZUCKER pirated. According to Menéndez Pidal, fwas conserved in the written language until the end of the fifteenth century.1 Antonio de Nebrija's Gramática castellana, published in the very year in which the expulsion took place, describes the initial sound of hago and hecho as a distinctly aspirated h-,2 so that, regardless of the exact time of the change., we know that it was going on when the Catholic Monarchs enacted their decree of expulsion fot those Jews who wou~d not convert to Catholicism. While most dialects of Judeo-Spanish, including those of Istanbul (Constantinople) and Rhodes, say ijo and azer (modern Spanish hijo and hacer), in Salonica those words are fijo and fazer. lt, frankly, does not seem logical that the influence of travelers would operate on the relatively subtle matters of morphology (second-person singular preterite forms), semantics (negro) and syntax (imperfect subjunctive), while it had no corresponding leveling influence on matters as immediately obvious as the sounds with which sorne words began. For that reason, let us -tentatively, at leastreject this attempted explanation of the variants in Judeo-Spanish from non-Jewish Spanish while, at the same time, admitting that it is certainly much more plausible than the idea of spontaneous and independent coincidence. Fortunately, a third explanation is possible -that of a base language which already contained the changes noted. That would certainly explain the coincidence of difference between Judeo-Spanish and non-Jewish Spanish. Evidence for or against this hypothesis can come only from documents written in JudeoSpanish before 1492, documents written by Jews stillliving in Spain. It is with this idea in mind that we may find useful a linguistic study of the Valladolid Taqqanot. In 1432 the Chief Rabbi of Castile, Abraham Benveniste, called together representatives of Castilian Jewry in Valladolid for the purpose of composing ordinances to regula te the lives of Castile' s J ews who, as a result of the attacks against them in 1391, had gone through a great deal of suffering as well as relocation. These laws, or taqqanot, are divided into five parts, dealing with schools and synagogues, courts, denunciations, taxes, festivities and clothing. Written in Judeo-Spanish, in the Hebrew alphabet, this document exists in a single fifteenth-century manuscript of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. Fritz Baer's Die luden im christlichen Spanien3 contains his transcription of l. Manual de gramática histórica española, lla ed. (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1962), §38 121. 2. Ed. crítica de Pascual Galindo Romeo y Luis Ortiz (Madrid: Edición de la Junta del Centenario, 1946) I, 22-23: "La h no sirve por si en nuestra lengua, mas usamos de !la para tal sonido cual pronuciamos en las primeras letras destas diciones hago hecho ; la cual letra, aunque enellatin no tenga fuer<;a de letra, es cierto que, como nos otros la pronunciamos hiriendo enla gargauta ... " 3. 2 vols. (Berlin, 1936, reprinted by Gregg Intemational Publishers Limited, [England], 1970). The document in question is found in II, 280-297. THE VALLADOLID T AQQANOT OF 1432: A LINGUISTIC STUDY 385 the Paris manuscript, and it is on Baer's edition -still in Hebrew lettersthat this study is based. Aside ~rom the obvious historical and sociological value of such a document, it is a linguistic treasure. Written in the Hebrew alphabet, it did not observe spelling conventions inherited from Latin for representing the sounds of Castilian and, because it is a document written by Jews and for Jews, we may assume that, except for set legal formulae, it represents the Castilian spoken by those Jews living in the early fifteenth century. The Hebrew alphabet was adapted for writing Spanish, so that various sounds which did not exist in Hebrew could be represented. Since the Hebrew alphabet is made up only of consonants, sorne of them were used for vowels: alefwas used for /a/ in most cases, although word-final /a/ was represented by the Hebrew hay. (Hay is a feminine ending in Hebrew, as is -a often in Spanish). Hebrew yod was used to represent the sounds written in the Roman alphabet with e and i, as well as for the palatal elements in the Spanish ll and ñ. Hebrew vav, which could represent labiodental /v/ (alternating with bet), was also used for o and u. 4 Phonologically, we can make reliable statements for only one vowel, /a/. Because yod stands for both open and close e as well as for i, we cannot tell from the Taqqanot if the word for 'and' was still /e/ or if it already had the pronunciation of /i/. We are likewise unable to state whether the preterite of aver (MS haber) was ovo or uvo, since Hebrew vav represented both of those initial vowels. We can, however, make sorne statements about the pronunciation of consonants among the Castilian Jews of the early fifteenth century. The Taqqanot show a clear distinction between voiced and unvoiced s, the former being represented by a zayin: razon, fazer, quinze, juezes. Unfortunately, we cannot be as inequivocal about voiceless s, since it is represented by both samekh and sin. The latter appears regularly in word-final position and before a consonant. If there was any difference in the pronunciation of the two, it would seem to have been minimal, given cases such as lisensya and lisensya, both of which are to be found here.5 Further strengthening the idea that there was virtually no difference in the pronunciation of these two letters are one occurrence of the word ordenansas with the final consonant samekh rather than sin and, on the same page, criStianos, where sin is used for the first s and samekh for the final one. 6 4. For a good explanation of how Judeo-Spanish is written in the Hebrew alphabet, see FoulchéDelbosc, "La Transcription hispano-hébraYque", Revue Hispanique, I ( 1894 ), 22-23; or David M. Bunis, A Guide to Reading and Writing Judezmo (Brooklyn, NY: Adelantre!, 1975). 5. I uses for the sin, and s to represent samekh. 6. Baer II, 287, lines 30 and 12 respective! y. Further citations of the text of the Taqqanot will appear in the text parenthetically. 386 GEORGE K. ZUCKER Aside from this occasional confusion of sin and samekh, a further complication arises when we note that samekh also altemates with tzade, pronounced /ts/. Again, the word lisensya provides us with an example, with the second sibilant appearing four times as samekh and twice as tzade. Othei: occurrences of tzade .are in the words JuSti{ts}ya (twice), pertene{ts}en (once), gra{ts}ya (once) and tre{ts}ya (once). It may because of such cases that a recent transcription of the Valladolid Taqqanot regularly renders the samekh as r:;. 7 Tlie rajé, a mark above a consonant, serves the purpose of changing that letter's phonetic value. Sin with a rajé has the value of shin, a palatal s, equivalent to Old Spanish ,x. There are three occurrences of this consonant, once each in traxio, dixiere, dexe. Gime! plus rajé represents both the voiced affricate 1]1 and its unvoiced counterpart 1 t1. However, the fact that a single symbol is used does not permit us to suppose that fifteenth-century Jewish Castilian did not distinguish between the initial sounds of gente and chico. Although we cannot positively identify all of the sibilants used in Jewish Castilian in 1432, we can see a richer sibilant system than exists in modem Spanish; one in which the voiced equivalen! of f: -i.e., /dz/- had simplified to /z/, and where /ts/ was in the process of simplifying in the same manner. If, in fact, number of occurrences is any indication, we may say that /ts/ is fast approaching obsolescence because the samekh is much more common than tzade in the text. Unlike modem Spanish pronunciation, where both b and v represen! a bilabial sound, Nebrija's grammar of 1492, sixty years after the composition of these taqqanot, testifies to a bilabial b, but a labiodental v, the voiced equivalen! of f8 Hebrew bet in this document represents labiodental v, the voiced equivalent of f8 Hebrew bet in this document represents labiodental v, but a rajé above the letter tums it into the bilabial. This is contrary to Nebrija's remark in Reglas de orthographia, to the effect that the bet is normally /b/, but "pronuncian su 'beth' con 'raphe', como 'u' consonante".9 Nevertheless, intemal evidence in the Valladolid Taqqanot supports the use of simple betas /v/. The unadomed bet altemates on occasion with vav in various forms of the verb venir, the noun vino and the preposition salvo. We can consequently deduce with confidence that the preposition which is modem sobre 7. Yolanda Moreno Koch, "The Taqqanot of Valladolid of 1432," The American Sephardi, IX (1978), 58-145. This is approximately half ofthe document; the remainder was scheduled to appear in volumeX. 8. Antonio de Nebrija, Gramática castellana I, 20: "La p ph b suenan espediendo la boz, despues del os be~os apretados mas o menos ... Laf con la v consonante, puestos los dientes de arriba sobre el be~o de baxo, i soplando por las helgaduras dellos ... ". , 9. Antonio de Nebrija, Reglas de orthographía en la lengua castellana, ed. Antonio Quilis (Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo, 1977), 138. THE VALLADOLID TAQQANOT OF 1432: A LINGUISTIC STUDY 387 was pronounced /sovre/ and that the auxiliary verb for the compound tenses was /aver/. Interestingly enough, the city names Balderas and Badajoz appear only with the initial vav never with bet. Castilian written in the Hebrew alphabet, at least in this document, makes no distinction between single and double r. As can be expected in the early part of the fifteenth century, initial fis still common: fasta, fazer, fijos, ferir, fallar. We see the unvoicing of final -d in. words with the -dad or -tad suffix: voluntat, diversidat, verdat. The nasal used before p , contrary to what might be expected, is inequivocally n : tienpo, cunplir, but the final sound of según is regularly m. The metathesized form presona, used to mark Sancho Panza's substandard speech in Don Quixote , is the only form which appears in this document and, like segum, it appears repeatedly, in variety of contexts. Equally, we see the methathesized form for the conditional of venir: vernia. The preposition para does not exist in the language of the Taqqanot: pora is used regularly. The participle of tener is tenudo, with at least five occurrences, but none of modern tenido. Negative words are still clearly nin and non, both ending in fÍnal nun every time they appear, and alguno is clearly preferred to ninguno in negative contexts. : " ... e ·non salgan dende elyos nin alguno delyosA ... " (p. 258, l. 14). Contractions such as sovrel and delyo are the rule, as is the old present subjunctive of valer: vala. Seer is still the regularly-used form of the copulative verb, although there is one occurrence of modern ser. The past participle of escrivir shows up three times; always as escrivto, following the same pattern as sujevto, sivdat, adevdar, each of which apperars once . While we see the adjective privilejados once, the noun, which appears several times, is always provelejo. Cualquiera appears here as cualquier or cual quiere, but never with final -a. Grande is given a feminine singular form, with the final vowel changed to /a/ (Hebrew hay) : ". . . Su pena deve seer muy granda ... " (p. 289, 11. 6-7). Epenthetic b in the -mbre suffix is completely absent in this document: omre, nomre, azumres. Syntactically, we notice the common use of future subjunctive. Although no imperfect subjunctive forms are found, the contents do not call for that form. Law codes tend to deal with what one should do in the future rather than with what might have been done in the past. The Hebrew pattern of cada kahal en kahal is a normal structure in fifteenth-century Judeo-Spanish, and agreement of a singular collective subject with plural verb is also the rule: " ... porende ordenamos que cada kahal en kahal fagan ordenansa entre si sovrela dicha razon ... " (p. 297, 11. 1516). The clearest influence of Hebrew is lexical. Not only do sentences switch languages entirely, but there are cases in which a single Hebrew word is used in an otherwise Spanish sentence. La mayoría is commonly replaced by el 388 GEORGE K. ZUCKER rov, the radical-changing meldar replaces aprender and, while cristiano and cristiana are used, so ares the words goy and goya. If a s-tudy of the Taqqanot of Valladolid of 1432 cannot, by itself, yield any definitive conclusion about the existence of a Jewish dialect of Spanish in Castile during the fifteenth century, it does. point toward that possibility. In addition to the Jews' tendency to reject Latin and its influence, as being representative of the church which was their oppressor in medieval Spain, 10 use of the Hebrew alphabet to transcribe Spanish would break the hold of any existing spelling conventions, so that we could reasonably expect as phonetic as possible a rendering of the Spanish in the document. The transcription system used for the Spanish vowels leaves us unable to tell if the old strong preterite stems in -o-- had become -uin Jewish Spanish by the early fifteenth century, or if the conjunction for 'and' was pronunced /e/ or /i/, bl}.t, on the other hand, we can gather sorne specific information on the pronunciation of consonants among !his component of the Castilian population. The voiced affricate /dz/ had been simplified to /z/ and its unvoiced counterpart was quickly heading for the same fate; labiodental 1 v/ was not only used, but in sorne cases had replaced the etymological bilabial, as in escrivto, from scriptum. Presona, considered substandard in the early seventeenth century, was the regular form here, with no occurrence of persona. Ser is beginning to appear, but is still highly outnumbered by the older seer, grande becomes granda in the feminine singular and the -mre suffix has not yet developed the epenthetic b distinctive of modem Castilian. A comparative study of this text ped and contemporary documents by a nonJewish Spaniard would give us information on whether these archaic forms were still current outside the Jewish communities in the first third of the fifteenth century. As expected, Hebrew influence was the greatest differentiating element in Jewish Castilian and, while we see its syntactic influence in constructions such as de cada anyo en anyo, Hebrew is more often apparent lexically. In sorne cases, a single word will appear, and not necessarily because there is not an equivalent word in Spanish. Compare, for example, " Pero del vino que se vendiere a cristianos . .. " (p. 287, 11. 11-12; boldface mine) with " Otro si ordenamo~ que algun judio nin judia no sea osado de traer goy o gaya para rogador ... " (p. 290, 11. 4-5; boldface mine). But even more marked is the amount of lexical borrewing from Hebrew to replace existing Castilian words completely: meldar 'aprender', rov'- 1 O. América Castro, The Structure of Spanish History, tr. Edmund. L. King (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1954), 481. THE VALLADOLID TAQQANOT OF 1432: A LINGUISTIC STUDY 389 mayoría, kahal 'comunidad'. Does the presence of such words suffice to call this language a dialect? Perhaps, even with the inclusion of syntactic and morphological variance from non-Jewish Spanish, it amounts to no more than Castilian spoken with an ethnically-identified accent. However, the study of additional fifteenth-century documents should provide the basis for a definitive conclusion about the existnece of a pre-expulsion Jewish dialect of Castilian.