Haketia ( Ḥakkītīyā; al-Ḥakītiya; ) (also written as Hakitia or Haquitía) is an endangered Jewish Romance language also known as Djudeo Spañol, Ladino Occidental, or Western Judaeo-Spanish. It was historically spoken by the North African Sephardim in the Moroccan cities of Tétouan, Tangier, Asilah, Larache, Chefchaouen, Ksar el-Kebir, and the Spanish towns of Ceuta and Melilla. Tetuani Ladino was also spoken in Oran, Algeria. One of the distinctions between Ladino and Haketia (Haquetia) is that the latter incorporates Moroccan Arabic.

Etymology

The name "Haketia" derived from the Arabic حَكَى ḥakā, "tell", and is therefore pronounced with [], reflecting the Arabic ح ḥāʾ. In some places it is written "Jaquetía" with the same pronunciation.

Description

The well-known form of Judaeo-Spanish spoken by Jews living in the Balkans, Greece, Turkey and Jerusalem is Ladino Oriental (eastern Ladino). Haketia may be described by contrast as Ladino Occidental. The language is a variety of Spanish that borrows heavily from Judeo-Moroccan Arabic. It evidently also contains a number of words of Hebrew origin and was originally written using Hebrew letters. There is some cultural resemblance between the two Judaeo-Spanish dialect communities, including a rich shared stock of romanzas (ballads) from medieval Spain, though both words and music often differ in detail (as indeed they do between one Oriental-Sephardic community and another). The Haketia lexicon is made up mostly of Spanish words but 34.5% of words are from Arabic and 18.5% are from Hebrew. It contains many calques of Hebrew phrases, such as hiĵas de Israel, a literal translation of the Hebrew phrase בנות ישראל, meaning "daughters of Israel". Other words have shifted in meaning. For example, שכן, "neighbor", became sajén, which has taken on the meaning "Christian/Spanish". Spanish prefixes and suffixes are combined with Hebrew base words.

Phonology

Characteristics of Haketia's phonology include:

Consonant Phonemes

Vowel Phonemes

Morphology

Verb Conjugation

Regular conjugations:

Modern use

Haketia, unlike other varieties of Judaeo-Spanish, did not develop a literary tradition, so the language remained as a colloquial form of communication and was not used as a vehicle for formal education since in Spanish Morocco, Spanish was used, along with French, at the Alliance Israélite Universelle schools. Due to the influence of the Spanish and French conquests and the large number of Jews from northern Morocco who emigrated to Venezuela, Spain and later Argentina, the language was levelled with modern Spanish, which has contributed greatly to its diminution. Nevertheless, there has been a slow renaissance of the language, helped by musicians such as Vanessa Paloma with a variety of performances and the recordings of her sound archive KHOYA as well as others such as, Mor Karbasi and , among others. José Benoliel and Alegría Bendayán de Bendelac have both compiled Spanish-Haketía dictionaries, published in 1977 and 1995, respectively. The regularly publishes articles in Haketia in its magazine Maguen-Escudo. The language is also spoken in some communities in the Amazon areas of Brazil.

Scholarship

Joseph Benoliel collected oral tradition, grammar, and a lexicon. Alegria Bendelac conducted fieldwork. Nina Pinto-Abecasis collected folklore. Vanessa Paloma Elbaz collected many songs from the oral tradition and published extensively on the community and its music in the early twenty first century.

Status

Decline began as early as 1860 during the Spanish occupation of Tetuan and accelerated as a increasing share of Haketia speakers adopted Modern Spanish. Today Haketia is a declining language with only 1000 speakers remaining, down from 30,000 in 1900.