Language
Characteristic language traits of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews are the use of both Spanish and Portuguese languages—and often a mixture of the two—in parts of the synagogue service. Otherwise, the use of Spanish and Portuguese quickly diminished amongst the Spanish and Portuguese Jews after the 17th century, and from the mid-19th century on, Spanish and Portuguese were in practice replaced with local languages in everyday use. Local languages used by Spanish and Portuguese Jews include Dutch (in the Netherlands and Belgium); Low German in the Hamburg/Altona area; and English in Great Britain, Ireland, USA and Jamaica.
Read more about this topic: Spanish And Portuguese Jews
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“In a language known to us, we have substituted the opacity of the sounds with the transparence of the ideas. But a language we do not know is a closed place in which the one we love can deceive us, making us, locked outside and convulsed in our impotence, incapable of seeing or preventing anything.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The problems of society will also be the problems of the predominant language of that society. It is the carrier of its perceptions, its attitudes, and its goals, for through it, the speakers absorb entrenched attitudes. The guilt of English then must be recognized and appreciated before its continued use can be advocated.”
—Njabulo Ndebele (b. 1948)
“There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)