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:
“It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to.... The feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.”
—Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890)
“There’s a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“Syntax and vocabulary are overwhelming constraints—the rules that run us. Language is using us to talk—we think we’re using the language, but language is doing the thinking, we’re its slavish agents.”
—Harry Mathews (b. 1930)