Abstract:

The Sephardic communities of Monastir (North Macedonia) and Pristina (Kosovo), which rapidly disappeared in 1943 and 1999 respectively, were easily identifiable by their peculiar Judeo-Spanish variety, whose most outstanding feature was the word termination in -e(s), including grammatical endings, that in other Sephardic varieties as well as Spanish end in -a(s). This variety emerged when Sephardic speakers, descendants of Jews of Aragon and Portugal, came into contact with Castilian and other non-Hispanic languages. It was used exclusively in the oral medium. Researchers such as Luria (1930), Crews (1935), or Kolonomos (1968) described the variety, but we are lacking testimonies of it in written literature. The cuadro costumbrista (a literary work encompassing local customs and habits), Monastir es sjempri Monastir (1932), edited and commented here, in which its author Avraham ben Moise Romano «Buki» portrays the dialect of women of Monastir, constitutes the only known literary evidence of his Judeo-Spanish variety.
Keywords: Judeo-Spanish (Ladino), Sephardic dialectology, Sephardic literature, Monastir (Bitola), Pristina.