Judæo-Piedmontese was the vernacular language of the Jews living in Piedmont

Piedmont

Piedmont is one of the 20 regions of Italy. It has an area of 25,402 square kilometres and a population of about 4.4 million. The capital of Piedmont is Turin. The main local language is Piedmontese. Occitan is also spoken by a minority in the Occitan Valleys situated in the Provinces of...

, in North Western Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, from about the 15th Century until the Second World War.
It was based on the Piedmontese dialect, with many loanwords from ancient Hebrew, and also languages like Provençal

Franco-Provençal language

Franco-Provençal , Arpitan, or Romand is a Romance language with several distinct dialects that form a linguistic sub-group separate from Langue d'Oïl and Langue d'Oc. The name Franco-Provençal was given to the language by G.I...

 and Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, since many Piedmontese Jews originally came from Southern France and the Iberian Peninsula

Iberian Peninsula

The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...

.

Judæo-Piedmontese was never a language as rich as Yiddish or Ladino

Judaeo-Spanish

Judaeo-Spanish , in Israel commonly referred to as Ladino, and known locally as Judezmo, Djudeo-Espanyol, Djudezmo, Djudeo-Kasteyano, Spaniolit and other names, is a Romance language derived from Old Spanish...

, the two Jewish languages

Jewish languages

Jewish languages are the various languages and dialects that developed in Jewish communities around the world.Although Hebrew was the daily speech of the Jewish people for centuries, by the fifth century BCE, the closely related Aramaic joined Hebrew as the spoken language in Judea and by the third...

 primarily spoken by Western Jews besides Hebrew. It was in fact rather narrow, developed out of secrecy and segregation within the Ghettos throughout Piedmont, thus simply meant not be understood by the Gentiles.
Today there are virtually no more speakers of Judæo-Piedmontese.

Small vocabulary

The dialect never had written phonetical rules, the words in this list are written according to the book La gran battaglia degli ebrei di Moncalvo and Primo Levi

Primo Levi

Primo Michele Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist and writer. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems, but is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland...

's book The Periodic Table

The Periodic Table (book)

The Periodic Table is a collection of short stories by Primo Levi, published in 1975, named after the periodic table in chemistry. In 2006, the Royal Institution of Great Britain named it the best science book ever ....

.

Pronunciation:

(kh) like in German "Nacht".

(ñ) nasal, like in English "Sing", not to be confused with the Spanish ñ.

(ô) like in English "Loom".

(u) like the French u or the German ü.

(sc) like the English sh.

(j) like in German "Jung" or in English "Young".

• (a)brakhà - blessing
• Adonai Eloénô - God, Lord
• bahalòm - in a dream (used for jokes)
• barakhùt - blessed
• barôcabà - welcome!, blessed He who comes!
• batacaìn - cemetery
• beemà - beast
• berìt - pact, penis (vulgar)
• Cadòss Barôkhù - God
• cassèr - community, ghetto
• ganàv - thief
• ganavé - to steal
• ghescér - bridge
• gôì - non-Jewish man
• gôià - non-Jewish woman
• gojìm - non-Jewish people
• hafassìm - jewels (lit. "stuff")
• hamòr - donkey
• hamortà - stupid woman (lit. female of donkey)
• hasìr - pig
• hasirùd - rubbish
• havertà - rough and dissolute woman
• khakhàm - rabbi (lit. "learned one")
• khalaviòd - breasts (from Hebrew "halav", milk)
• khaltrùm - Catholic bigotry
• khamisà - five
• khamissidò - slap
• khanéc - neck (pregnant with meaning, used to swear)
• khaniké - to hang (kill)
• khèder - room
• kinìm - lice
• lakhtì - (exclamation) go away!
• Lassòn Acòdesh - Sacred Language
• macòd - blows
• maftèkh - key
• mahané - neck (generic and neutral)
• mamsér - bastard
• mañòd - money
• medà meshônà - accident (lit. "strange death")
• menaghèm / meraghèl - spy
• Milca - Queen
• morénô - rabbi (lit. "our master")
• nainé - to look at
• ñarél - non-circumcised
• nero - evil, bad
• pakhàt - fear
• pegartà - dead woman
• pôñaltà - dirty, shabbily-clothed woman
• pôñèl - dirty, shabbily-clothed man
• rabbenù - rabbi
• rashàn - non-pious
• rôkhòd - winds
• ruàkh - wind
• samdé - to baptize (lit. "destroy")
• sarfatìm - guards
• saròd - disgraced
• scòla - synagogue, temple
• sefòkh - toddler vomit
• sôrada - appearance, look
• sôtià - crazy woman
• tafùs - prison, jail (it is a Hebrew loanword in Piedmontese jargon. Ca tafus meaning "jail", from ca house, although the piedmontese word is përzon)
• takhôrìm - haemorroids
• tanhanè - to argue