Editing Yevanic language (section)

==Historical background==
Greece, Constantinople, Asia Minor, Southern Italy, the Balkans and Eastern Europe had originally a Greek-speaking Jewish community. After the arrival of Jewish refugees into these areas from the Iberian Peninsula, Northern Italy, and Western Europe, the Greek-speaking Jewish communities began to almost disappear while integrating into the group of the newcomers, which did not constitute in every area of their new homeland the majority.<ref>Bowman, Steven (1985). "Language and Literature". The Jews of Byzantium 1204-1453. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press. p. 758.</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.jta.org/2014/04/01/news-opinion/world/greeces-romaniote-jews-remember-a-catastrophe-and-grapple-with-disappearing|title=Greece's Romaniote Jews remember a catastrophe and grapple with disappearing - Jewish Telegraphic Agency|date=April 2014|website=www.jta.org|access-date=3 April 2018}}</ref><ref>Avigdor Levy; The Jews of the Ottoman Empire, New Jersey, (1994)</ref>

The immigration of Italian and Spanish-speaking people into Greece in the late 15th century altered the culture and vernacular of the Greek Jews. A lot of locales picked up on Judeo-Spanish language and customs, however some communities in Epirus, Thessaly, the Ionian Islands, Crete, Constantinople and Asia Minor kept the old, so-called "Romaniote minhag" and the Judaeo-Greek language.<ref name=":1" /> During the 19th century Yevanic switched from Hebrew to letters to Greek letters.<ref name=":0" /> By the early 20th century, the Jews living in places such as [[Ioannina]], [[Arta (regional unit)|Arta]], [[Preveza]], and [[Chalkida]] still spoke a form of Greek that slightly differentiated the Greek of their Christian neighbors. These differences, semantically, do not go beyond phonetic, intonational, and lexical phenomena. It is different from other Jewish languages, in that there is no knowledge of any language fragmentation ever taking place.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web | url=http://www.jewish-languages.org/judeo-greek.html | title=Jewish Languages | access-date=2004-09-22 | archive-date=2005-10-23 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051023230839/http://www.jewish-languages.org/judeo-greek.html | url-status=dead }}</ref>

At the start of [[World War II]] [[Northern Greece]] alone had ten thousand speakers, but the language was almost totally annihilated during the [[Holocaust]] with only 149 speakers surviving.<ref name=":0" />