Aljamiado
Aljamiado (Spanish: [alxaˈmjaðo]; Portuguese: [alʒɐmiˈaðu]; Arabic: عَجَمِيَة trans.
According to Anwar G. Chejne, Aljamiado or Aljamía is "a corruption of the Arabic word ʿajamiyah (in this case it means foreign language) and, generally, the Arabic expression ʿajam and its derivative ʿajamiyah are applicable to peoples whose ancestry is not of Arabian origin".
[4] The systematic writing of Romance-language texts in Arabic scripts appears to have begun in the fifteenth century, and the overwhelming majority of such texts that can be dated belong to the sixteenth century.
[6] In later times, Moriscos were banned from using Arabic as a religious language, and wrote in Spanish on Islamic subjects.
[8] Aljamiado played a very important role [9] in preserving Islam and the Arabic language in the life of the Moriscos of Castile and Aragon; Valencian and Granadan Moriscos spoke and wrote in Andalusi Arabic.
They were forced to adopt Christian customs and traditions and to attend church services on Sundays.
Nevertheless, some of the Moriscos kept their Islamic belief and traditions secretly, and this included the usage of Aljamiado.
They were given three years to learn the language of the Christian Spanish, after which they would have to get rid of all Arabic written material.
Moriscos of Castile and Aragon translated all prayers and the Hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) into Aljamiado transcriptions of the Spanish language, while keeping all Qur'anic verses in the original Arabic.
In Arabic, these 3 vowels have both a short form, which is represented by diacritics fatʾha, kasra, and ḍamma, and long forms, which are represented by the letters alif (ا), yaʾ (ي), and waw (و).
The Hebrew alphabet, like Arabic, has both diacritics, known as niqqud, and the use of three letters alef (א), vav (ו), and yod (י).
No distinction between unstressed or stressed vowels exist in Aljamiado manuscripts.
The pronunciation of vowels and their writing are subject to certain rules in the Spanish Latin Alphabet, as well as in Aljamiado.
In Spanish, vowels are divided into two general groups: "strong" and "weak": As previously mentioned, in Aljamiado, there is no difference in writing between [o] and [u].
That is why the manuscripts of Aljamiado are considered important sources for the study of Spanish linguistics.
In Aljamiado texts, the letter ط was utilized to represent the phoneme /t/ in initial and intervocalic positions where it was unaspirated, while the letter ت was utilized in postconsonantal positions to indicate the aspirated form of the phoneme.
However, according to the glossary of Abuljair, the aspiration of plosive consonants never ceased to occur in any position.
In Modern Judeo-Spanish (Ladino), unlike varieties of Spanish, this historic pronunciation has been preserved.
However, due to contact and influence from other languages, namely Serbo-Croatian, Turkish, and French, a distinction between [ʒ] and [d͡ʒ] in orthography has come to dominance.
While this is not reflected in Latin alphabet, in Aljamiado manuscripts, as well as in Judeo-Spanish (not universally) is shown.
To reflect the difference between "s" and soft pronunciation of "c", in Aljamiado, the letter "shin" (ش) was given a new association and sound, and was used to write "s".
[11][12] In modern Judeo-Spanish, in the centuries after expulsion of Jews from Spain, as the pronunciations of "c" and "s merged independently of Spanish, confusion ensued for a few decades, with both "samech" (ס) and "shin" (ש) being used interchangeably.
Some, such as Fernando Tejón, have compiled, updated, and standardized a new iteration of the Aljamiado script, having it match the modern phonetics of Peninsular Spanish, which in a sense makes this effort, more of creating an Aljamiado-derived transliteration scheme, than an alphabet.
The stated objective of this transliteration scheme is to have an accurate one-to-one representation of all phonetic sounds that are found in standard Peninsular Spanish, eliminating detailed representation of allophones (in contrast with traditional Aljamiado, in which for example the letter "d" was written with either د or ذ, sounds /d/ and /ð/ respectively).
[18] [19][20] This specific scheme has been designed based on the principle of ease-of-use and practicality, meaning that the letters and diacritics used, are the typical ones found in standard Arabic script, with no need for additional characters or modifications.
This is in line with the traditional Aljamiado itself, in which for example the letter "p" is written with a geminated "b", as in «بّ» ("b" with a shadda diacritic).
[21] The word aljamiado is sometimes used for other non-Semitic language written in Arabic letters: Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:[23]
