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Zarphatic, also called Judeo-French (Zarphatic: Tzarfatit) or Western Loez, is a language that was spoken by the French Jews of northern France and in parts of west-central Germany, such as Mainz, Frankfurt am Main and Aix-la-Chapelle. It was also spoken by French Jews who moved to Norman England.Hillaby (2013), pp. 1, 112, 194-5. Some have conjectured that the language influenced the development of Yiddish language.Weinreich, M. (1959). History of the Yiddish Language: The Problems and Their Implications. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 103(4), 563–570. http://www.jstor.org/stable/985559
Unlike most other Jewish languages which had many loan words from Hebrew, it had relatively few. This has led to the conclusion that it may not have been a far-distant language but, instead, a dialect of Old French. Scribd A document about the Zarphatic Language
Most linguists agree that Zarphatic was not fundamentally different from Old French, and that it was more of a writing system and literary tradition that reflected the Jewish culture of the day. According to some researchers,M. Weinreich et S. A. Birnbaum, cited by Marc Kiwitt, cf sources it was different from the Christian majority dialect, and thus a specific Judeo-Romance language. However, other linguists contend that it was essentially the same as Christian dialects of the same regions, with only some Hebrew influences.
It seems that Zarphatic was probably never a vernacular language, and that the Jews of the area did not speak a differing language or dialect, at least not one distinguished by phonology or lexicon beyond that specific to a community.Jean Baumgarten in La question du judéo-français vue par les philologues allemands et français, citing M. Bannitt; cf bibliographie Rather, it acted more as a liturgical language, for exegesis and literature. Its primary use was for explanation and vulgarisation of biblical and rabbinical literature. Most of the elements from the Hebrew language are found in the function words (articles, prepositions, etc.), though there are some changed to verbs and vocabulary.
Not all Hebrew graphemes are used in Zarphatic: the graphemes kaph (כ), samekh (ס), and Taw (ת), are rare, and Heth (ח) and Ayin (ע) are omitted entirely.
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