ABSTRACT
Jews have been living in the Italian Peninsula since perhaps as early as the 2nd century BCE, during the time of the Roman Republic. The earliest Jewish settlers were probably Greek speaking, though with knowledge of Hebrew and Aramaic, as evidenced by surviving tombstones. The modern Italian language in its written form is the same all over Italy. The amount of extant literature in Judeo-Italian is greater than in the other Judeo-Romance dialects with the exception of Judeo-Spanish. Judeo-Italian texts exist in a variety of genres, and they range in length from a few words to entire volumes. Judeo-Italian texts is identical to standard literary Italian, while other texts, including a number of siddurim and some biblical translations, reflect a uniquely Jewish dialect of Italian, which makes them particularly interesting from a linguistic perspective. Spoken Judeo-Italian dialects, typical of Jewish languages, incorporated numerous words from Hebrew. Some spoken Judeo-Italian dialects have also been influenced by other Jewish languages.
