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leroibobo · 3 months ago

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another mena language post - i wanted to talk about judeo-arabic and clarify a little bit about what "judeo-arabic" means

the basics, for those of you who don't know: arabic, being a language that was spread over a large part of the world and has since evolved into many different forms, has many different things that differentiate certain dialects. languages/dialects can be influenced by languages speakers' ancestors spoke before, by the social structure of where speakers live, by languages they come into contact with, and by gradual evolution in pronunciation. (many letters like evolving into ones that are easier to pronounce - this is why arabic has no "p" sound, it eventually evolved into "f" or "b". the same thing happened in germanic languages to some extent, which is why we say "father" in english and "vader" in german while in romance languages it's some variation of "padre" or "père".) many arabic dialects in particular possess different substratum (obvious, traceable influence from languages people spoke in before shifting to the new one).

arabic, being a language that was spread over a large part of the world and has since evolved into many different forms, has many different regional dialects which are different for the reasons i described in the above paragraph. even though there's modern standard arabic (which is the subject of its own post), people speak regional dialects in real life. on top of that, there's a variety of social influences on different types of arabic, such as whether someone's living in the city or in the country, whether someone's sedentary or a bedouin, and in some cases religion.

in the middle east, religion was historically:

not seen as a personal choice, but as something you're born into and a group you're a part of, kind of like ethnicity;

not generally something governments actively wanted everyone to share one of at the penalty of ostracization due to sticking to your group being the more livable way of life in the area, or later, the benefits of things like imposing extra taxes on people who weren't the "correct" religion/branch (this is far from being a "muslim thing" btw, it's been in the area for a while now, i mean look at the assyrians);

an influential factor in where you lived and who you were more likely to interact with because of those two things. (for example, it wasn't uncommon for most of the people living in one village in the countryside to share one religion/branch of a religion. if your village converted, you converted, too. if they didn't, you didn't, either.)

this means that the influence of religion in different types of arabic is due to people of different religions living in or coming from different places, and who people talked to most often.

for example, in bahrain, most sedentary shia bahrainis' ancestors have lived on the island for a very long time, while most sedentary sunni bahrainis' ancestors immigrated from other places in the gulf and iran in the 18th century. therefore, while they've all interacted and shared different aspects of their dialects including loanwords, there are two "types" of bahraini arabic considered distinctive to sunni and shia bahrainis respectively, regardless of how long ago their ancestors got there. despite the differences being marked by the religion of the speakers, they have nothing to do with religion or contact/lack thereof between bahraini sunni and shia, but with the factors affecting the different dialects i mentioned in the first paragraph which influenced either group.

a similar phenomenon to this in english is class differences in accent in england. nothing in received pronunciation is actually something only rich people can say or unintelligible to poor people, it developed by the class differences influencing where rich and poor english people lived and the different pronunciation/linguistic histories in those places, as well with different classes keeping more to themselves.

the influence of religion on arabic dialects isn't universal and nowhere near as intense as it is with aramaic. some places, especially more cosmopolitan or densely populated places, are less likely to have very noticeable differences or any differences at all. in addition, certain variations of a dialects that may've been influenced by religion in some way (as well as urban dialects) may be standardized through tv/movies/social media or through generally being seen as more "prestigious", making more people who wouldn't have spoken them otherwise more likely to pick it up. (this is why so many arabic speakers can understand egyptian arabic - cairo is like the hollywood of the arabic-speaking world.) this is the case with many if not most countries' official and regional languages/dialects nowadays.

this phenomenon is what "judeo-arabic" refers to generally. like many other jewish diaspora languages, the "jewish" aspect is that it was a specific thing jewish people did to different types of arabic, not that it was isolated, possessed a large enough amount of certain loanwords (though some varieties did have them), or is unintelligible to non-jews. people were generally aware of differences where they existed and navigated between them. (for example, baghdadi jews may've switched to the more prestigious muslim baghdadi dialect when in public.) if you know arabic, listen to this guy speak, you should be able to understand him just fine.

judeo-arabic also often used the hebrew alphabet and some may have been influenced by hebrew syntax and grammar in their spelling. you can also see the use of script for religious identification in persian and urdu using the arabic script, and in english using the latin alphabet. in general, influences of hebrew/aramaic on different types of judeo-arabic aren't consistent. you can read more about that here.

"judeo-arabic" isn't a universal that definitely happened in every arabic-speaking part of the world that had jews in it to the same degrees, but it did definitely exist. some examples:

after the siege of baghdad in 1258, where mongols killed all muslim baghdadis and spared baghdadis of other religions, bedouins from the south gradually resettled the city. this means that the "standard" sedentary dialect in the south is notably bedouin influenced, while dialects in the north are more notably influenced by eastern aramaic. christians and (when they lived there) jews in baghdad have dialects closer to what’s up north. within those, there's specific loans and quirks marking the differences between "christian" and "jewish".

yemenite jews faced some of the most persistent antisemitic persecution in the middle east, so yemeni jewish arabic was more of a city thing and often in the form of passwords/codewords to keep jews safe. jews were usually a lot safer and better-regarded in the countryside, so jewish yemeni arabic was much less of a thing there, and when it was, it was less "serious".

due to the long history of maghrebi immigration to palestine, there's attestation of maghrebi influences in arabic spoken by some palestinian jews with that origin. this was also a thing in cairo to some extent.

(i'd link sources, but most of them are in hebrew, i guess you'll have to trust me on this one??)

still, the phrase "judeo-arabic" is often used with the implication that it was one all encompassing thing (which it wasn't, as you can see), or that jews everywhere had it in some way. many jews who spoke some version of arabic special to their mostly-jewish locale may not have registered it as a specifically "jewish" version of arabic (though they did more often than not). the truth is that research about anything related to middle eastern and north african jews is often sloppy, nonexistent, and often motivated by the desire of the researcher to prove something about israel's colonization of palestine (on either "side" of the issue). this is not me being a centrist about the colonization of palestine, this is me stating that academia is often (even usually) influenced by factors that aren't getting the best and most accurate information about something. i don't think we're going to get anything really "objective" on arabic spoken by jews in that regard for a long while.

for comparison's sake: yiddish is considered a separate language from german due to 19th century yiddishists' efforts to "evolve" yiddish from dialect to language (yiddish-speaking jews were said to speak "corrupted german" historically; on that note sephardim were also said to speak "corrupted spanish"). this was at a time when ethnic nationalism was en vogue in europe and declaring a national language meant declaring your status as a sovereign nation (both metaphorically and literally). for yiddishists to assert that they were speaking a language and not a dialect that intrinsically tied them to germans was to reject the discrimination that they were facing. (besides, german/austrian/swiss jews weren't speaking yiddish (leaving it with the connotation of being the language of those icky ostjuden), yiddish-speaking jews had practically zero other ties to germany/austria/switzerland, and yiddish-speaking jews (let alone the yiddishists) were almost entirely east of germany/austria/switzerland, so it's not like they were pulling this out of their ass.)

whether a jewish person of arabic-speaking descent calls it "arabic", "judeo-arabic", or something like "moroccan"/"syrian"/etc depends on who you're talking to, where they're from (both diaspora origins and today), how old they are, and what they think about zionism. despite "judeo-arabic" being what it's called in academia, on the ground, there's no real strong consensus either way because the social circumstances arabic-speaking jews lived in didn't drive them to form a movement similar to yiddishists. (not because there was no discrimination, but because the political/social/linguistic circumstances were different.) the occupation since made the subject of middle eastern jews’ relation to the middle east a contentious topic considering the political and personal weight behind certain cultural identifiers. the term "judeo-arabic" is modern in comparison - whether it's a distinction dredged up by zionist academics to create separations that didn't really exist or a generally accurate term for a specific linguistic phenomenon is a decision i'll leave you to make.

#jewish #mizrahi #languageposting #my posts #my own opinion is it doesn’t matter what you label a language because it doesn’t erase its history #what we think of as a ''language'' or ''dialect'' is arbitrary #technically hebrew arabic and aramaic are all dialects of proto-semitic #but it’s a good general idea to listen to speakers to know why someone may think of it in the way that they do #like yeah i do think political circumstances cause bosnians/serbians/croatians to label the language they speak as separate things despite #them all speaking one thing. but if a croatian guy tells me he speaks croatian and it has nothing to do with bosnian or serbian i won’t be #like ‘’well actually it’s a dialect continuum’’ or ‘’you poor thing manipulated by nationalist propaganda’’#ill just smile and nod and move on #he has a god given right to see the language he uses every day however he wants #even if i came to my opinion through research and the concensus of other bosnians/serbs/croats it means nothing in comparison

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phoenixyfriend · 2 years ago

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I know I'm a nerd because the amount of time I've spent obsessing over the Vojvodina dress is. Way too much.

This dress doesn't actually have a name (probably), but it's from late 19th century Vojvodina, and I kind of obsessed over it when I was at the Serbian Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade (main site is available only in Serbian).

(Unfortunately, I'm trying to work within the tumblr image limit, but here's a google drive!)

BTW, if you enjoy this post, please consider leaving a tip! I spent more time than is reasonable putting this together.

Also, due to tumblr being Odd, you may want to open this in a new tab to avoid having the posts expand to full; the dashboard view only lets there be one image per line, for some reason. If you open in a new tab, they are much more neatly organized into sets, and quicker to scroll past.

Due to the fact that I can't really describe these photos in a way that means anything to readers unless they have a large technical vocabulary or background in Balkan fashion history, and there being so many pictures, I will not be including image descriptions. However, my commentary on those photos throughout the latter half of the post should hopefully give you a solid summary on what the photos contain, even if it's not going into details for most.

Here is the general shape of what you see in 19th century Serbia (incl. Kosovo), Montenegro, Bosnia&Herzegovina, and Croatia:

You can see a few throughlines, even with the variety from one region to the next. Certain types of fabric are more common, especially that heavy plain-weave white fiber (I think usually cotton, nowadays, but probably historically flax) with the small knots; my grandmother's apartment is still stocked with that as the default bed linen! You see it all through the exhibit, most frequently in the skirts, but often for blouses or chemises, too.

There are a lot of hand-woven fabrics, which you can see on display best with the aprons, and a very specific style of applique trimmings on the cropped vest. The arm's eyes and necklines have similar proportions. The lengths are similar. Most things are cut on the rectangular, or not cut at all. Hems are often tassled, for complex weaves, or simply folded under for the white base fabrics; plain, non-white fabrics tend to get a textured applique at the hems. Lace is usually eyelet.

There are exceptions, of course. I'd love to know more about that mint green cardigan(?) from Montenegro, with the gored pieces. I think it's made of doeskin (the tight wool weave, not the leather), and I wish I could get more information on the history. Most of the larger green dyes, not counting floral motifs or minor elements of a multicolored weave, are from the Bosnian section of the display (wide stripes along the collar, for instance), presumably due to Ottoman influence leaving a large Muslim population. And then there's this mint green cardigan from Montenegro made of a fabric I'm not seeing on any other garments? Tell me more, please.

(Also, in the close-ups, you can see that the hook and eye closure has released rust stains onto the blouse!)

There are so many more pictures, but unfortunately, I have a thirty-image max and really want to talk about this one specific dress:

The image description on the floor below describes this as:

Woman's festive dress with a zlatara cap, Banat, Vojvodina, late 19th century

(I have minimal commentary on the hat. It's a traditionally Serbian vestment, but there's nothing too unusual about it.)

So, here are a few things to note at first glance:

The arm's eye on the vest is wide. It dips further in towards the neck than most vests, and swoops further down towards the ribs. Most of the traditional vests have a much tighter arm's eye.

Relatedly, the straps are much thinner than most of the vests, maybe half as wide. This is partly the arm's eye, and partly the width of the neckline to start!

The vest comes down in a slightly pointed oval ending at the swell of the bust, rather than curving back up or being a rounded shape a few inches higher. It's also finished with these little satin triangles?

The vest is laced at front, rather than hook and eye closure.

The bottom edge has tabs!

The hems on those tabs are chain stitched in yellow, and then the hem is wrapped in a thin orange ribbon that I would hesitantly say is satin? Plus all the other yellow embroidery, which to my eye looks really different from the embroidery you see on various aprons, and also different from the metallic appliques you see on most vests!

That bottom edge also appears to be straight across (most of the vests curve up slightly at front), and is very tight to the body. While some of the vests are tight, those are generally the shorter ones. Longer vests are much looser than this one, which cuts off and cinches at the waist, right where it meets the skirt.

The fabric itself! I'll get back to this but it seems to be a satin jacquard??? A jacquard that matches (in thread, not in pattern) to the skirt? Insane.

[Disclaimer: Some of these deviations, such as the arm's eye size or the dropped shoulder hem, could be a matter of the mannequin being the wrong size for the clothing. Unfortunately, I don't have enough background information to be sure. It could be just the right size. It could be far too small. I only have these photos and the most basic of background information to go off of.]

Okay moving on to the blouse:

It's not completely unique to be sheer, but it's definitely uncommon!

The chest is not pintucked or a flat weave, but rather the sheer fabric has thin stripes of more opaque weave? I don't actually remember what that's called but it's definitely cool to see.

We also see a net lace at the cuffs, which is similarly uncommon; most of the fashions I saw had eyelet lace instead (which we can see at the collar of the blouse).

The dropped shoulder! The shoulder seam sits much higher on most of the pieces I saw (there are a few exceptions, but mostly from regions nearby). In fact, most of the examples had the shoulder seam hidden, between the higher seam and the width of the vest; it's both the dropped seam and the thin straps of the vest that let us see this here!

That metallic embroidery. Again, most of the embroidery we see on the other pieces is cross stitch or done with a much thicker thread; sometimes, you get lineart, but not filled in in this manner. This kind of thin-thread embroidery that fills the space between the lines isn't common in the other pieces!

I don't think I can actually say much about the sleeve length? I feel like most of the pieces have sleeves that are full or bracelet length, while this one is a three-quarter, but I'm not 100% on that actually being true. It's a bit hard to tell in some cases. Might just be summer clothes?

The skirt:

SATIN JACQUARD

BOX PLEATS

SLIGHT OVAL HEM

SATIN RIBBON TRIM

I'm gonna be honest this was a huge part of why I began to obsess over this dress let me just. Whoo!

This fabric is, as far as I can tell, a satin jacquard, very probably machine-woven. It is very different from basically every other fabric we see in this exhibit. This is not a plain weave, and it is not a hand-woven design. This is a meticulously, mechanically repetitive pattern done using satin-weave manipulation to adjust which sections have shine and which don't. Given the time period, it's probably silk. (Take a look at this portion of a video on silk by Nicole Rudolph to understand what I mean by jacquard. If you want to know more about satin weave, you can watch the full video.)

I'd guess that the vest is made of the same type of fabric, even the same threads, just in a different pattern.

The pleating! If you take a look at the other photos, the general pattern is 'put together some rectangles, gather at top, and you have a dress. Cover with a hand-woven apron in front and possibly in back.' There are, again, some exceptions, but this dress has both the box pleating and the satin jacquard. The structure of this skirt is completely different from 90% of this exhibit.

In conjunction with the pleating, the skirt had a very slight oval shape around the bottom. I didn't get a good photo of that part, but it's typical of 1890s dresses in Western Europe to have a sort of egg-shaped hem if you look at them from above, through use of pleating, strategic panel shapes, and bum pads or petticoats. In short, the dress is just slightly longer at back without being a full-on train. Most of the other pieces, due to the rectangles and gathers, are a much simpler circle shape around bottom.

Length! Part of why the egg-shaped hem is happening is because this dress actually brushes the floor. Ankle-length is the default across the exhibit, even for formal wear.

Simple satin ribbons for decorative trim, rather than something textured, shaped, or multicolor!

Then, the actual hem of the skirt: a center-pleated green ribbon. This is, again, really different from most of the hems. Most of the skirts don't reach the ground, and aren't made of a fancy fabric. Those white dresses/skirts that form the base of most looks are easily washed and have hems that don't drag on the ground. If they aren't left to just the selvage, they're very simply hemmed; I think what I saw most frequently was a double-folded hem. The pieces that have more decorative hems, like blouses and vests and aprons, aren't pieces that get the same form of wear. However, since this dress does reach the ground, it needs a centimeter or so of additional fabric to take some of that wear to protect the fancier skirt fabric, like hem braid, which the easily-replaced ribbon could conceal for this skirt since it's a festival item.

I think that might also be part of why there's a seam about twenty centimeters up from the bottom edge; it's a replaceable section in case it needs replacement, or the seam is for a protective layer inside. However, it could also be a seam used for a stiff inner lining meant to help the skirt flare out just a touch, like this.

Now, finally, why is all this even a thing, and why do I care?

Vojvodina, the region this outfit is from, was under Austro-Hungarian control during the latter half of the 19th century; whether it was officially Hungarian, Austrian, or both changed from one decade to the next, but it was definitely under that sphere of influence for a very long time. Despite this, it was and is culturally Serbian, and is majority Serbian in terms of population; it was even back then! However, the 19th century saw a large number of ethnic Hungarians and ethnic Germans in the region as well, and the cultural impact from Vienna was not to be underestimated.

This dress is a great example of how a culturally Serbian individual would have clothing that integrated those foreign influences. For most of the Balkans, the greatest influence was the Ottomans, due to five centuries of imperial rule, but this dress is a great contrast due to Hungarian occupation, and then Austrian. It contains elements of the culture that birthed it, yes, but the influence of the West is so very, very clear.

(I wish I could talk more about the Pannonian elements in general, but I'm still learning.)

I hope you enjoyed this rambling deep dive into a single outfit from the Serbian Ethnographic Museum. Visit it if you get a chance!

And if you've read this whole thing and feel like dropping a tip, you can do so on this blog, post, or over on ko-fi. You could even join my Patreon!

#serbia #vojvodina #fashion #fashion history #the vojvodina dress #serbian stuff #balkan stuff #balkans #Banat #Hungary #Austria Hungary #austro hungarian empire #phoenix posts

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