A linguistic sketch of Judeo-Piedmontese and what it tells us about Piedmontese Jews' origins

Judeo-Piedmontese (also called Lason Akodesh) is a virtually extinct dialect spoken by the Jewish communities that settled in Piedmont from the 14th century onward. The article takes into account the two historical stages usually recognized for Judeo-Italian varieties, namely the Medieval and the Modern one. As regards Judeo-Piedmontese, the only testimony of the former period is the Glossario di Alba by Jacob ben Nathan de Olmo; while more data, still limited in quantity, is available for the Modern period. Through the analysis of some relevant morpho-syntactic traits, Judeo-Piedmontese is shown to be a conservative Piedmontese variety, exhibiting some interesting Provençal-Ligurian features. Thus, on the basis of linguistic data too, it is possible to claim that the Jewish communities that settled in Piedmont might have come from Provence and Liguria.