Haketia in Morocco. Or, the story of the decline of an idiom

Bürki, Yvette (2016). Haketia in Morocco. Or, the story of the decline of an idiom. International journal of the sociology of language, 2016(239), pp. 121-155. Mouton de Gruyter 10.1515/ijsl-2016-0007

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This contribution takes a diachronic look at the political, social, cultural and economic reasons behind the decline of Haketia, which has become one of the most symbolic icons in the collective memory of the Hispano-Moroccan Sephardic Jews in their new settlements. The article has three parts: it opens with a general section that introduces the concept of Sephardic Jew and sets out the linguistic varieties of this ethnic group; a second section contextualises the sociocultural and linguistic history of Sephardic Jews in Morocco after their expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula and up until 1860, the year of the Spanish military foray into North Morocco; and a third and central section examines the causes of the decline of Haketia and the current situation. The article concludes with glottopolitical reflections on the evolution of this idiom, the tension between a colonised and a colonising tongues, and the role of language in ethnic-cultural identity, all of which prove how linguistic homogeneity and linguistic difference can be considered the result of ideological expressions in the social and political processes of a given region.

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