1- What is the historical importance of the Haketía language and culture?

The Haketía language has an interesting historical importance because through its knowledge we can also get to know the most significant features of the Jewish communityvthat lived in Sepharad2 until the end of the 15th century when they began to be expelled from Spain and settled in Morocco. Their customs, traditional literature, or the celebration of religious festivities were perfectly tolerated, like María Rosa Menocal, a specialist in Iberian literature at Yale University, claims when she said “tolerance was an inherent aspect of Andalusian society” (2003). Also typical foods, like the Adafina, or the way of establishing social relationships being considered by Islamic authority as dhimmis, or protected non-Muslims, allows us to trace the knowledge of this speech, the vocabulary and grammar. Haketía is a language developed in Morocco from the Castilian Spanish spoken by the expelled Jews or megorashim that already left the Iberian Peninsula influenced by arabisms and hebraisms assimilated during the andalusi period, but that once outside the Iberian Peninsula, in the same way that happened with the Ladino spoken by the Jews who settled in the Ottoman Empire, this Haketía was filled with lexicon, grammatical structures, or expressions from other languages in contact when it became the vernacular language of those jews in north Morocco.
The Hispano-Moroccan War (1859–1860), can be considered a turning point in the evolution of this language, strongly tided to the people that spoke it. After the arrival of the Spaniards in Tetouan in 1859-60, and their settlement in the territory, close contact was established between these Spaniards and the Sephardic descendants who had fled from the Peninsula centuries before. Those Jews had preserved their customs and continued to speak the Castilian language they left with. A language that had suffered several variations that where recognized the Jews realized that what they spoke, the language they believed to be Spanish, was by then far from the Spanish spoken by those newcomers. Almost three centuries later, the language with which the Jews had left the Iberian Peninsula had seen how it kept almost intact the grammatical and phonetic structures of medieval Castilian, while they had added lexicon and Darija syntactic turns
of phrases due to the close contact with this local language. For example, the verb Hadrear, that means ‘to speak.’ It drifts from an Arabic root but ends as a regular Spanish verb from the first conjugation. This situation brought with it some consequences in the evolution of Haketía.
There were those who felt that they were speaking a vulgarized dialect of Spanish and rejected further use of this language, which unfortunately came to be described as ‘bad’ Spanish. Since the end of the 19th century this contempt was one of the causes of the loss of Haketía speakers. As Esther Bendahan explains la haketía es el habla del que huyeron mis padres. No solo ellos, también mis abuelos. Se quedaron en los cajones de nuestra memoria algunas palabras que usábamos con alegría y complicidad (2020).
Kaketía is the way of speaking from which my parents fled. Not only them, but also my grandparents. In the drawers of our memory remained several words that we would use with joy and complicity. By reading her words we understand how, while the use of that speech was publicly rejected, it was kept in the most private sphere as a source of joy and complicity, as the bond that united them with their past and their roots. After the establishment of the Protectorate over the Kingdom of Morocco in 1912, the contacts between Haketía and other languages began to have an impact on the evolution of the language, first of all, because of the contact with Spanish throughout the
northern part of the country, especially in cities such as Tetouan, Chaouen, or Larache.Also French in the southern regions of Morocco, and special cases that we must consider should be the cities of Ceuta, Melilla3 and Tangier. The Spanish enclaves on the North African coast were cities in which a large number of Jewish people lived, so the language there had evolved in a different way, for example, assimilating Spanish loanwords from before. For example, the word jarabullina than means unusual mixture, normally associated with food. Jarabullina might come from the Spanish word Rebujina, drifted form Rebujo.
The most singular case was the city of Tangier. The international city never belonged to either of the two Protectorates settled in Morocco(Spanish and French) but remained as an independent city until 1956, when it became part of the Kingdom of Morocco. In addition, the city since the second half of the 18th century was the diplomatic headquarters of the Kingdom, so the population was used to living among a multifaceted range of nationalities. This, it could not be otherwise, meant that several languages could be heard in the city at the same time, even in the same conversation, and therefore the linguistic reality of Tangier has been complex from then until today. The way in which this affected the evolution of Haketía is very evident, for example, in the vocabulary that the Tangerine Haketía adopted from another language such as Greek, Portuguese, English or even Russian, in a more residual way. An interesting example is the word Preto, for the color black that is an adopted portuguese word. After the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, the emigration of Jews out of Morocco made Haketía practically disappear from the Maghreb country. From then until today the number of Haketía speakers has almost disappeared in the country where it was born. Meanwhile, those Jews who have emigrated, not only to Israel, but also to Venezuela, Canada or Spain, are making great efforts trying to save this singular language that means so much to this community. In the destinations to which the Jews emigrated when leaving Morocco, we can establish a difference. On the one hand, those who settled in Spain were looking for a return to their first background, that is, they wanted to return looking for the family stories they had heard so many times. On the other hand, those who chose destinations in America, especially Canada and Venezuela, went in search of a new future full of promises of richness and peace, since these countries had strong economies and mixed complex societies in which these Jews could fit without problems, just as itactually happened.

2- What are the major foundational works/cultural contributions of the Haketía language? or culture (this can include written works, religious perspectives, technological innovations, archaeological sites, etc.)?

Haketía has been always an oral language. The written manifestations have been very scarce throughout centuries. Being considered the language of intimate and familiar expression, most of the stories and narratives in this language were orally transmitted. Faced with the evidence that this endangered the preservation of the language by progressive abandonment, José Benoliel, one of the first intellectuals to recognize the importance of this language, compiled all the poems and romances that he could. Asking for help from Jews from Tangier, Tetouan and also other European cities where there were communities around the second decade of the 20th century, he came to gather 150 texts. He sent these to Ramón Menéndez Pidal4, so they could be included in the Romancero español, a work than included hundreds of oral poems from Spanish folklore written in Castilian, Catalan, Portuguese, Sefardic, and 150 of them in Haketía. This milestone is very important for the acceptance of Haketía as a Castilian Romance language, because by including it in the Spanish Romancer, Menéndez Pidal was giving it authority as Castilian as well as singularizing it out for its own characteristics.In the few written examples that are preserved, it is important to point out that until the 20th century, most of the preserved ones had been made using the Hebrew alphabet mainly, from then on, the Latin alphabet became more common, as it is still use in our days. This is an important issue as it is crucial for the definitive revitalization of Haketía. A consensus is necessary about the orthographic rules, because until now there is no unanimity on certain aspects, which complicates the learning of the language in the absence of a standard scholars like Alegría Bendaya, Esther Bendahan or Solly Levy are making great efforts in stablishing the Latin alphabet as de definitive one. The use of this alphabet compared to the use of the Hebrew alphabet has a logic that can be explained from phonetic perspective, since Haketía is a language derived from Castilian, the representation of sounds is easier using the Latin alphabet. As a second important contribution by José Benoliel, The Diccionario básico jaquetía-español was the first book based on a study about the Haketía. The work appeared in the Bulletin of the Royal Academy of Spanish Language from 1928 onwards in different volumes of the publication, due to the great interest showed by Menéndez Pidal, after the publication of the poems included in the Romancero Español. Benoliel’s work became titanic because all the compilation and writing work had been carried out simply with the effort of his memory since there was not enough writing material to use, as he himself explained in the introduction: reunir y coordinar los elementos necesarios a mi estudio, sin más recurso que mi memoria, embotada y ofuscada por más de cincuenta años de residencia en países donde ni se habla español ni de nombre es conocida la Hakitía. Despite his own doubts about the work he was about to undertake, the Diccionario básico jaquetía-español is still today one of the most important contributions to the knowledge and conservation of Haketía. In 1977, a facsimile edition was made and since then it has been considered an essential foundational work. Other important works that deal with the historical study, grammatical and phonetic characteristics as well as including vocabulary glossaries are those by Alegría Bendayan de Bendelac, among which we can highlight Voces jaquetiscas, published in 1990. The work done by Jacobo Israel Garzón, Lengua y literatura oral del Judeo-español de Marruecos o Jaquetía, published in 2017. Also noteworthy are the contributions made by the philologist Yaakob Bentolila, as well as the works published by Solly Levy such as Mi vida en Haketía (2012), a publication that includes 5 CDs in which Levy collects stories and knowledge all recorded in Haketía. Further, Levy is the author of what is considered the first literary work entirely written in this language: Yaḥasrà, published in Québec in 1992. In 2008, he also published El libro de Selomó, considered the second work ever published in Haketía, which was followed by El segundo libro de Selomó in 2014. These two last novels are partly considered pseudo-autobiographical narrate the life of a Jew born in Tetouan.
In addition to these works, we have to take into account the literary works La vida perra de Juanita Narboni and El mazal de los pobres, two novels that although they are not written entirely in Haketía, do include words and expressions in this language and stand out for their uniqueness and literary value, as well as being a fundamental tool to know in depth the Haketía speaker community, as this books reflect with great fidelity customs, traditions and even cooking recipes that bring us closer to that lost reality. Professor Francisco Moscoso considers La vida perra de Juanita Narboni by Angel Vazquez (1976 1st ed.) and El mazal de los pobres by Elie Benchetrit (2017) two literary treasures. El mazal de los pobres is a novel written in Spanish but in which the dialogues and some fragments are in Haketía. Benchetrir narrates the life in the international city of Tangier of the 50s and 60s as he remembers it. We can draw some important conclusions from this novel. Since the city of Tangier never had a mellah (Jewish quarter), there were areas of the neighborhoods in which a greater number of Jews lived. Thus, in Tangier the majority were divided between Fuente Nueva, where Benchetrit grew up, the Bulevar
Pasteur area, Tetuán street and the wealthiest in Marchan. What this novel shows us is that in this internal division of the Jews within the city of Tangier there were also differences that were recognized in their way of speaking Haketía. It is surprising if we think about the number of speakers we are dealing with, in this case a community that in the decade between the early 1950s and the mid-1960s dropped from about 18,000 to 4,000 Jews. This supports the fact that Haketía was essentially a familial language and that it evolved according to the environment that each one had, also important to the survival of the languages was the difficulty to learn it since it was, and still is, only use in private environment what made almost impossible to learn it. Jacobo Israel Garzón explains that this difference was appreciated in the pronunciation, as the version spoken around the Fuente Nueva, inside the medina of Tangier, was the most classical. When moving towards the boulevard a re-Hispanization could be appreciated, and the pronunciation was closer to the andalusian accent. And lastly, going up towards the Marchan, the Haketía became frenchified in aspects like the vocabulary they incorporated. We can read a fragment of the novel in which a Jew from Fuente Nueva speaks to Rubén el de los buñuelos: Güeno está de ḥadras, Robén, qaddea de una vez y faddea con tu trabasho, que sino mos tienes aquí hasta la hora de minhá. To the novel, La vida perra de Juanita Narboni by the tangierian writer Ángel Vázquez, is a reckless and confused portrait of the city of Tangier during the middle decades of the 20th century. The story of Juanita, the protagonist, falls in parallel to that of the city of Tangier itself, which moves towards its nationalization and, therefore, the loss of the internationalization that characterized it. The structure of the novel is a monologue in which Juanita speaks constantly, almost like a stream of water that flows without a dam that stops it. In the brief introduction that precedes the novel, the author explains that his intention in writing it was to record her memories, to try to reflect as faithfully as possible the speech and customs of tangerine women like his mother and her Jewish friends. Thus, this work is also another of those treasures that we mentioned, since Juanita’s speech is fully plagued with Haketía terms through we can learn about the customs and habits of the Jews in the International city. We read a fragment of the uninterrupted text of Juanita Narboni full of terms in Haketía:
(…) Te veía venir. Como siempre. Yo también te saludo, mi reina, se te caiga el massaj. Una vez te pedí veinte duros y no quisiste dejármelos. Claro me saludas por cuestión de Prestige. Al fin y al cabo, una es una Narboni (…) Estoy bien mi buen, gracias. Mejorado te veas como yo me veo. Eso, ahora provócame. Para qué me preguntará eso esta bastarda, si sabe que no tengo un céntimo? (…)

3- The importance of the association of Haketía with Judaism.

The connection between Judaism and Haketía is full, since, as we have been pointing out, this language was spoken by the Jews who settled in Morocco after the expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula from the 15th century onwards. A way to certify this union is by consulting the glossaries of Haketía where we find a large amount of vocabulary related to religious rites, festivities, or traditional clothing. Here are some examples of vocabulary from Benoliel’s work, as well as expressions and set phrases taken from Voces jaquetiscas by Alegría Bendayan.

Vocabulary

Àaberá: (from Hebrew) Sin, violation of a precept.
Àaborá: Religious worship service. Worship of God.
Àarbit: (from Hebrew) Twilight prayer.
Adafina: (from Arabic) Traditional dish eaten on Saturdays
Alaafu: (from Arabic). God forgive us and save us from anything.
Arreboso: Scarf to cover women’s head.
Arrescobdarse: Lean back on the left elbow to eat the bocados on the first two nights of
Pesach.
Bocados: Piece of certain vegetables that the family’s father distributes among the guests
during the first two nights of Pesach.
Crinches: false hair covering the forehead. It is placed under the headscarf that covers the
head of married Jewish women.
Deshamezzar –To remove the hamés, everything that is unleavened. Many days before Pesach it is obligatory to do a general cleaning throughout the house, leaving no corner or piece of furniture without searching, washing and cleaning, in case there is any trace
of hidden unleavened dough, that is, a crumb of bread, a grain of wheat, the least dust of flour, until the eve of Pesah, the day on which are burned as many pieces of bread as rooms are in the house, as a demonstration that everything possible has been done to destroy the hamés, and in fulfillment of the precept: “Y que no sea visto hamés en tu morada”.

Dío: God.
Escuchado: The children are tested on Thursdays to hear the Sabbath reading recitation
of the of the Pentateuch.
Esnoga: Synagogue.
Finojo: Fennel. Herb used in the Rosh Haxaná, the New Year ceremony.
Fiuzia: Faith.
Habla: Word used by custom when a wife does not address her husband by his name, but
rather by saying ¡Habla!
Hazer una àaberá: To commit a sin.
Hamdear: (from Arabic) To Give thanks to God.
Haxak: (from Arabic) God save you from that!
Káfer: (from Arabic) Atheist, unbeliever, traitor, renegade.
Káfer billáh: (from Arabic) The one who denies God.
Kasér or Kaxér: (from Hebrew) What is allowed for food by law.
Lorez al-Dio: Praise to God.
Lillah: (from Arabic) For God’s sake!
Mellah: Jewish quarter in Morocco
Mezuzero: (from Hebrew) Mezuzah case.
Qadmear: (from Arabic) To Invoke only in the name of God.
Yedallah: (from Arabic) Help. Literally “hand of God”.
Òomer: (from Arabic) The time between Pesach and Pentecost.

Expressions or Idioms

Lo mire el Dío y se apiade: Expression of faith, anguish and resignation that is used when some minor misfortune occurs. It is also said to censure someone who commits blunders or insists on continuing with reprehensible behavior. Lo nuestro/Los nuestros: Expression use by the Sephardic Jews of northern Morocco to identify the set of beliefs, customs and values by which they are governed. Lo nuestro is the term by which they represent themselves, the descendants of those expelled from Spain who speak Haketía and have preserved the ancestral traditions. Use to distinguish themselves from the rest of the population of Morocco, like Muslims or Jews from the
south of Morocco. Loores al Dío/al Señor/a mi Señor: Expression of faith and gratitude to God for what has been received