1- What are the major linguistic features?

The grammatical system of the Haketía is mostly the Castilian one since the language was born from the spoken by the Spanish Jews in the 15th century. The loans and adoptions are, to a great extent, limited to vocabulary and idioms. Since Haketía is eminently an oral language its writing system is not fixed, which means that we find different ways of representing those phonemes that vary from Spanish if they are borrowed from Hebrew or Moroccan Arabic mostly. In these cases, each of the authors who have written in Haketía have proposed a writing system to be able to read certain letters with the correct pronunciation. The first of them, as we have already indicated, was José Benoliel’s Dictionary. He created a detailed transcription system that helps its knowledge. When in 1977 Garzon Serfaty edited Benoliel’s Dictionary of Haketía, he carried out a brief study that introduces us to the phonetic system of Haketía and its graphic representation following Benoliel’s system.

Sound Patterns

Of the thirty-one consonant and vowel sounds identified by Benoliel, nine of them are different from Spanish. The phonemes that interest us the most are the following:
1. The G in words from Arabic origin is pronounced like غ) gain) or like a French R. It is written in italics to differentiate it from the g when has a Spanish pronunciation. As in gzal, gzala: Young endowed with beauty.
2. The aspirated H that is pronounced like the French H or the Hebrew ה) he). As in the word of Arabic origin hadra: Conversation, gossip.
3. The Semitic H which is pronounced like the Hebrew ח) het) or the Arabic ح) ḥa). It is either a loud aspirated sound or a soft Spanish J. Like the Andalusian J. Benoliel writes it in italics to differentiate it from the previous one. We can also find it written as ḥ. For example, in the Arabic word hram: sin, illicit, forbidden
4. The J that is pronounced like the French J. He writes it in italics to differentiate it from the Spanish j. For example, the word jaqueta: jacket
5. The Semitic Q that is pronounced emphasized like the Hebrew (quf) ק or the Arabic (qaf) ق .We have to distinguish this consonant from the Spanish Q which is followed by /u/ before the vowels /e/ or /i/. With the vowels /a/, /o/ and /u/, Benoliel uses the consonant K, widely used in the usual transcriptions of Haketía. For example, Káfer: atheist, unbeliever, traitor, renegade.
6. The V that is always pronounced like its French equivalent, except for words of Hebrew origin that is pronounced like the Hebrew ו) vav). For example, vazzio: empty.
7. The X that is always pronounced as sh. Therefore, equivalent to the Arabic ش (shin). Xabon, soap, pronounced shabón. Xabonar, to wash, pronounced shabonar.
8. The Z that will always be pronounced like the French Z. For example, in words like onze (eleven), doze (twelve). Very often intervocalic S is changed to Z, as in mozotros instead of nosotros.
9. The ع’ ayin, pronounced like its equivalent in classical Hebrew and Arabic. Benoliel puts it as the last entry in his dictionary and represents it with a grave accent on the corresponding doubled vowel to indicate a lengthening. This is what happens in the words Èeden: Eden, or Òolam: world.
In addition to these consonants that represent a variation from the Castilian of origin,
based on the work carried out by Professor Fanciscon Moscoso (2020), we can highlight
other characteristic features:
1. Vowel changes such as /o/ for /u/ in modern Spanish: abondara for abundara (abound).
Also, the presence of the /i/ in the place of the /e/ due to the influence of dialectal Arabic.
Although as Professor Moscoso points out, this is also a common feature of Andalusian,
therefore, the contact in this case is double. Examples would be, biñuelos for buñuelos
(fritter); Pilíkula for Película (film), or Mirinda for Merienda (snack). In this last
example we also find another usual feature: the diphthong /ie/ will always be only /i/.
2- A very characteristic feature in the change between some consonants: from N to M and
from M to B. For example, mozotros for nosotros (us), or baldición for maldición
(malediction).
3- The consonantal sound L, especially in the cases of the article, disappears, but doubles the consonant it precedes when they are: N, R or D, in the most common cases. This is due to the indisputable influence of the reduplication of the article in Arabic before the so-called solar letters: er-regalo (the gift)

Stress

in Haketía also has its own rules since the words are only agudas, llanas or unstressed. Even if the words are taken from other languages rather than spanish, the tendency in Haketía is towards this word stress. There are no esdrújulas or sobreesdrújulas words, they become agudas: lampará, Malagá, fabricá. Professor Moscoso points out that, although the stress of words of Castilian origin is usually respected, when they are used with the intention of emphasizing that word or in questions, the accentuation varies by making them agudo (we represent them with a lengthening of the vowel to mark pronunciation): ¿Adondee iremoos? (Where shall we go?).

Intonation

is perhaps one of the most distinctive features when listening to Haketi. It is a language that we could define as musical, a singing and joyful language. We can still hear this characteristic sonority of Haketía in a very residual way in some older speakers of this language.

As for the morphosyntactic features

we must dwell on the conjugations of verbs and plurals. Although in Haketía there are tree conjugations of the verbs like in Spanish, due to the aforementioned change of the vowel /e/ in /i/, most of the verbs of the second conjugation are grouped in the third conjugation. On the other hand, in Haketía we find numerous verbs borrowed from Hebrew and dialectal Arabic that are Spanishized by grouping them in the first conjugation: ḥadrear, means to speak. Atauilar, tidy up, put in order. When conjugating them, for example, in the present tense, a /y/ is added to the first person at the end. According to Solly Levy, the explanation he finds for this is that the addition responds to assimilation with the conjugated verbs: voy (I go), soy (I am), estoy (I am). Therefore, yo hablo (I speak) in Haketía would be: yo habloy, and yo digo (I say) is yo digoy. The issue of plurals is also special in this language. As Cuevas Ramos explains in her research work (2016), the most significant features can be summarized as follows: The plural of all words from Castilian, French or Portuguese origin are made following the rules of plurals in Spanish with two exceptions: 1- When the word ends in Z it is not changed to C to make /-ces/, but rather maintains the Z: vez (time), plural vezes. 2- The words that end in S, change said S for a Z: mes (month) plural mezes. Arabic loanwords will also take this plural ending: mesqín (poor)- plural mesqínes. For words of Hebrew origin, it maintains the regular Hebrew plurals: /-im/ for the masculine and /-ot/ for the feminine. For example, Goy (nation, town) whose plural is Goyím.