week the Germans occupied the island with huge losses among the Italians, and subsequently deported the nearly 5,000 Jews (speakers of the Italkian) of the island to concentration camps, where most of them perished. Currently, the Venetian language is no longer spoken in Corfu as its last speakers died in the 1980s. Moreover, there are only a few Jews in Corfu city who still speak Italkian, a Jewish language mixed with many Venetian words. Italian with Venetian/Apulian influences Historically, the upper class of the Jewish community of Corfu spoke a Venetian dialect with some modifications (due to the influence of Greek) (see "Italkian"). The Venetian of the Corfiote Jews accordingly differed from the same Venetian dialect as spoken by non-Jews in the same town. A characteristic of this dialect is the formation in "ò" of the plural of nouns ending in "à", a formation which originated in the Hebrew ending, simplified, according to the Italian laws of phonology, into "ò", e.g., the Italianized plural of "berakah" is "berakhò" (for "berakot"); hence "novità", "novitò"; "città", "cittò." There has presumably been no Jewish literature in this dialect, since Venice herself very early adopted pure Italian as her official language, and all documents of the Corfu Jewish community were written in that language, which served as well in Hebrew schools as the means of translating the Bible. Permanent residence in Corfu was also found by the Apulian Jews, who brought from the Italian coast their vernacular and a few specimens, still preserved, of their literature. The dialect from Apulia was accordingly spoken by the under class of the Jewish community. Two Apulian love-songs, seemingly original, exist in manuscript, of which one is an independent composition of a rather scurrilous purport, while in the second each stanza is preceded by one of a religious Hebrew poem on a quite different subject. Both are written in Hebrew characters, as is a semioriginal composition containing the rules for the Passover supper, of which the following paragraph (with Italian words retransliterated) may be cited: "Pigiamu la cu li doi signali, e la spartimu a menzu, edizzimu: Comu spartimu chista, cussi spardiu lu Mari Ruviu, e passàra li padri nostri intra di issu e fizzi cun issi e . Cussì cu fazza cu nùi; chistu annu accà, l'annu che veni à la terra di omini liberi.—Menza mintimu sotto la tovaggia pir, e l'altva menza infra li doi, pir