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Julia Peck
Boz del puevlo, boz del syelo. / The voice of the people is the voice of heaven.
-Ladino refran
Julia Peck
she/her/hers
Welcome, glad you're here!
I'm currently a PhD student at the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. I primarily work on language revitalization — the process by which a speaker community reclaims and revives a language in decline. I am dedicated to working in support of the revitalization movement for Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), the language of the Sephardic Jews.
I'm also interested in minoritized languages from the angles of sociolinguistics and language contact. My MPhil (Masters) dissertation examined the morphosyntactic integration of borrowings in Istanbul Judeo-Spanish.
At Berkeley, I'm proud to be a co-founder of the Ladino/Judeo-Spanish Working Group, co-coordinator of the Language Revitalization Working Group and a member of the Sociolinguistics Lab at Berkeley (SLaB).
Below are some questions that keep me up at night on the linguistics front. Reach out to me at julia (dot) peck (at) berkeley (dot) edu if you like to think about these too.
Things I think about
Things I think about
How can linguists best serve and collaborate with minoritized speaker communities? How do we move away from the extractive models our discipline once relied on?
What language revitalization and reclamation tools can we develop that are effective and fulfilling for learners and address some of the root causes of language shift and loss?
How can linguists best serve and collaborate with minoritized speaker communities? How do we move away from the extractive models our discipline once relied on?
What language revitalization and reclamation tools can we develop that are effective and fulfilling for learners and address some of the root causes of language shift and loss?
How do speaker communities treat borrowings and other results of language contact as they work to revitalize their languages? How do they integrate them linguistically?
How do speaker communities treat borrowings and other results of language contact as they work to revitalize their languages? How do they integrate them linguistically?
How do language revitalization movements overlap with other anti-oppression movements in a community, like the struggle for land rights, political sovereignty, and economic and environmental justice?
How do language revitalization movements overlap with other anti-oppression movements in a community, like the struggle for land rights, political sovereignty, and economic and environmental justice?
Things I've been up to recently
Publishing a public-facing piece about my work on Ladino revitalization with the Center for Language and Literature Education at Karlstad University: Carving out Space for Minoritized Languages: At-Home Language Nesting in Ladino.
Being named to the Berkeley Language Center Advisory Board!
Completing my semester as a Berkeley Language Center Fellow for Spring 2025.
Co-hosting a backpacking Passover seder in the Ventana Wilderness (Esselen land) with everything we needed on our backs (kind of like what the seder commemorates). Moroccan charoset is excellent for this :)
Presenting at ucLADINO 2025, where I launched a new website, Ladinoenkaza.com, to support learners to build "language nests" for Ladino in their homes.
Publishing an article in the Turkish-Jewish magazine Avlaremoz about a newly (re-)discovered mikvah/mikvé (Jewish ritual bath) in A Coruña, Galicia (Spain). The published version was translated into Turkish but the English original can be read here.
Walking 300 kilometers on the Camino del Norte in Northern Spain & the Basque Country. Nope, I'm not Catholic now, I just love walking too much.
Getting interviewed by the wonderful Ladino21 Youtube channel led by Dr. Carlos Yebra López about my experience learning Ladino (this video) and working within its revitalization movement (this video and this video).
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