Ladino

Ladino, otherwise known as Judeo-Spanish, is the spoken and written Hispanic language of Jews of Spanish origin. Ladino did not become a specifically Jewish language until after the expulsion from Spain in 1492 - it was merely the language of their province. It is also known as Judezmo, Dzhudezmo, or Spaniolit.

When the Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal they were cut off from the further development of the language, but they continued to speak it in the communities and countries to which they emigrated. Ladino therefore reflects the grammar and vocabulary of 14th and 15th century Spanish. The further away from Spain the emigrants went, the more cut off they were from developments in the language, and the more Ladino began to diverge from mainstream Castilian Spanish.

In Amsterdam, England and Italy, those Jews who continued to speak 'Ladino' were in constant contact with Spain and therefore they basically continued to speak the Castilian Spanish of the time. However, in the Sephardi communities of the Ottoman Empire, the language not only retained the older forms of Spanish, but borrowed so many words from Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Turkish, and even French, that it became more and more distorted. Ladino was nowhere near as diverse as the various forms of Yiddish, but there were still two different dialects, which corresponded to the different origins of the speakers.

Ladino is a Romance language, derived mainly from Old Castilian and Hebrew. The relationship of Ladino to Castilian Spanish is comparable to that of Yiddish to German. Speakers are currently almost exclusively Sephardic Jews, for example, in Thessaloniki and Istanbul.

An even greater revelation was that our Spanish was different from that spoken in Spain and Latin America today. "Today we are going to learn some words in Spanish," said my fifth grade teacher. She continued, "The first thing that you must learn is that in Spanish the letter ‘j' is pronounced like an ‘h'". I thought she was crazy or at least uninformed, at home we pronounced the "j" as an English or French; "zh" or "dzh". Sometimes it was "sh" as in the word dejar which we pronounced deshar, in modern Spanish it is pronounced; dehar. And some of the words were different; we would say, aninda (yet), trocar (change), chapeo (hat) and chapines (shoes), for the modern Spanish words, todavia, cambiar, sombrero and zapatos. Years later I found that the first three words were Portuguese and the fourth was Catalan.

Ladino is a derivation of the medieval Castilian Spanish, which is preserved among the descendants of the Jews expelled from Spain (called Sefardim or Sephardim) in 1492. At present time they are estimated to be about 700,000 and the major part of them is established in the State of Israel. No more than 200,000 are active Ladino speakers and these are mainly persons of old age. Most of them originate in the Balkans and Asia Minor, but, since World War II, were scattered around the world. About 11,000 speakers now reside in Israel, and many live in New York City and Buenos Aires.

Ladino, otherwise known as Judeo-Spanish, is the spoken and written Hispanic language of Jews of Spanish origin. Ladino did not become a specifically Jewish language until after the expulsion from Spain in 1492 - it was merely the language of their province. It is also known as Judezmo, Dzhudezmo, or Spaniolit.

Ladino language also called Judeo-spanish, Sefardic, or Sephardic, Romance language spoken by Sefardic Jews in the Balkans, the Middle East, North Africa, Greece, and Turkey; it is very nearly extinct in many of these areas. A very archaic form of Castilian Spanish, mixed somewhat with Hebrew elements, Ladino originated in Spain and was carried to its present speech areas by the descendants of the Spanish Jews who were exiled from Spain

Sometimes called "Spaniolish," Ladino is the Spanish-Jewish dialect spoken by Sephardic Jews. Ladino's origins are similar to those of Yiddish, in that they both combine Hebrew and local language(s). As the Ladino language developed during the 15th and 16th centuries, it grew to include Arabic, Turkish, Greek, French and Italian.

The Ladino Language

Ladino is the name most commonly used today for the traditional “Judeo-Spanish” language of Sephardi or Spanish Jews. The language is also known as Judezmo, Judyó, Spanyol(it), Judeo-Spanish, and – in Morocco – Ḥaketia. Customarily written in the Hebrew alphabet, but today mostly in Romanization, the language is comprised of elements derived from Old Ibero-Romance, Hebrew and Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Greek, local post-Expulsion contact languages such as Turkish in the former Ottoman regions and Arabic in Morocco, and European prestige languages such as French, Italian and Castilian.