Judaeo-Spanish
Judaeo-Spanish or Judeo-Spanish, also known as Ladino or Judezmo, Sephardi or Spaniolit, is a Romance language derived from Castilian Old Spanish.
It was originally spoken by Sephardic Jews in parts of the Iberian Peninsula and then, after the Edict of Expulsion, it spread throughout the Ottoman Empire as well as France, Italy, the Netherlands, Morocco, and England. It is today spoken mainly by Sephardic minorities in more than 30 countries, with most speakers residing currently in Israel. Although it has no official status in any country, it has been acknowledged as a minority language in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, and France. In 2017, it was formally recognised by the Royal Spanish Academy.
The core vocabulary of Judaeo-Spanish is Old Spanish, and it has numerous elements from the other old Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula: [Aragonese language|Old Catalan, Old Aragonese], Asturleonese, Galician-Portuguese, and Andalusi Romance. The language has been further influenced by Ottoman Turkish and Semitic vocabulary, such as Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic—especially in the domains of religion, law, and spirituality—and most of the vocabulary for new and modern concepts has been adopted through French and Italian. Furthermore, the language is influenced to a lesser degree by other local languages of the Balkans, such as Greek, Bulgarian, and Serbo-Croatian.
Historically, the Rashi script and its cursive form Solitreo have been the main orthographies for writing Ladino. However, today it is mainly written with the Latin alphabet, though some other alphabets such as Hebrew and Cyrillic are still in use. Judaeo-Spanish has been known also by other names, such as: Español, Judió or Jidió, Judesmo, Sefaradhí or Ḥaketía. In Turkey, and formerly in the Ottoman Empire, it has been traditionally called Yahudice in Turkish, meaning the 'Jewish language.' In Israel, Hebrew speakers usually call the language Ladino, Espanyolit or Spanyolit.
Ladino, once the Jewish lingua franca of the Adriatic Sea, the Balkans, and the Middle East, and renowned for its rich literature, especially in Salonika, today is under serious threat of extinction. Most native speakers are elderly, and the language is not transmitted to their children or grandchildren for various reasons; consequently, all Judeo-Spanish-speaking communities are undergoing a language shift. In 2018, four native speakers in Bosnia were identified; however, two of them have since died, David Kamhi in 2021 and Moris Albahari in late 2022. In some expatriate communities in Spain, Latin America, and elsewhere, there is a threat of assimilation by modern Spanish. It is experiencing, however, a minor revival among Sephardic communities, especially in music.
Name
The Jewish scholar Joseph Nehama, author of the comprehensive Dictionnaire du judéo-espagnol, referred to the language as Judeo-Espagnol. The 1903 Hebrew–Judeo-Spanish Haggadah entitled "Seder Haggadah shel pesaḥ ʿim pitron be-lashon sefaradi", from the Sephardic community of Livorno, Italy, refers to the language used for explanation as the Sefaradi language. The rare Judeo-Spanish-language textbook entitled Nuevo Silibaryo Espanyol, published in Salonica in 1929, referred to the language as Espanyol and lingua Djudeo-Espanyola.The language is also called Judeo-Espanyol, Judeoespañol, Sefardí, Judío, and Espanyol or Español sefardita; Haketia refers to the dialect of North Africa, especially Morocco. Judeo-Spanish has also been referred to as Judesmo. The dialect of the Oran area of Algeria was called Tétuani after the Moroccan city of Tétouan since many Orani Jews came from there. In Israel, the language is known as Spanyolit or Espanyolit. The names Djidio, Kasteyano Muestro, and Spanyol de mozotros have also been proposed to refer to the language; regional names to refer to the language include kastiyano viejo, sepharadit, ekseris romeka, yahudije, and musevije.
An entry in Ethnologue claims, "The name 'Judesmo' is used by Jewish linguists and Turkish Jews and American Jews; 'Judeo-Spanish' by Romance philologists; 'Ladino' by laymen, initially in Israel; 'Haketia' by Moroccan Jews; 'Spanyol' by some others." That does not reflect the historical usage. In the Judaeo-Spanish press of the 19th and 20th centuries the native authors referred to the language almost exclusively as Espanyol, which was also the name that its native speakers spontaneously gave to it for as long as it was their primary spoken language. More rarely, the bookish Judeo-Espanyol has also been used since the late 19th century.
In recent decades in Israel, followed by the United States and Spain, the language has come to be referred to as Ladino, literally meaning 'Latin'. This name for the language was promoted by the Autoridad Nasionala del Ladino. However, speakers of the language in Israel referred to their mother tongue as Espanyolit or Spanyolit. Native speakers of the language consider the name Ladino to be incorrect, having for centuries reserved the term for the "semi-sacred" language used in word-by-word translations from the Bible, which is distinct from the spoken vernacular. According to linguist Paul Wexler, Ladino is a written language that developed in the eighteenth century and is distinct from spoken Judeo-Spanish. According to the website of the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, the cultural center of Sephardic Judaism after the expulsion from Spain,
The derivation of the name Ladino is complicated. Before the expulsion of Jews from Spain, the word meant "literary Spanish" as opposed to other dialects, or "Romance" distinct from Arabic. One derivation has Ladino as derived from the verb enladinar, meaning "to translate", from when Jews, Christians and Arabs translated works from Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic into Spanish during the times of Alfonso X of Castile. Following the Expulsion, Jews spoke of "the Ladino" to mean the word-for-word translation of the Bible into Old Spanish. By extension, it came to mean that style of Spanish generally in the same way that Targum has come to refer to Judeo-Aramaic languages and Arab Jews, sharḥ has come to mean Judeo-Arabic.
Judaeo-Spanish Ladino should not be confused with the Ladin language, spoken in part of Northeast Italy. Ladin has nothing to do with Jews or with Spanish beyond being a Romance language, a property that it shares with French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian.
Origins
At the time of the expulsion from Spain, the day-to-day language of the Jews of different regions of the peninsula was hardly, if at all, different from that of their Christian neighbours. There may have been some dialect mixing to form a sort of Jewish lingua franca. There was, however, a special style of Spanish used for purposes of study or translation, featuring a more archaic dialect, a large number of Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords and a tendency to render Hebrew word order literally. As mentioned above, authorities confine the term Ladino to that style.Following the Expulsion of Jews from Spain, the process of dialect mixing continued, but Castilian Spanish remained by far the largest contributor. The daily language was increasingly influenced by both the language of study and the local non-Jewish vernaculars, such as Greek and Turkish. It came to be known as Judesmo and, in that respect, the development is parallel to that of Yiddish. However, many speakers, especially among community leaders, also had command of a more formal style, "castellano", which was closer to the Spanish at the time of the Expulsion.
Spanish
The grammar, the phonology, and about 60% of the vocabulary of Judaeo-Spanish is essentially Spanish but, in some respects, it resembles the dialects in southern Spain and South America, rather than the dialects of Central Spain. For example, it has yeísmo as well as seseo.In many respects, it reproduces the Spanish of the time of the Expulsion, rather than the modern variety, as it retains some archaic features such as the following:
- Modern Spanish j, pronounced, corresponds to two different phonemes in Old Spanish: x, pronounced, and j, pronounced. Judaeo-Spanish retains the original sounds. Similarly, g before e or i remains or, not.
- * Contrast basho and mujer.
- Modern Spanish z, pronounced or, like the th in English think, corresponds to two different phonemes in Old Spanish: ç, pronounced ; and z, pronounced. In Judaeo-Spanish, they are pronounced and, respectively.
- *Contrast korasón and dezir.
- In modern Spanish, the use of the letters b and v is determined partly based on earlier forms of the language and partly based on Latin etymology. Both letters represent one phoneme,, realised as or as according to its position. In Judaeo-Spanish, and are different phonemes: boz 'voice' vs. vos 'you'. v is a labiodental "v," like in English, rather than a bilabial.
Portuguese and other Iberian languages
In some respects, the phonology of both the consonants and part of the lexicon is closer to Portuguese and Catalan than to modern Spanish. This is partially explained by direct influence, but also because Portuguese, Old Spanish and Catalan retained some of the characteristics of medieval Ibero-Romance languages that Spanish later lost.There was mutual influence with the Judaeo-Portuguese of the Portuguese Jews.
Contrast Judaeo-Spanish ' with Portuguese ' and Spanish ' or the initial consonants in Judaeo-Spanish ', ', Spanish ', . It sometimes varied with dialect, as in Judaeo-Spanish popular songs, both and are found.
The Judaeo-Spanish pronunciation of s'' as "" before a "k" sound or at the end of certain words is shared with Portuguese but not with Spanish.
Hebrew and Aramaic
Like other Jewish vernaculars, Judaeo-Spanish incorporates many Hebrew and Aramaic words, mostly for religious concepts and institutions. Examples are haham and kal. Some Judeo-Spanish words of Hebrew or Aramaic origin have more poetic connotations than their Spanish equivalents. Compare gaava from Hebrew ga'avá with arrogansya from Spanish arrogancia.Turkish
The majority of Judaeo-Spanish speaking people resided in the Ottoman Empire, although a large minority on the northern Coast of Morocco and Algeria existed. As such, words of Turkish origin were incorporated into the local dialect of the language. Examples include emrenear from Turkish imrenmek.Some of these words themselves were inherited into Turkish from Arabic or Persian. Examples include bilbiliko, from Persian bülbül and gam from Arabic ġamm.
The Turkish agentive suffix -ci was borrowed into Judaeo-Spanish as the suffix -djí. It can be found in words like halvadjí, derived from halva + -djí.
French
Due to the influence of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in the westernization and modernization of Judaeo-Spanish speaking communities, many words of French origin were adopted. Most of these words refer to Western European innovations and introductions. Examples include: abazur, from French abat-jour, fardate, from French se farder, and fusil from French fusil. Some French political and cultural elements are present in Judaeo-Spanish. For example, ir al Bismark was a phrase used in some Judaeo-Spanish communities in the late 19th century to mean 'to go to the restroom', referring to the German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, as a euphemism for toilet.Arabic
Because of the large number of Arabic words in Spanish generally, it is not always clear whether some of these words were introduced before the Expulsion or adopted later; modern Spanish replaced some of these loans with Latinisms after the Reconquista, where Judaeo-Spanish speakers had no motivation to do so. Some Arabic words were borrowed via Turkish or Persian.Haketia, the variety of Judaeo-Spanish spoken in the Maghreb, has substantial influence from Moroccan and Algerian Arabic, as well as local Amazigh languages. The Jewish community of Tetuan spoke its own particular dialect. The varieties of Judaeo-Spanish spoken in the Levant and Egypt have some influence from Levantine Arabic and Egyptian Arabic respectively.
Other source languages
Judeao-Spanish speaking communities often incorporated words or phrases from surrounding languages. Greek, South Slavic, Italian, and Romanian borrowings can be found in those respective communities.Varieties
A common way of dividing Judaeo-Spanish is by splitting first Haketia, or "Western Judaeo-Spanish", from other varieties, collectively referred to as "Eastern Judaeo-Spanish". Within Eastern Judaeo-Spanish, further division is made based on city of origin.Aldina Quintana split Eastern Ladino into three groups:
- Grupo noroccidental, centered around Sarajevo. It also includes the dialects of Bitola and Kastoria. The most distinct characteristics of this group are: the reduction of and into and the conservation of as in.
- Grupo nororiental that includes most of Bulgaria and Romania including Sofia and Bucharest. It represented an intermediate state between the other varieties: the reduction of and into, but the metathesis of into as in.
- Grupo suroriental that included the main Sephardic cultural hubs of Salonika and Istanbul, as well as the remainder of Anatolia, and Eastern Greece. The varieties of this group maintain the gradient in difference between and in the final position, as well as maintaining a difference between. The metathesis of into is also present.
Differences between varieties usually include phonology and lexicon. The dialect spoken in the Macedonian city of Bitola has relatively many lexical differences as compared with other varieties of Judeao-Spanish. An example of this can be seen is the word for 'carriage'. In many dialects, such as those that were spoken in Istanbul and Thessaloniki, araba is used, a loanword from Arabic via Turkish, while the Monastir dialect uses karrose, possibly from Italian. The dialect spoken in the Greek island of Rhodes has the unique difference that when a word ends with o, it is pronounced as u.
Phonology
The number of phonemes in Judaeo-Spanish varies by dialect. Its phonemic inventory consists of 24-26 consonants and 5 vowels.Consonants
| Bilabial | Labio- dental | Dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Glottal | |
| Nasal | ||||||||||
| Stop | ||||||||||
| Affricate | ||||||||||
| Fricative | ||||||||||
| Trill | ||||||||||
| Tap | ||||||||||
| Approximant | ||||||||||
| Lateral |
Notes:
- Most dialects merge with and with.
- Some dialects merge the rhotic phonemes. The realization of the merged rhotic is variable, though speakers typically pronounce it as a tap.
- and only appear in loanwords. Some dialects merge with.
- and only appear in dialects heavily influenced by Arabic, such as Haketia.
- Voiceless plosives in initial position have aspiration.
Vowels
Notes:- Front rounded vowels only appear in French loanwords. They do not exist in every dialect.
Phonological differences from Spanish
As exemplified in the Sources section above, much of the phonology of Judaeo-Spanish is similar to that of standard modern Spanish. Here are some exceptions:- It is claimed that, unlike all other non-creole varieties of Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish does not contrast the trill and the tap/flap. However, that claim is not universally accepted.
- The Spanish is in some dialects of Judaeo-Spanish: nuevo, nuestro → muevo, muestro.
- The Judaeo-Spanish phoneme inventory includes separate and : jurnal vs jugar/djugar . Neither phoneme is used in modern Spanish, where they have been replaced by the jota : jornal, jugar.
- While Spanish pronounces both b and v as, Judeo-Spanish distinguishes between the two, with b representing and v representing : bivir .
- Judaeo-Spanish has little or no diphthongization of tonic vowels, e.g. in the following lullaby:
- * Durme, durme, kerido ijiko, Serra tus lindos ojikos,
- * Duerme, duerme, querido hijito, Cierra tus lindos ojitos,
- * Sleep, Sleep, beloved little son, close your beautiful little eyes,
- There is a tendency to drop at the end of a word or syllable, as in Andalusian Spanish and many other Spanish dialects in Spain and the Americas: amargasteis -> amargátex/amargatesh.
- The form Dios -> Dio is sometimes explained as an example of dropping the final, or more often as an example of folk etymology: taking the s as a plural ending and attributing it to Christian trinitarianism. Thus, removing the s supposedly produced a more clearly monotheistic word for God. This is probably a folk etymology, however, as is an Old Spanish alternative spelling of dios, the former derived from the Latin accusative form deum and the latter from the nominative form deus.
Morphology
Judaeo-Spanish is distinguished from other Spanish dialects by the presence of the following features:- Judaeo-Spanish maintains the second-person pronouns tú/tu, vos and vosotros/vozotros ; the third-person él/ella/ellos/ellas / el/eya/eyos/eyas are also used in the formal register. The Spanish pronouns usted and ustedes do not exist.
- In verbs, the preterite indicates that an action taken once in the past was also completed at some point in the past. That is as opposed to the imperfect, which refers to any continuous, habitual, unfinished or repetitive past action. Thus, "I ate falafel yesterday" would use the first-person preterite form of 'eat', comí/komí but "When I lived in İzmir, I ran five miles every evening" would use the first-person imperfect form, corría/koria. Though some of the morphology has changed, usage is just as in normative Spanish.
- In general, Judaeo-Spanish uses the Spanish plural morpheme /-s/. The Hebrew plural endings /-im/ and /-ot/ are used with Hebrew loanwords, as well as with a few words from Spanish: ladrón/ladron : ladrones, ladronim; hermano/ermano : hermanos/hermanim / ermanos/ermanim. Similarly, some loaned feminine nouns ending in -á can take either the Spanish or Hebrew plural: quehilá/keilá : quehilás/quehilot / keilas/keilot.
- Judaeo-Spanish contains more gendering cases than standard Spanish, prominently in adjectives, as well as in nouns and in the interrogative qualo/quala / kualo/kuala.
Verb conjugation
Regular conjugation for the present tense:Regular conjugation in the preterite:
Regular conjugation in the imperfect:
Syntax
Judaeo-Spanish follows Spanish for most of its syntax. Like Spanish, it generally follows a subject–verb–object word order, has a nominative-accusative alignment, and is considered a fusional or inflected language.Orthography
Two Israeli organizations, the Akademia Nasionala del Ladino and the Autoridad Nasionala del Ladino, jointly regulate Judaeo-Spanish orthography. The organizations allow speakers to choose between the Hebrew script, which was historically the most prevalent writing system for the language, and the Latin script, which gained prominence after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.Hebrew script
Printed works in Judæo-Spanish use the Rashi script, whereas the handwritten language uses a cursive form of the Hebrew alphabet called Solitreo. In the Hebrew script, a silent must precede word-initial vowels. Moreover, it is necessary to separate adjacent vowels with or. Whereas can separate any pair of vowels, can only separate front vowels from adjacent vowels. Furthermore, cannot separate diphthongs that include a non-syllabic .Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords and morphemes are spelled according to Hebrew orthography. The rest of the language's lexicon is spelled as illustrated in the following table:
| Grapheme | Name | Phoneme | Notes |
| Only appears in Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords. In native words, the dagesh is unnecessary. | |||
| ~ | Most dialects merge ~ with. Therefore, Judaeo-Spanish orthography does not always distinguish the two phonemes. | ||
| Most dialects merge with. | |||
| In Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords, represents an etymologically pharyngealized. | |||
| is represented by a double, except when it is adjacent to a front vowel. | |||
| Only appears in Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords. | |||
| Only appears in Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords. | |||
| silent | Represents an etymological in Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords. | ||
| Only appears in Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords. In native words, the dagesh is unnecessary. | |||
| Cannot represent in native words. | |||
| Represents an etymological in Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords. | |||
| Only appears in Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords. | |||
| Only appears in Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords, wherein it represents an etymological. | |||
| Only appears in Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords. |
Latin script
This orthography uses an interpunct to distinguish the sequence from the phoneme. Writers may also use acute accents to mark irregular stress. The regular stress pattern is as follows:- Words that end with a vowel or with,, or are paroxytones.
- Words that end with any other consonant are oxytones.
| Grapheme | Name | Phoneme |
| a | A | |
| b | Be | |
| ch | Che | |
| d | De | |
| dj | Dje | |
| e | E | |
| f | Ef | |
| g | Ge | |
| h | He | |
| 'h | 'He | |
| i | I | |
| j | Je | |
| k | Ka | |
| l | El | |
| m | Em | |
| n | En | |
| ny | Nye | |
| o | O | |
| ö | Ö | |
| p | Pe | |
| r | Er | |
| rr | ||
| s | Es | |
| sh | She | |
| t | Te | |
| ts | ||
| u | U | |
| ü | Ü | |
| v | Ve | |
| x | Iks | |
| y | Ye | |
| z | Zed |
Historical orthographies
Prior to the adoption of the official orthographies, the following systems of writing Judaeo-Spanish had been used or proposed.- Formerly, the Hebrew-script orthography represented an etymological, which has merged with.
- Historically, the most common form of written Ladino was Rashi script, as well as its cursive form, Solitreo.
- The Greek alphabet and the Cyrillic script were used in the past, but this is rare or nonexistent nowadays.
- In Turkey, Judaeo-Spanish was most commonly written in the Turkish variant of the Latin alphabet. That may have been the most widespread system in use prior to the adoption of the official orthography, as following the decimation of Sephardic communities throughout much of Europe during the Holocaust, the greatest proportion of speakers remaining were Turkish Jews.
- The American Library of Congress has published the romanization standard it uses.
- Works published in Spain usually adopted the standard orthography of modern Spanish to make them easier for modern Spanish speakers to read. The editions often used diacritics to show where the Judaeo-Spanish pronunciation differs from modern Spanish.
- Pablo Carvajal Valdés and others suggested adopting the orthography that was used at the time of the Expulsion
History
In the medieval Iberian Peninsula, now Spain and Portugal, Jews spoke a variety of Romance dialects. Jews in the Middle Ages were instrumental in the development of Spanish into a prestige language. Erudite Jews translated Arabic and Hebrew works, often translated earlier from Greek, into Spanish. Christians translated them again into Latin for transmission to Europe.Following the 1490s expulsion from Spain and Portugal, most of the Iberian Jews resettled in the Ottoman Empire. Jews in the Ottoman Balkans, Western Asia, and North Africa developed their own Romance dialects, with some influence from Hebrew and other languages, which became what is now known as Judaeo-Spanish. Until recent times, the language was widely spoken throughout the Balkans, Turkey/Western Asia and North Africa, as Judaeo-Spanish had been brought there by the Jewish refugees. Later on, many Portuguese Jews also escaped to France, Italy, the Netherlands and England, establishing small groups in those nations as well, but these spoke Early Modern Spanish or Portuguese rather than Judaeo-Spanish. The contact among Jews of different regions and languages, including Catalan, Leonese and Portuguese developed a unified dialect, differing in some aspects from the Spanish norm that was forming simultaneously in Spain, but some of the mixing may have already occurred in exile rather than in the Iberian Peninsula.
In the 16th century, the development Judeo-Spanish was significantly influenced by the extensive mobility of Sephardic Jews. By the end of the century, Spanish had become the dominant language of commerce for Sephardic communities across Italy and the eastern Mediterranean. This standardization was further supported by practices such as hiring tutors to teach Castilian in Hebrew script, as noted in a 1600 deposition from Pisa. Additionally, itinerant rabbis who preached in the vernacular contributed to the spread and standardization of Judeo-Spanish among diverse Sephardic congregations, including those in Greek- and Arabic-speaking regions.
The closeness and mutual comprehensibility between Judaeo-Spanish and Spanish favoured trade among Sephardim, often relatives, from the Ottoman Empire to the Netherlands and the conversos of the Iberian Peninsula.
Over time, a corpus of literature, both liturgical and secular, developed. Early literature was limited to translations from Hebrew. At the end of the 17th century, Hebrew was disappearing as the vehicle for rabbinic instruction. Thus, a literature appeared in the 18th century, such as Me'am Lo'ez and poetry collections. By the end of the 19th century, the Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire studied in schools of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. French became the language for foreign relations, as it did for Maronites, and Judaeo-Spanish drew from French for neologisms. New secular genres appeared, with more than 300 journals, history, theatre, and biographies.
Given the relative isolation of many communities, a number of regional dialects of Judaeo-Spanish appeared, many with only limited mutual comprehensibility, largely because of the adoption of large numbers of loanwords from the surrounding populations, including, depending on the location of the community, from Greek, Turkish, Arabic and, in the Balkans, Slavic languages, especially Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian. The borrowing in many Judaeo-Spanish dialects is so heavy that up to 30% of their vocabulary is of non-Spanish origin. Some words also passed from Judaeo-Spanish into neighbouring languages. For example, the word palavra 'word', passed into Turkish, Greek and Romanian with the meaning 'bunk, hokum, humbug, bullshit' in Turkish and Romanian and 'big talk, boastful talk' in Greek.
The language was known as Yahudice in the Ottoman Empire. In the late 18th century, Ottoman poet Enderunlu Fazıl wrote in his Zenanname: "Castilians speak the Jewish language but they are not Jews."
Judaeo-Spanish was the common language of Salonica during the Ottoman period. The city became part of Greece in 1912 and was subsequently renamed Thessaloniki. Despite the Great Fire of Thessaloniki and mass settlement of Christian refugees, the language remained widely spoken in Salonica until the deportation of 50,000 Salonican Jews in the Holocaust during the Second World War. According to the 1928 census, the language had 62,999 native speakers in Greece. The figure drops down to 53,094 native speakers in 1940, but 21,094 citizens "usually" spoke the language. The language was so prominent in Salonica that the most prestigious monument of the city was known by its Judeo-Spanish name, Las Incantadas.
Judaeo-Spanish was also a language used in Donmeh rites. An example is Sabbatai Tsevi esperamos a ti. Today, the religious practices and the ritual use of Judaeo-Spanish seems confined to elderly generations.
The Castilian colonisation of Northern Africa favoured the role of polyglot Sephards, who bridged between Spanish colonizers and Arab and Berber speakers.
From the 17th to the 19th centuries, Judaeo-Spanish was the predominant Jewish language in the Holy Land, but its dialect was different in some respects from the one in Greece and Turkey. Some families have lived in Jerusalem for centuries and preserve Judaeo-Spanish for cultural and folklore purposes although they now use Hebrew in everyday life.
An often-told Sephardic anecdote from Bosnia-Herzegovina has it that as a Spanish consulate was opened in Sarajevo in the interwar period, two Sephardic women passed by. Upon hearing a Catholic priest who was speaking Spanish, they thought that his language meant that he was Jewish.
In the 20th century, the number of speakers declined sharply: entire communities were murdered in the Holocaust, and many of the remaining speakers, many of whom emigrated to Israel, adopted Hebrew. The government of the new nation-state encouraged instruction in Hebrew. Similarly in the US, Sephardic Jews were encouraged to speak English rather than Judaeo-Spanish, therefore, the language was not passed down to younger generations. In Turkey, where there is a large community of Sephardic Jews, Judaeo-Spanish was considered a language of little prestige; additionally, parents refused to teach their children the language, fearing that their children would develop a "Jewish accent" and therefore face discrimination. At the same time, Judaeo-Spanish aroused the interest of philologists, as it conserved language and literature from before the standardisation of Spanish.
Judaeo-Spanish is in serious danger of extinction. As of 2011, the majority of fluent speakers are over the age of 70; the descendants of these speakers exhibit little to no knowledge of the language. Nevertheless, it is experiencing a minor revival among Sephardic communities, especially in music. In addition, Sephardic communities in several Latin American countries still use Judaeo-Spanish. There, the language is exposed to the different danger of assimilation to modern Spanish.
Kol Yisrael and Radio Nacional de España hold regular radio broadcasts in Judaeo-Spanish. Law & Order: Criminal Intent showed an episode, titled "A Murderer Among Us", with references to the language. Films partially or totally in Judaeo-Spanish include the Mexican film Novia que te vea, The House on Chelouche Street, and Every Time We Say Goodbye.
Efforts have been made to gather and publish modern Judaeo-Spanish fables and folktales. In 2001, the Jewish Publication Society published the first English translation of Judaeo-Spanish folktales, collected by Matilda Koen-Sarano, Folktales of Joha, Jewish Trickster: The Misadventures of the Guileful Sephardic Prankster. A survivor of Auschwitz, Moshe Ha-Elion, issued his translation into Judeo-Spanish of the ancient Greek epic Odyssey in 2012, in his 87th year, and later completed a translation of the sister epic, the Iliad, into his mother tongue.
The language was initially spoken by the Sephardic Jewish community in India, but was later replaced with Judeo-Malayalam.
Literature
The first printed Judaeo-Spanish book was Me-'am lo'ez in 1730. It was a commentary on the Bible in the Judaeo-Spanish language. Most Jews in the Ottoman Empire knew the Hebrew alphabet but did not speak Hebrew. The printing of Me-'am lo'ez marked the emergence of large-scale printing activity in Judaeo-Spanish in the western Ottoman Empire and in Istanbul in particular. The earliest Judaeo-Spanish books were religious in nature, mostly created to maintain religious knowledge for exiles who could not read Hebrew; the first of the known texts is Dinim de shehitah i bedikah ;. Texts continued to be focussed on philosophical and religious themes, including a large body of rabbinic writings, until the first half of the 19th century. The largest output of secular Judaeo-Spanish literature occurred during the latter half of the 19th and the early 20th centuries in the Ottoman Empire. The earliest and most abundant form of secular text was the periodical press: between 1845 and 1939, Ottoman Sephardim published around 300 individual periodical titles. The proliferation of periodicals gave rise to serialised novels: many of them were rewrites of existing foreign novels into Judaeo-Spanish. Unlike the previous scholarly literature, they were intended for a broader audience of educated men and less-educated women alike. They covered a wider range of less weighty content, at times censored to be appropriate for family readings. Popular literature expanded to include love stories and adventure stories, both of which had been absent from Judaeo-Spanish literary canon. The literary corpus meanwhile also expanded to include theatrical plays, poems and other minor genres.Multiple documents made by the Ottoman government were translated into Judaeo-Spanish; usually translators used terms from Ottoman Turkish.
Religious use
The Jewish communities of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Belgrade, Serbia, still chant part of the Sabbath Prayers in Judaeo-Spanish. The Sephardic Synagogue Ezra Bessaroth in Seattle, Washington, United States, was formed by Jews from Turkey and the Greek island of Rhodes, and it uses the language in some portions of its Shabbat services. The Siddur is called Zehut Yosef and was written by Hazzan Isaac Azose.At Congregation Etz Ahaim of Highland Park, New Jersey, a congregation founded by Sephardic Jews from Salonika, a reader chants the Aramaic prayer B'rikh Shemay in Judaeo-Spanish before he takes out the Torah on Shabbat. That is known as Bendichu su Nombre in Judaeo-Spanish. Additionally, at the end of Shabbat services, the entire congregation sings the well-known Hebrew hymn Ein Keloheinu, which is Non Como Muestro Dio in Judaeo-Spanish.
Non Como Muestro Dio is also included, alongside Ein Keloheinu, in Mishkan T'filah, the 2007 Reform prayerbook.
El Dio Alto is a Sephardic hymn often sung during the Havdalah service, its currently popular tune arranged by Judy Frankel. Hazzan Isaac Azose, cantor emeritus of Synagogue Ezra Bessaroth and second-generation Turkish immigrant, has performed an alternative Ottoman tune.
Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan translated some scholarly religious texts, including Me'am Loez into Hebrew, English or both.
İzmir's grand rabbis Haim Palachi, Abraham Palacci, and Rahamim Nissim Palacci all wrote in the language and in Hebrew.
Modern education and use
In 1967, linguist Haïm Vidal Séphiha of the University of Paris became the first professor of Judaeo-Spanish in the world; courses of Judaeo-Spanish have been introduced in universities since then in other European countries, along with research centers dedicated to the study of the language. The National Authority of Ladino, dedicated to the study and promotion of Judaeo-Spanish was established in Jerusalem in 1997.As with Yiddish, Judaeo-Spanish is seeing a minor resurgence in educational interest in colleges across the United States and in Israel. Almost all American Jews are Ashkenazi, with a tradition based on Yiddish, rather than Judaeo-Spanish, and so institutions that offer Yiddish are more common. the University of Pennsylvania and Tufts University offered Judaeo-Spanish courses among colleges in the United States; INALCO in Paris, the University of the Basque Country and University of Granada in Spain were offering courses as well. In Israel, Moshe David Gaon Center for Ladino Culture at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev is leading the way in education and research. Hebrew University also offers courses. The Complutense University of Madrid also used to have courses. Prof. David Bunis taught Judaeo-Spanish at the University of Washington, in Seattle during the 2013–14 academic year. Bunis returned to the University of Washington for the Summer 2020 quarter.
In Spain, the Spanish Royal Academy in 2017 announced plans to create a Judaeo-Spanish branch in Israel in addition to 23 existing academies, in various Spanish-speaking countries, that are associated in the Association of Spanish Language Academies. Its stated purpose is to preserve Judaeo-Spanish. The move was seen as another step to make up for the Expulsion, following the offer of Spanish citizenship to Sephardim who had some connection with Spain.
When French-medium schools operated by Alliance Israelite Universelle opened in the Ottoman Empire in the 1860s, the position of Judaeo-Spanish began to weaken in the Ottoman Empire areas. In time Judaeo-Spanish became perceived as a low status language, and Sephardic people began losing connections to that language. Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue, authors of Sephardi Jewry: A History of the Judeo-Spanish Community, 14th–20th Centuries, wrote that the AIU institutions "gallicized" people who attended. As time progressed, Judaeo-Spanish language and culture declined. Although Mary Altabev in 1994 observed limited use of Ladino at home among educated Turkish Jews, Melis Alphan wrote in Hürriyet in 2017 that the Judaeo-Spanish language in Turkey was heading to extinction.
the Ladino supplement of Şalom is the sole monthly newspaper in Ladino. El Amaneser is the sole all Ladino newspaper.
Samples
Songs
A tradition dating back to at least the 16th century exists of translating piyyutim into Judaeo-Spanish. Fragments from kinnot in Judeo-Spanish from probably the 16th century have been found. It is known that certain women, known as endechederas would attend funerals to sing endechas, however, none of these endechas are known to have survived.A tradition of ballads, or romansas, also exists in the Judeo-Spanish tradition, and were predominantly sung by women. Their original purpose was to transmit news; later they became work songs as well as entertainment. They covered a wide range of topics, from childbirth to marriage to death; they could also cover secular topics, such as unhappily married women, incest, violence, and single mothers. In one ballad, a pregnant princess pretends to her mother that she is not pregnant, but rather has indigestion, then proceeds to give birth to her fourth child.
Folklorists have been collecting romances and other folk songs, some dating from before the expulsion. Many religious songs in Judaeo-Spanish
are translations of Hebrew, usually with a different tune. For example, here is Ein Keloheinu in Judaeo-Spanish:
Other songs relate to secular themes such as love:
Anachronistically, Abraham—who in the Bible is an Aramean and the very first Hebrew and the ancestor of all who followed, hence his appellation Avinu —is in the Judeo-Spanish song born already in the djudería, the Jewish quarter. This makes Terach and his wife into Hebrews, as are the parents of other babies killed by Nimrod. In essence, unlike its Biblical model, the song is about a Hebrew community persecuted by a cruel king and witnessing the birth of a miraculous saviour—a subject of obvious interest and attraction to the Jewish people who composed and sang it in medieval Spain.
The song attributes to Abraham elements that are from the story of Moses's birth, the cruel king killing innocent babies, with the midwives ordered to kill them, the 'holy light' in the Jewish area, as well as from the careers of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego who emerged unscathed from the fiery furnace, and Jesus of Nazareth. Nimrod is thus made to conflate the role and attributes of three archetypal cruel and persecuting kings: Nebuchadnezzar and Pharaoh and Herod
Another example is the Coplas de Purim, a folk song about Purim.
Selected words by origin
Words derived from Arabic:Alforría – 'liberty, freedom'Alhát – 'Sunday'Atemar – 'to terminate'Saraf – 'money changer'Shara – 'wood'Ziara – 'cemetery visit'Words derived from Hebrew:Alefbet – 'alphabet' Anav – 'humble, obedient'Arón – 'grave'Atakanear – 'to arrange'Badkar – 'to reconsider'Beraxa – 'blessing'Din – 'religious law'Kal – 'community', 'synagogue'Kamma – 'how much?', 'how many?'Maaráv – 'west'Maasé – 'story, event'Maabe – 'deluge, downpour, torrent'Mazal – 'star', 'destiny'Met – 'dead'Niftar – 'dead'Purimlik – 'Purim present' Sedaka – 'charity'Tefilá – 'prayer'Zahut – 'blessing'
Words derived from Persian:Chay – 'tea'Chini – 'plate'Paras – 'money'Shasheo – 'dizziness'
Words derived from Portuguese:Abastádo – 'almighty, omnipotent' Aínda – 'yet'Chapeo – 'hat'Preto – 'black' Trocar – 'to change'
Words derived from Turkish:Balta – 'axe'Biterear – 'to terminate'Boyadear – 'to paint, color'Innat – 'whim'Kolay – 'easy'Kushak – 'belt, girdle'Maalé – 'street, quarters, neighbourhood'; Maalé yahudí – 'Jewish quarters'
Words derived from Greek:meldar – 'read, learn'bora – 'storm, torrential rain, gust of wind'demet – 'bouquet'domate – 'tomato'fasaria – 'a fuss, to-do, agitation, bustle'fota – 'the moment when work, motion, traffic reaches its highest intensity'kuturu – 'a pile of mismatched objects, of overripe fruit, of mixed leftovers'
Modern singers
Jennifer Charles and Oren Bloedow from the New York-based band Elysian Fields released a CD in 2001 called La Mar Enfortuna, which featured modern versions of traditional Sephardic songs, many sung by Charles in Judeo-Spanish. The American singer Tanja Solnik has released several award-winning albums that feature songs in the languages: From Generation to Generation: A Legacy of Lullabies and Lullabies and Love Songs. There are a number of groups in Turkey that sing in Judeo-Spanish, notably Janet – Jak Esim Ensemble, Sefarad, Los Pasharos Sefaradis and the children's chorus Las Estreyikas d'Estambol. There is a Brazilian-born singer of Sephardic origins, Fortuna, who researches and plays Judeo-Spanish music.Israeli folk-duo Esther & Abi Ofarim recorded the song "Yo M'enamori d'un Aire" for their 1968 album Up To Date. Esther Ofarim recorded several Judaeo-Spanish songs as a solo artist. These included "Povereta Muchachica", "Noches Noches", "El Rey Nimrod", "Adio Querida" and "Pampaparapam".
The Jewish Bosnian-American musician Flory Jagoda recorded two CDs of music taught to her by her grandmother, a Sephardic folk singer, among a larger discography. Following her death in 2021, gentile musicians in Bosnia have recorded music in Judaeo-Spanish as well.
The cantor Ramón Tasat, who learned Judeo-Spanish at his grandmother's knee in Buenos Aires, has recorded many songs in the language, with three of his CDs focusing primarily on that music.
The Israeli singer Yasmin Levy has also brought a new interpretation to the traditional songs by incorporating more "modern" sounds of Andalusian Flamenco. Her work revitalising Sephardic music has earned Levy the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation Award for promoting cross-cultural dialogue between musicians from three cultures: In Yasmin Levy's own words:
I am proud to combine the two cultures of Ladino and flamenco, while mixing in Middle Eastern influences. I am embarking on a 500 years old musical journey, taking Ladino to Andalusia and mixing it with flamenco, the style that still bears the musical memories of the old Moorish and Jewish-Spanish world with the sound of the Arab world. In a way it is a 'musical reconciliation' of history.
Notable music groups performing in Judeo-Spanish include Voice of the Turtle, Oren Bloedow and Jennifer Charles' La Mar Enfortuna and Vanya Green, who was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for her research and performance of this music. She was recently selected as one of the top ten world music artists by the We are Listening International World of Music Awards for her interpretations of the music.
Robin Greenstein, a New York-based musician, received a federal CETA grant in the 1980s to collect and perform Sephardic Music under the guidance of the American Jewish Congress. Her mentor was Joe Elias, noted Sephardic singer from Brooklyn. She recorded residents of the Sephardic Home for the Aged, a nursing home in Coney Island, New York, singing songs from their childhood. The voices recorded included Victoria Hazan, a well known Sephardic singer who recorded many 78's in Judaeo-Spanish and Turkish from the 1930s and 1940s. Two Judaeo-Spanish songs can be found on her Songs of the Season holiday CD, released in 2010 on Windy Records.
German band In Extremo also recorded a version of the above-mentioned song Avram Avinu.
The Israeli-German folk band has released two albums that have songs with lyrics in Judaeo-Spanish.