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| Judaeo-Spanish | |
|---|---|
| Ladino | |
| |
 The Rashi script, originally used to write the language | |
| Pronunciation | [dʒuˈðeo espaˈɲol] |
| Native to | Israel, Turkey, USA, France, Greece, Brazil, UK, Morocco, Bulgaria, Italy, Canada and others |
| Ethnicity | Sephardim and Sabbateans |
Native speakers | (112,130 cited 1985)[1] |
Indo-European
| |
| Dialects | Haketia, Levantine (Occidental and Oriental dialects), Ponentine |
| Mainly Latin; originally Rashi and Solitreo; also Arabic, Cyrillic script, Greek and Hebrew | |
| Official status | |
| Regulated by | Autoridad Nasionala del Ladino in Israel |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | lad |
| ISO 639-3 | lad |
lad | |
| Linguasphere | ... 51-AAB-bd 51-AAB-ba ... 51-AAB-bd |
Judaeo-Spanish (also spelled Judeo-Spanish and Judæo-Spanish; Latin script: [Judeo-Espanyol] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help),[i] Hebrew script: גֿודֿיאו-איספאנייול, Cyrillic: Ђудео-Еспањол, pronounced [dʒuˈðeo espaˈɲol][ii]), commonly referred to as Ladino, is a Romance language derived from Old Spanish. Originally spoken in the former territories of the Ottoman Empire (the Balkans, Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa) as well as in France, Italy, Kingdom of the Netherlands, Morocco and the UK, today it is spoken mainly by Sephardic minorities in more than 30 countries, most of the speakers residing in Israel. Although it has no official status in any country, it has been acknowledged as a minority language in Israel and Turkey.
The core vocabulary of Judaeo-Spanish is Old Spanish and it has numerous elements from all the old languages of the Iberian Peninsula, such as Aragonese, Astur-Leonese, Catalan, Galician-Portuguese and Mozarabic. The language has been further enriched by Semitic vocabulary, such as Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic and Ottoman Turkish, 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 also influenced by other local languages of the Balkans, such as Greek, Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian, however to a lesser degree.
Historically, the Rashi script and its cursive form Solitreo have been the main orthographies for writing Judaeo-Spanish. 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 is also locally known by many different names, major ones being: Espanyol, Judio (or Jidio), Judesmo, Ladino, Sefaradi and Haketia. In Israel, the language is called Spanyolit, Espanyolit and Ladino. In Turkey and formerly in the Ottoman Empire, the language have been traditionally called Yahudice, meaning the Jewish language.
Judaeo-Spanish, once the trade language of the Adriatic Sea, the Balkans and the Middle-East and renowned for its high 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. In some expatriate communities in Latin America and elsewhere, there is a threat of dialect levelling resulting in extinction by assimilation into modern Spanish. However, it is experiencing a minor revival among Sephardic communities, especially in music.
- ^ Judaeo-Spanish at Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013)
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