Judaeo-Spanish

Judaeo-Spanish (alternatively spelled Judeo-Spanish; autonym Djudeo-Espanyol, Hebrew script: גֿודֿיאו־איספאנייול), also known as Ladino, Judezmo, or Spaniolit, is a Romance language derived from Castilian Old Spanish.

It has been spoken by Sephardic Jews since they were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula after the Edict of Expulsion, and with their migrations it spread throughout the Ottoman Empire (the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, West Asia, and North Africa) 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.

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, 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 (Espanyol, Spaniol, Spaniolish, Espanioliko), Judió (Judyo, Djudyo) or Jidió (Jidyo, Djidyo), Judesmo (Judezmo, Djudezmo), Sefaradhí (Sefaradi) or Ḥaketía (in North Africa). 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.

In 2017 the Royal Spanish Academy announced plans to boost the conservation of the Ladino language by opening a Judeo-Spanish branch in Israel to its existing Association of Academies of the Spanish Language.

Darío Villanueva described Judeo-Spanish as “an extraordinarily important cultural and historical phenomenon” that was overdue an academy of its own.