| Also Known As: Dzhudezmo,Spanyol,Hakitia,Judezmo,Sefardi,Haketia,Haquetiya,Judeo Spanish,Ladino
Description:
Judaeo-Spanish (native names Djudeo-Espanyol, Ladino, Djudezmo, Djudeo-Kasteyano, etc.) is a Romance language derived from Old Spanish. As a Jewish language, it is influenced heavily by Hebrew and Aramaic, but also Arabic, Turkish and to a lesser extent Greek and other languages where Sephardic expellees settled around the world, primarily throughout the Ottoman Empire.
Currently, speakers are almost exclusively Sephardic Jews, principally those in or from Thessaloniki (modern Greece), Istanbul and Izmir (modern Turkey), all localities into which the Sephardim re-settled centuries ago.
Judaeo-Spanish has kept the postalveolar phonemes /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ of Old Castilian, which both changed to the velar /x/ in modern Spanish; it also has an /x/ phoneme taken over from Hebrew. In some places it has also retained certain characteristic words, such as muestro for nuestro (our). Its grammatical structure is close to that of Spanish, with the addition of many terms from Hebrew, Portuguese, French, Turkish, Greek, Bulgarian and Bosnian depending on the geographic origin of the speaker.
Like many other Jewish languages, Judaeo-Spanish is in serious danger of language extinction because most..... full article at Wikipedia |
