Judaeo-Spanish
Judaeo-Spanish is a Romance language, derived mainly from Old Castilian (Spanish). Speakers are exclusively Sephardic Jews. In popular usage, the language is often called Ladino.Like Old Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish keeps the /S/ and /Z/ palatal phonemes, both changed to /x/ in modern Spanish. But unlike Old Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish has an /x/ phoneme taken over from Hebrew.
Judaeo-Spanish is normally - like Hebrew and Yiddish - written with the Hebrew alphabet although it is linguistically unrelated to Hebrew and very distantly related to Yiddish.
Until recent times, the language was widely spoken throughout the Balkans, Turkey, the Middle East, and North Africa, having been brought there by Jewish refugees fleeing Spain following the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. Over time, a corpus of literature, both liturgical and secular, developed.
In the twentieth century, the number of speakers declined sharply: entire communities were eradicated in the Holocaust, while the remaining speakers, most of whom migrated to Israel, adopted Hebrew.
Most native speakers today are elderly immigrants, who have not transmitted the language to their children or grandchildren. In addition, Sephardic communities in several Latin American countries still use Ladino.
Here is a sample:
Non komo muestro Dio,
Non komo muestro Sinyor,
Non komo muestro Rey,
Non komo muestro Salvador.
It is also sung in Hebrew (Ein k'Eloheynu) but the tune is different.
See also: Judaism, Yiddish language, Hebrew
External link
- Ladinokomunita (http://www.sephardicstudies.org/komunita.html), an email list in Judaeo-Spanish
It were better for him,
about his neck, and he should be
should offend one of my
many, has discouraged many: it
grief in us all. And yet your
blessed Paul the Apostle into your
to you at his first preaching the
admonish you concerning himself,
that even then ye had begun to
among yourselves.
22 Nevertheless your partiality
forasmuch as ye placed your
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was greatly tried and approved
who are they that have now led
reputation of that brotherly love
yea, a very great shame, and
profession, to hear that the
of the Corinthians should,
into a sedition against its
only to us, but to those also that
the Lord is blasphemed through
are brought into danger by it.
27 Let us therefore with all
and let us fall down before the
that he would be favourably
again to a seemly and holy course
righteousness, opening unto.
On
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