Descrittore
Termine preferito
Cultura di Lingua Ebreo-Spagnola CercaNota d'ambito
Used when interviewees discuss Ladino culture, or when Ladino culture is described as part of the their integral, personal / formative experiences before, during and after World War II. (en-US)
Definizione
Ladino, otherwise known as Judeo-Spanish, is the spoken and written Hispanic language of Jews of Spanish origin. Ladino did not become a specifically Jewish language until after the expulsion from Spain in 1492 - it was merely the language of their province. It is also known as Judezmo, Dzhudezmo, or Spaniolit. Ladino reflects the grammar and vocabulary of 14th and 15th century Spanish.
Additional Information:
In the Sephardi communities of the Ottoman Empire, the language not only retained the older forms of Spanish, but borrowed many words from Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Turkish, and even French. Though not as dialectically diverse as the various forms of Yiddish, there were two dialects, corresponding to the different origins of the speakers. 'Oriental' Ladino was spoken in Turkey and Rhodes and reflected Castilian Spanish, whereas 'Western' Ladino was spoken in Greece, Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia and Romania, and preserved the characteristics of northern Spanish and Portuguese. While some terms were transferred between communities through commercial or cultural relations, others remained peculiar to particular communities. These foreign words derive mainly from Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Greek, French, and to a lesser extent from Portuguese and Italian.
In the Ladino spoken in Israel, several words have been borrowed from Yiddish. For most of its lifetime, Ladino was written in the Hebrew alphabet, in Rashi script, or in Solitro, a cursive method of writing letters. It was only in the 20th century that Ladino was ever written using the Latin alphabet. At various times Ladino has been spoken in North Africa, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, France, Israel, and, to a lesser extent, in the United States and Latin America. By the beginning of the 20th century Ladino began to disintegrate. Emigration to Israel from the Balkans hastened the decline of Ladino in Eastern Europe and Turkey.
Ladino speakers who survived the Holocaust and immigrated to Latin America tended to pick up regular Spanish very quickly. Israel is now the country with the greatest number of Ladino speakers, with about 200,000 people who still speak or understand basic or limited forms of the language. (en-US)
Fonte
Dedicated to preserving and promoting centuries-old culture of the Sephardic communities of Turkey, Greece, the Balkans, Europe and the U.S. Emigration, and those communities devastated by the Holocaust. http://www.sephardicstudies.org/history.html.