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Ladino is a Romance Language , derived mainly from Old Castilian ( Spanish ) and Hebrew . The relationship of Ladino to Castilian Spanish is comparable to that of Yiddish to German . Speakers are currently almost exclusively Sephardic Jew s, for example, in (or from) Thessaloniki and Istanbul . Like Old Spanish, ''Ladino'' keeps the and palatal phonemes, both changed to in modern Spanish. But unlike Old Spanish, it has an phoneme taken over from Hebrew. In some places it has also developed certain characteristic usages, such as ''muestro'' for ''nuestro'' (our). The structure is linguistically related to Spanish , with the addition of many terms from the Hebrew , Portuguese , French , Turkish , Greek , and South Slavic languages depending on where the speakers resided. Name of language The name "Ladino" is a variant of "Latin". The language is also called Judæo-Spanish, '''Sefardi''', '''Dzhudezmo''', '''Judezmo''', and '''Spanyol'''; '''Haquitía''' (from the Arabic ''haka'' حكى, "tell") refers to the dialect of North Africa, especially Morocco . The dialect of the Oran area of Algeria was called ''' Tetuani ''', after the Moroccan town Tétouan , since many Oranais Jew s came from this city. In Hebrew, the language is called '''Spanyolit'''. According to the Ethnologue , :The name 'Dzhudezmo' is used by Jewish linguists, 'Judeo-Espanyol' by Turkish Jews; 'Judeo-Spanish' by Romance philologists; 'Ladino' by laymen, especially in Israel; 'Hakitia' by Moroccan Jews; 'Spanyol' by some others. Authors like , 1978 reserve "Ladino" for a very Hebraicized form used in religious translations as in the Ferrara Bible . Orthography Today, ''Ladino'' is most commonly written with the Latin Alphabet , especially in Turkey . However, it is still sometimes written in the Hebrew Alphabet (especially in Rashi characters), a practice that was very common, possibly almost universal, until the 19th Century (and called '' Aljamiado '', by analogy with Arabic usage.) Although the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets have been employed in the past, this is rare nowadays. Following the decimation of Sephardic communities throughout much of Europe (particularly in the Netherlands and the Balkans ) during the Holocaust the greatest proportion of speakers remaining were Turkish Jews. As a result the Turkish variant of the Latin Alphabet is widely used for publications in ''Ladino''. The Israeli Autoridad Nasionala Del Ladino promotes another spelling. There are also those who, with Iacob M Hassán , claim that Ladino should adopt the orthography of the standard Spanish language. Perhaps more conservative and less popular, others along with - ''s'' : like in ''buscar'', ''cosquillas'', ''mascar'', ''pescar'' or after ''is'' endings like in séis , favláis or sois could be reflected through writing by the ''x''. The difference between ''b'' and ''v'' would be clearer thus some concessions to Latin spelling, as in the case of the reflex of intervocalic ''-B-'': eg Latin ''DEBET'' > post-1800 Spanish ''debe'', will return to its Old Castilian ''deve'' spelling. The use of the digraphs ''ch'', ''ph'' and ''th'' ( today /k/, /f/ and /t/ in standard Spanish respectively), formally reformed in 1803, would be in used in words like ''orthographía'', ''theología''. Latin ''q'' before words like ''quando'', ''quanto'' and ''qual'' would also be used. Some argue that using Old Castilian Orthography will only distance non-Hispanic characteristics about Ladino and create problems that phonetical systems solve. Nevertheless, Classical and Golden Age Spanish literature would gain renewed interest, better appreciation and understanding should its orthography be used again. History During the Middle Ages, Jews were instrumental in the development of Castilian into a prestige language. In the Toledo School Of Translators , erudite Jews translated Arabic and Hebrew works (often translated earlier from Greek) into Castilian and Christians translated again into Latin for transmission to Europe. 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 . The contact among Jews of different regions and tongues developed a unified dialect, already different in some aspects of the Castilian norm that was forming simultaneously in Spain. The language was known as ''Yahudice'' (Jewish language) in the Ottoman Empire . In late 18th century, Enderunlu Fazıl ( Fazyl Bin Tahir Enderuni ) wrote in his ''Zenanname'': "Spaniards speak the Jewish language but they are not Jews." Over time, a corpus of literature, both liturgical and secular, developed. Early Ladino literature was limited to translations from Hebrew. At the end of the 17th century, Hebrew was disappearing as the vehicle for Rabbinic instruction. Thus a literature in the popular tongue (Ladino) appeared in the 18th century, such as Meam Loez and poetry collections. By the end of the 19th century, Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire studied in schools of the Alliance Israelite Universelle . French became the language for foreign relations (as it did for Maronite s), and ''Ladino'' drew from French for neologisms. New secular genres appeared: more than 300 journals, history, theatre, biographies. Interaction with French also gave way to the creation of a new slang named ''judeo-franyol''. Given the relative isolation of many communities, a number of regional dialects of Ladino appeared, many with only limited mutual comprehensibility. This is due largely to the adoption of large numbers of Loanword s from the surrounding populations, including, depending on the location of the community, from Greek , Turkish , Arabic , and, in the Balkans , Slavic Languages , especially Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian . Ladino was the common language in the Ottoman city of Salonika , captured by Greece in 1912 and subsequently renamed Thessaloniki . Despite a major fire, economic oppression by Greek authorities, and mass settlement of Greek-speaking refugees, the language remained widely spoken in Salonika until the death of 49,000 Salonikan Jews in The Holocaust during the Second World War . Ladino was also a language used in Donmeh rites. An example is the recite ''Sabbatai Tsevi esperamos a ti''. Today, the religious practices and ritual use of Ladino seem to be confined to elderly generations. In the twentieth century, the number of speakers declined sharply: entire communities were eradicated in The Holocaust , while the remaining speakers, many of whom migrated to Israel , adopted Hebrew . The governments of the new Nation-state encouraged instruction in the official language. At the same time, it aroused the interest of philologists since it conserved language and literature which existed prior to the standardisation of Spanish. Many native speakers today are elderly Olim , who have not transmitted the language to their children or grandchildren, however it is experiencing a minor revival among Sephardic communities. In addition, Sephardic communities in several Latin American countries still use ''Ladino''. Qol Yerushalayim and Radio Nacional De España hold regular radio broadcasts in Ladino. And Law and Order showed an episode with references to Ladino language. Songs Folklorists have been collecting ''romances'' and other folk songs, some dating from before the expulsion. Many religious songs in Ladino are translations of the Hebrew, usually with a different tune. For example, ''Ein k'Eloheynu'' looks like this in Ladino: :Non komo muestro Dio, :Non komo muestro Sinyor, :Non komo muestro Rey, :Non komo muestro Salvador. etc. Anachronistically, Abraham - who in the Bible is the very first Jew and the ancestor of all who followed, hence his appelation "Avinu" (Our Father) - is in the Ladino song born already in the judería, the Jewish quarter. This makes Terach and his wife into Jews, as are the parents of other babies killed by Nimrod. In essence, unlike its Biblical model, the song is about a Jewish community persecuted by a cruel king and witnessing the birth of a miraculous saviour - a subject of obvious interest and attraction to the Jewish people who composed and sung it in Medieval Spain. Evidently, the song attributes to Abraham many aspects of the birth of Jesus - the star announcing his impending birth, the cruel king killing innocent babies in an effort to prevent that birth, and his being laid in a manger. Moreover, his speaking rationally to his mother right after birth suggests the Muslim account where the baby Jesus (honoured by Islam as a Prophet though not as the Son of God) speaks to Mary and counsels her right after birth - a miracle not recounted in the Christian Gospels (see {Link without Title} ). Jews in Medieval Spain were likely to be familiar with the Muslim version of Jesus' life as well as the Christian one. Jennifer Charles and Oren Bloedow from the New York-based band Elysian Fields released a CD in 2001 called La Mar Enfortuna, which featured modern versions of traditional Sephardic songs, many sung by Charles in Ladino. There are a number of groups in Turkey that sing in Ladino, notably ''Janet - Jak Esim Ensemble'', ''Sefarad'', ''Los Pasharos Sefaradis'', and the children's chorus ''Las Estreyikas d'Estambol''. Reference See also External links
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