Ladino
Hi everyone, I just wanted to bring to light a latin language that no one has talked about yet. Ladino!
For those who've never heard of this before, its an offshoot of spanish spoken by jews who were expelled in 1492 when they went to the Ottaman Empire. Therefore there's a lot of arabic, turkish, and hebrew thrown in.
Unfortunately, there are few native speakers alive who speak it on a daily basis, and its thought that soon its going to become a dead language. An example is my friends grand-mother who spoke grew up with ladino as her first language. However she hasn't really spoken it in 50 years.
You can listen to it here:
http://www.sephardicstudies.org/quickladino.html
Maybe some spanish speakers can say how can say how close it is to spanish
Ladino is also a word in Spanish it means : "Weasel" in the sense of Shamaless not in the sense of the animal.
For example:
Indio Ladino: Weasel Indian.
Phil,
Yes. Just as there is a Jewish form of German (Yiddish), there is also a Jewish form of Spanish (Ladino). It is still essentially a 14th and 15th century Spanish and must be very close to what Columbus and the Conquistadors spoke. Some its older Spanish pronuciations are apparent in words like muncho (mucho 'much'), agora (ahora 'now'), aguzho (agujo 'needle'), and el kaxon (el cajón 'the box;chest') etc. It uses rapoza for "fox' and mancepo for "boy" which are archaicisms instead of the modern Spanish zorro and muchacho. Before World War II, New York City had a big Ladino speaking community and several Ladino newspapers. There are many Sephardi Jews living in Seattle but few whom I've met can speak Ladino. A good Ladino singer to listen to is Flory Jagoda (originally from Yugoslavia where many Spanish Jews fled). If you can find any of her CD's they are worth listening to. Some of it sounds much like Andalusian and Mexican music.
Sigma,
Interesting point about 'ladino' also meaning "shameless" and "weasely" in standard Spanish. However, "Ladino" in the sense of the language is an alteration of Latino meaning "Latin." During the Middle Ages, people in Western Europe were called "Latins" or "Franks" (sometimes even Keltoi or Kelts) by the Byzantine Greeks and Arabs regardless of their religion or nationality. That's how this group of Spanish Jews got their name.
Some (OF) its older Spanish pronuciations
One of my (worst) teachers was a Sephardic Jew. He was a specialist in medieval literature who amazingly couldn't read Latin.
Before they left Spain the Spanish Jews produced works such as the proverbs of Sem Tob.
"Por naçer en espino
La rrosa, yo no syento
Que pierde...
Nin los enxemplos buenos
Por que judío los diga....
Which says, more or less, that a rose is no less for having originated among thorns, nor are profitable sayings worth less because they come from the mouth of a Jew.
Also one of the major works of early Spanish literature, La Celestina, was written by Fernando de Rojas, probably a 'converso' (convert from Judaism).
How understandable is Ladino (also known as Dzhudezmo) for a speaker of modern Spanish? Can a Spanish speaker and Ladino speaker hold a conversation?
Except for some occasional words, the two forms of Spanish are probably mutually intelligable. Over thirty years ago, I showed an article in "Quinto Lingo" about Ladino to a Mexican friend of mine, Salvador Guerrero. He told me that it looked like Spanish to him and implied that he didn't understand why the magazine was trying to present it as something special. Many years later, I tried speaking some Romanian to a Mexican co-worker of mine, Hugo, just for the heck of it and I was surprised at how much of it he recognized. After all, Romanian is probably the most divergent member of the Romance family. He only said that it sounded more like Italian than Spanish.
I can understand the few Ladino I've read, but not Romanian as Brennus said.
Thanks for the info,
Sigma, i was just wondering if you can understand completely the audio clip here.
http://www.sephardicstudies.org/quickladino.html
If so, then would ladino constitute another language or just a dialect, like the equivalent of bayern german to standard german for example
Affirmative Phil I understood completely the audio clip.
I think is just a dialect of Spanish because it match in a 98% with it, only a couple of words are pronounced slightly different. (Well at least the audio clip that I heard).
La Serena
Si la mar era de leche
Los barquitos de canela
Yo me mancharia entera
Por salvar la mi bandera
Si la mar era de leche
Yo me haria un pexcador
Pexcaria las mis dolores
Con palavricas de amor
En la mar hay una torre
En la torre una ventana
En la ventana hay una hija
Que a los marineros ama.
Dame tu mano palomba
Para suvir a tu nido
Maldicha que durmes sola
vengo a durmir contigo
Interesting...
<<Si la mar era de leche>>
Indicative used as subjunctive.
<<Por salvar la mi bandera>>
Article before the possessive adjective.
<<Pexcaria las mis dolores>> <<En la mar hay una torre>>
'Dolor' and 'mar' are used as femenine words. I think they used to be neuter nouns in Latin. ('Mar' is still used as femenine, but that's not common).
P.S.: 'Ladino' is an evolution of 'Latino'.
>Article before the possessive adjective.
Yes, this is something that occurs in old Spanish. You'll see it also in Gonzalo de Berceo (12th-13th century):
"Toda sancta eglesia fará dent grant ganançia,
Abrá maior verguenza ante la tu substançia,
Sabran maiores nuevas de la tu alabançia
Que non renunçian todos los maestros de Françia."
http://www.vallenajerilla.com/obrasberceo/duelo.htm
On the similarities between Romanian and Spanish:
A few years ago, a young woman who was a recent Romanian emigree joined a mission team from our community which I was leading in a relief work project in Mexico. I, like Brennus, was quite surprised at how much mutual intelligibility Daniela found with the Mexican people we were working among. Certainly, it wasn't a 1-for-1 exchange, but she was generally able to communicate her point, and had never studied any foreign language other than English.