Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) and Its Literature

Judeo-Spanish, also known as Ladino or Djudezmo, is the language derived from the Castilian spoken by the Jews of Spain before their expulsion in 1492, preserved and transformed by their descendants in exile. Settled mainly in the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans, its speakers enriched it with borrowings from Hebrew, Turkish, Greek, and other Mediterranean languages. From the nineteenth century onward, Judeo-Spanish sustained a dynamic cultural life with a press, a theater, and a literature, as well as a vast oral corpus of romances, proverbs, and songs. The term "Ladino" more precisely designates the calque language used to translate Hebrew sacred texts literally. Decimated by the Shoah in the Balkans and weakened by assimilation, this language is today classified as endangered but is the subject of documentation and revitalization efforts.

Sources & resources

• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan
• Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World — Brill