Judaeo-Spanish (native names Djudeo-Espanyol, Ladino, Djudezmo, Djudeo-Kasteyano, etc.) is a Romance language derived from Old Spanish. As a Jewish language, it is influenced heavily by Hebrew and Aramaic, but also Arabic, Turkish and to a lesser extent Greek and other languages where Sephardic expellees settled around the world, primarily throughout the Ottoman Empire.

Currently, speakers are almost exclusively Sephardic Jews, principally those in or from Thessaloniki (modern Greece), Istanbul and Izmir (modern Turkey), all localities where centuries ago the Sephardim re-settled into.

Judaeo-Spanish has kept the postalveolar phonemes /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ of Old Castilian, which both changed to the velar /x/ in modern Castilian; it also has an /x/ phoneme taken over from Hebrew. In some places it has also retained certain characteristic words, such as muestro for nuestro (our). Its grammatical structure is close to that of Castilian, with the addition of many terms from Hebrew, Portuguese, French, Turkish, Greek, and Bosnian depending on the geographic origin of the speaker.

Like most other Jewish languages besides Hebrew, Judaeo-Spanish is in serious danger of language extinction because most native speakers today are elderly, many of whom had immigrated to Israel where the language has not been transmitted to their children or grandchildren. However, it is experiencing a minor revival among Sephardic communities, especially in music. In some countries, especially expatriate communities in Latin America, there is also a danger of extinction due to the risk of dialect levelling, that is, assimilation into modern Castilian Spanish.


Today, especially in Israel, the language is commonly called "Ladino" (a variant of "Latin"), though many consider this use incorrect. The language is also called Judæo-Spanish, Judæo-Espagnol, judeoespañol, Sefardi, Djudio, Dzhudezmo, Judezmo, and Spanyol or español sefardita; 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 Orani Jews came from this city. In Hebrew, the language is called Spanyolit.

According to the Ethnologue:

The name 'Dzhudezmo' is used by Jewish linguists and Turkish Jews; 'Judeo-Spanish' by Romance philologists; 'Ladino' by laymen, especially in Israel; 'Hakitia' by Moroccan Jews; 'Spanyol' by some others.

The derivation of the name "Ladino" is complicated. In pre-Expulsion times in the area known today as Spain the word simply meant "Castilian" or "Romance": literary Castilian as distinct from dialect, and Romance in general as distinct from Arabic. (The first European language grammar and dictionary, of Castilian, refers to it as "nostro Latin," or lengua ladina. In the Middle Ages, the word "Latin" was frequently used to mean simply "language", and in particular the language one understands: a "latiner" or "latimer" meant a translator.) Following the expulsion, Jews spoke of "the Ladino" to mean the traditional oral translation of the Bible into archaic Spanish. By extension it came to mean that style of Castilian generally, in the same way that (among Kurdish Jews) Targum has come to mean Judaeo-Aramaic and (in Arab countries) sharħ has come to mean Judaeo-Arabic. For this reason, authors like Haim Vidal Sephiha reserve "Ladino" for the very Hebraicized form of the language used in religious translations such as the Ferrara Bible, which was based on the traditional oral version.


At the time of the expulsion from Spain, the day to day language of the Jews of different regions of the peninsula was little if at all different from that of their Christian neighbours, though there may have been some dialect mixing to form a sort of Jewish lingua franca. There was however a special style of Castilian used for purposes of study or translation, featuring a more archaic dialect, a large number of Hebrew and Aramaic loan-words and a tendency to render Hebrew word order literally (ha-laylah ha-zeh, meaning "this night", was rendered la noche la esta instead of the normal Spanish esta noche). As stated above, some authorities would confine the term "Ladino" to this style.


The Judaeo-Castilian dialect of Northern Morocco, known as Haketia, is the subject of a separate article.


The grammar of Judaeo-Spanish, and its core vocabulary (approx. 60% of its total vocabulary), are basically Castilian. However, the phonology of the consonants and part of the lexicon are in some respects closer to Galician/Portuguese than to modern Castilian, because both retained characteristics of medieval Ibero-Romance which Castilian later lost. Compare for example Judaeo-Spanish aninda ("still") with Portuguese ainda (Galician aínda, Asturian aína or enaína) and Castilian aún, or the initial consonants in Judaeo-Spanish fija, favla ("daughter", "speech"), Portuguese filha, fala (Galician filla, fala, Asturian fía, fala, Aragonese filla, fabla, Catalan filla), Castilian hija, habla. This sometimes varied with dialect: in Judaeo-Spanish popular songs both fijo and hijo are found. The Judaeo-Spanish pronunciation of s as "sh" before a "k" sound or at the end of certain words (such as seis, pronounced "sesh", for six) is also shared with Portuguese but not with Spanish. See also Judeo-Portuguese.

Archaic features retained by Judaeo-Spanish are as follows:

  • Modern Spanish z (c before e or i), pronounced as "s" or [θ] (as the English "th" in "think"), according to dialect, corresponds to two different phonemes in Old Castilian: ç (c before e or i), pronounced "ts", and z (in all positions), pronounced like an English "z". This distinction has been retained in Judaeo-Spanish: korason/coraçon, "heart" (modern Spanish corazón) versus dezir, "to say" (modern Spanish decir). (The cedilla in the character ç was invented in Spanish to represent the former of the two phonemes, though it is not used in modern Spanish.)
  • Modern Spanish j, pronounced [x], corresponds to two different phonemes in Old Castilian: x, pronounced [ʃ] (English "sh"), and j, pronounced [ʒ] ("zh"). Again the distinction has been retained: basho/baxo, "low" or "down" (modern Spanish bajo) versus mujer, "woman" or "wife".
  • In modern Spanish, the choice between b and v is made in accordance with Latin etymology: both letters are pronounced as the same bilabial phoneme (realized either as an English "b" or as [β] according to position). In Old Castilian and in Judaeo-Spanish the choice is made phonetically: bivir, "to live" (modern Spanish vivir). In Judaeo-Spanish v is a labiodental "v" (as in English) rather than a bilabial.



  1. Traditionally Judaeo-Spanish, especially in Ladino religious texts, was written in the Hebrew alphabet (especially in Rashi script), a practice that was very common, possibly almost universal, until the 19th century (and called aljamiado, by analogy with the equivalent use of the Arabic alphabet). This occasionally persists today, especially in religious use.
  2. The Greek and Cyrillic alphabets have been employed in the past, but this is rare or nonexistent nowadays.
  4. The Israeli Autoridad Nasionala del Ladino promotes a phonetic transcription into the Latin alphabet from the traditional Hebrew script, making no concessions to Spanish orthography. The songs Non komo muestro Dio and Por una ninya, below, and the text in the Sample paragraph, are written using this system.
  5. There are also those who, with Iacob M Hassán, maintain that Judaeo-Spanish should adopt the standard orthography of modern Castilian, the official language of Spain. For the reasons set out in the section on phonology, this would fail to reflect the actual sounds of Judaeo-Spanish.
  6. Perhaps more conservative and less popular, others along with Pablo Carvajal Valdés suggest that Judaeo-Spanish should adopt the orthography used during the time of the Jewish expulsion of 1492 from Spain. This system is used below in the transcription of the song Adio querida. (Quando el melekh Nimrod is in a mixture of this and the Israeli system.)

Arguments for and against the 1492 orthography

The Castilian orthography of that time has been standardized and eventually changed by a series of orthographic reforms, the last of which occurred in the 18th century, to become the spelling of modern Spanish. Judaeo-Spanish has retained some of the pronunciation that at the time of reforms had become archaic in standard Castilian. Adopting 15th century Castilian orthography (similar to the modern orthography of Portuguese) would therefore closely fit the pronunciation of Judaeo-Spanish.

  • The old spelling would reflect
    • the /s/ (originally /ts/) - c (before e and i) and ç (cedilla), as in caça,
    • the /s/ - ss, as in passo, and
    • the /ʃ/ - x, as in dixo.


  • The old digraphs ch, ph and th (today c/qu - /k/, f - /f/ and t - /t/ in standard Castilian respectively), formally abolished in 1803, would be used in words like orthographía, theología.


It remains uncertain how to treat those sounds which the spelling of Old Castilian failed to render phonetically.

  • The s between vowels, as in casa, was probably pronounced /z/ in Old Castilian and is certainly so pronounced in Judaeo-Spanish. The same is true of s before m, d and other voiced consonants, as in mesmo or desde. Supporters of Valdés' proposal are unsure about whether this should be written s as in Old Castilian or z in accordance with pronunciation.
  • There is some dispute about the Spanish ll combination, which in Judaeo-Spanish (as in many areas of Spain) is pronounced like a y. Following Old Castilian orthography this should be written ll, but it is frequently written y in Ladino to avoid ambiguity and reflect the Hebrew spelling. The conservative option is to follow the etymology: caballero, but Mayorca.


During the Middle Ages, Jews were instrumental in the development of Castilian into a prestige language. 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 the area today know as Spain following the expulsion of the Jews in 1492.

The contact among Jews of different regions and tongues (including Catalan, Leonese and Portuguese) developed a unified dialect, already different in some aspects of the Castilian norm that was forming simultaneously in the area known today as Spain, though some of this mixing may have occurred in exile rather than in the peninsula itself. 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: "Castilians 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 Me'am Lo'ez 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 Maronites), and Judaeo-Spanish 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 language named judeo-franyol.

Given the relative isolation of many communities, a number of regional dialects of Judaeo-Spanish appeared, many with only limited mutual comprehensibility. This is due largely to the adoption of large numbers of loanwords from the surrounding populations, including, depending on the location of the community, from Greek, Turkish, Arabic, and, in the Balkans, Slavic languages, especially Bosnian, Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian. The borrowing in many dialects is so heavy that up to 30% per cent of Judaeo-Spanish is of non-Spanish origin. Some words also passed from Judaeo-Spanish to neighboring languages: the word "palavra" (<Vulgar Latin "parabola"< Greek "parabole") for example passed into Turkish, Greek, & Romanian.

Judaeo-Spanish was the common language of Salonika during the period of Ottoman rule. The city became part of the modern Greek Republic in 1912 and subsequently renamed to its original historical name Thessaloniki. Despite a major fire, economic oppression by Greek authorities, and mass settlement of Christian refugees, the language remained widely spoken in Salonika until the deportation and murder of 50,000 Salonikan Jews in the Holocaust during the Second World War.

Ladino was also a language used in Donmeh rites (Dönme in Turkish meaning convert and referring to adepts of Sabbatai Tsevi converted to the Moslem religion in the Ottoman empire). 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.



An often told Sephardic anecdote from Bosnia-Herzegovina has it that, as a Spanish consulate was opened in Sarajevo between the two world wars, two Sephardic women were passing by and, upon hearing a Catholic priest speaking Spanish, thought that given his language he was in fact Jewish!

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-states encouraged instruction in the official languages. At the same time, it aroused the interest of philologists since it conserved language and literature which existed prior to the standardisation of Castilian.


Kol Yisrael and Radio Nacional de España hold regular radio broadcasts in Judaeo-Spanish. Law & Order showed an episode, titled "A Murderer Among Us," with references to the language. Films partially or totally in Judaeo-Spanish include Novia que te vea and Every Time We Say Goodbye.

The Jewish community of Bosnia-Herzegovina in Sarajevo and the Jewish community of Belgrade still chants part of the Sabbath Prayers (Mizmor David) in Ladino. The Sephardic Synagogue Ezra Bessaroth in Seattle, State of Washington (US) was formed by Jews from Turkey and the Island of Rhodes and they use Ladino in some portions of their Shabbat services. The Siddur is called Zehut Yosef and was written by Hazzan Isaac Azose.



Many religious songs in Judaeo-Spanish are translations of the Hebrew, usually with a different tune. For example, Ein k'Eloheynu looks like this in Judaeo-Spanish:

Non komo muestro Dio,
Non komo muestro Sinyor,
Non komo muestro Rey,
Non komo muestro Salvador.

Other songs relate to secular themes such as love.

Adío, querida

Tu madre cuando te parió
Y te quitó al mundo,
Coraçon ella no te dió
Para amar segundo.
Coraçon ella no te dió
Para amar segundo.

Adío Querida,
Non quero la vida,
Me l'amargates tu.
Adío Querida,
Non quero la vida,
Me l'amargates tú.

Va, búxcate otro amor,
Aharva otras puertas,
Aspera otro ardor,
Que para mi sos muerta.
Aspera otro ardor,
Que para mi sos muerta.

Adío Querida,
No quero la vida,
Me l'amargates tu.
Adío Querida,
No quero la vida,
Me l'amargates tú.

Por una Ninya
(A song from Sofia, Bulgaria)
For a Girl (translation)
Por una ninya tan fermoza
l'alma yo la vo a dar
un kuchilyo de dos kortes
en el korason entro.
For such a beautiful girl
I will give my soul
a double-edged knife
pierced my heart.
No me mires ke'stó kantando
es lyorar ke kero yo
los mis males son muy grandes
no los puedo somportar.
Don't look at me; I am singing,
it is crying that I want,
my sorrows are so great
I can't bear them.
No te lo kontengas tu, fijika,
ke sos blanka komo'l simit,
ay morenas en el mundo
ke kemaron Selanik.
Don't hold your sorrows, young girl,
for you are white like bread,
there are brunette girls in the world
who set fire to Thessaloniki.
Quando el Melekh Nimrod (Adaptation) When King Nimrod (translation)
Quando el Melekh Nimrod al campo salía
mirava en el cielo y en la estrellería
vido una luz santa en la judería
que havía de nascer Abraham Avinu.
When King Nimrod was going out to the fields
He was looking at heaven and at the stars
He saw a holy light in the Jewish quarter
Abraham Avinu, Padre querido
Padre barukh, la luz de Yisrael.
Abraham Avinu [our Father], dear father
Blessed Father, light of Israel.
Luego a las comadres encomendava
que toda mujer que preñada quedasse
si no pariera al punto, la matasse
que havía de nascer Abraham Avinu.
Then he was telling all the midwives
That every pregnant woman
Who did not give birth at once was going to be killed
because Abraham our father was going to born.
Abraham Avinu, Padre querido
Padre barukh, luz de Yisrael. '
Abraham Avinu, dear father
Blessed Father, light of Israel.
La mujer de Terach quedó preñada
y de día en día le preguntava
¿De qué teneix la cara tan demudada?
ella ya sabía el bien qué tenía.
Terach's wife was pregnant
and each day he would ask her
Why do you look so distraught?
She already knew very well what she had.
Abraham Avinu, padre querido
Padre barukh, luz de Yisrael.
Abraham Avinu, dear father
Blessed Father, light of Israel.
En fin de nueve meses parir quería
iva caminando por campos y viñas,
a su marido tal ni le descubría
topó una meara, allí lo pariría
After nine months she wanted to give birth
She was walking through the fields and vineyards
Such would not even reach her husband
She found a manger; there, she would give birth.
Abraham Avinu, Padre querido
Padre barukh, luz de Yisrael.
Abraham Avinu, dear father
Blessed Father, light of Israel.
En aquella hora el nascido fablava
"Andávos mi madre, de la meara
yo ya topo quen me alexasse
mandará del cielo ken me acompañará
porque só criado de El Dio Barukh."
In that hour the newborn was speaking
'Get away of the manger, my mother
I will somebody to take me out
Because I am a servant of the blessed God.'
Abraham Avinu, Padre querido
Padre barukh, luz de Yisrael
Abraham Avinu, dear father
Blessed Father, light of Israel.

Anachronistically, Abraham - who in the Bible is the very first Jew and the ancestor of all who followed, hence his appellation "Avinu" (Our Father) - is in the Judaeo-Spanish 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 sang it in Medieval Spain.

The song attributes to Abraham elements from the story of Moses's birth (the cruel king killing innocent babies, with the midwives ordered to kill them) and from the careers of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego who emerged unscathed from the fiery furnace. Nimrod is thus made to conflate the role and attributes of two archetypal cruel and persecuting kings - Nebuchadnezzar and Pharaoh. For more information, see Nimrod.

It is also suggested that the song borrows from the Christian nativity story: for example the miraculous light that signalled the birth, the birth in a manger and the massacre of the innocents.

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 Judaeo-Spanish. There are a number of groups in Turkey that sing in Judaeo-Spanish, notably Janet - Jak Esim Ensemble, Sefarad, Los Pasharos Sefaradis, and the children's chorus Las Estreyikas d'Estambol. There is a Brazilian-born singer of Sephardic origins called Fortuna who researches and plays Judaeo-Spanish music.





El djudeo-espanyol, djudio, djudezmo o ladino es la lingua favlada por los sefardim, djudios ekspulsados de la Espanya enel 1492. Es una lingua derivada del espanyol i favlada por 150.000 personas en komunitas en Israel, la Turkia, antika Yugoslavia, la Gresia, el Maruekos, Mayorka, las Amerikas, entre munchos otros.


El judeo-español, djudio, djudezmo o ladino es la lengua hablada por los sefardíes, judíos expulsados de España en 1492. Es una lengua derivada del español y hablada por 150.000 personas en comunidades en Israel, Turquía, la antigua Yugoslavia, Grecia, Marruecos, Mallorca, las Américas, entre muchos otros.


El xudeoespañol, djudio, djudezmo o ladino ye la llingua falada polos sefardinos, xudíos expulsados d'España en 1492. Ye una llingua derivada del español y falada por 150.000 persones en comunidaes n'Israel, Turquía, na antigua Yugoslavia, Grecia, Marruecos, Mayorca, nes Amériques, entre munchos otros.


O xudeo-español, djudio, djudezmo ou ladino é a lingua falada polos sefardís, xudeos expulsados da España en 1492. É unha lingua derivada do español e falada por 150.000 persoas en comunidades en Israel, na Turquía, na antiga Iugoslavia, Grecia, Marrocos, Maiorca, nas Américas, entre moitos outros.


O judeu-espanhol, djudio, djudezmo ou ladino é a língua falada pelos sefarditas, judeus expulsos da Espanha em 1492. É uma língua derivada do espanhol e falada por 150.000 pessoas em comunidades em Israel, na Turquia, na antiga Iugoslávia, Grécia, Marrocos, Maiorca, nas Américas, entre muitos outros.


Judeo-Spanish, Djudio, Djudezmo, or Ladino is the language spoken by the Sephardi Jews, who were expelled from Spain in 1492. It is a language derived from Spanish and spoken by 150,000 people in communities in Israel, Turkey, the former Yugoslavia, Greece, Morocco, Majorca, the Americas, among many others.

See also



  • Hemsi, Alberto: Cancionero Sefardí
  • Molho, Michael: Usos y costumbres de los judíos de Salónica (1950)
  • Markus, Shimon, Ha-safa ha-sefaradit-yehudit (the Judeo-Spanish language): Jerusalem, 1965
  • Габинский, Марк А. Сефардский (еврейской-испанский) язык (M.A. Gabinsky. Sephardic (Judeo-Spanish) language, in Russian). Ştiinţa: Chişinău, 1992.
  • Kohen, Elli; Kohen-Gordon, Dahlia. Ladino-English, English-Ladino: Concise Encyclopedic Dictionary. Hippocrene Books: New York, 2000

Sources for Further Studies

Lleal, Coloma (1992): "A propósito de una denominación: el judeoespañol" (en Cervantes Virtual)

External links

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