Ladinospeaking

Ladino-speaking refers to individuals and communities who use Ladino, also known as Judeo-Spanish, as a daily language, in liturgy, and as a marker of Sephardic Jewish identity. Ladino is a Romance language descended from medieval Castilian Spanish, developed by Sephardic Jews after their expulsion from Spain in 1492. It combines core Spanish elements with vocabulary and features drawn from Hebrew and the languages of the Sephardic diaspora, including Turkish, Greek, and Arabic, and it uses both Latin and Hebrew scripts in different contexts.

Ladino has several regional varieties, historically centered in the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans, with dialectal differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, and syntax. While the core structure remains Spanish-based, phonology and loanword profiles reflect long contact with neighboring languages. In religious settings, Ladino often appears in traditional liturgy and ritual poetry, sometimes using Hebrew script; secular writing has commonly used the Latin alphabet.

Geographically, Ladino-speaking communities have long been dispersed across the Mediterranean and beyond. Today, speakers are concentrated in Israel and among diaspora communities in the United States, Turkey, Greece, and parts of Europe and the Americas. Estimates of fluent speakers vary, but the language is broadly considered endangered, with fluency concentrated among older generations and fewer children acquiring it as a first language in many communities.

Cultural life around Ladino includes literature, poetry, folk songs, and cinema, as well as modern media, archives, and online resources. Revival efforts persist through academic programs, cultural organizations, language courses, and community initiatives aimed at documenting, teaching, and revitalizing Ladino for new generations.