Ladino—Judeo-Spanish לאדינו

The language of the exiles. They carried Spanish out with them in 1492—and it stayed medieval with them, as it had been at the expulsion, while in Spain itself it went on changing. Over it lay a Hebrew-Aramaic vocabulary—all that touches faith—and the words of the places they came to.

It has many names, and they disagree: Judezmo, Ladino, Djudeoespanyol; in North Africa Haketia; in Israel Spanyolit. Strictly, 'Ladino' means something else: the language of word-for-word translations from Hebrew, an interlinear for study. But in common use it is the name of the whole language.

It was written in Hebrew letters—in Rashi script in print and in a particular hand called Solitreo. In the twentieth century much went over to the Latin alphabet, and that is still disputed.

It was spoken in the Balkans, in Turkey, throughout the Ottoman Empire and in North Africa—from Salonika to Sarajevo. A good deal was written in it: translations of the Bible and the prayer book, the Me'am Lo'ez—a vast popular commentary on the Torah—romansas and coplas, newspapers, drama, proverbs.

The speakers were counted thus: about three hundred and fifty thousand in 1900 and about fifty-one thousand by 2024. Salonika, where it was the language of a whole city, perished in the Shoah. The youngest native speakers today are past fifty.