Ladino

Five hundred years after the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian peninsula, and the Holocaust, the Judeo-Spanish language of Ladino is classified by UNESCO as highly endangered. Ladino/Judeo-Spanish (ISO 639-3: lad) is spoken by approximately 100,000 people in countries of the former Ottoman Empire including Turkey, Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Greece. One of the largest Ladino-speaking populations resides in Israel. There are also Ladino communities in the Americas. The language originated in pre-1492 Spain and is understandable by most contemporary Spanish speakers. Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain took their language with them in their diaspora. Ladino bears traces of modern Galician, Portuguese, Italian and French. As the language developed for five centuries outside of Spain, it has combined Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Turkish and Slavic words with old Spanish.

[Description delivered by Susanna Zaraysky for the Language Fair]