Ladino (Judeao-Spanish)

Judaeo-Spanish or Judeo-Spanish (djudeoespanyol, Hebrew script: גﬞודﬞיאו־איספאנייול‎), also known as Ladino, is a Romance language derived from Old Spanish. The core vocabulary of Ladino is Old Spanish, and it has numerous elements from the other old Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula: Old Aragonese, Astur-Leonese, Old Catalan, Galician-Portuguese, and Mozarabic. The language has been further enriched by Ottoman Turkish and Semitic vocabulary, such as Hebrew and Arabic—especially in the domains of religion, law, and mysticism — and most of the vocabulary for new and modern concepts has been adopted through French and Italian. Furthermore, the language is influenced to a lesser degree by other local languages of the Balkans, such as Greek, Bulgarian, and Serbo-Croatian. Historically, the Rashi script and its cursive form Solitreo have been the main orthographies for writing Ladino. However, today it is mainly written with the Latin alphabet, though some other alphabets such as Hebrew and Cyrillic are still in use. Ladino has been known also by other names, such as: Español (Espanyol, Spaniol, Spaniolish, Espanioliko), Judió (Judyo, Djudyo) or Jidió (Jidyo, Djidyo), Judesmo (Judezmo, Djudezmo), Sefaradhí (Sefaradi) or Ḥaketía (in North Africa). In Turkey, and formerly in the Ottoman Empire, it has been traditionally called Yahudice in Turkish, meaning the 'Jewish language.' Within the Zionist State, Hebrew speakers usually call the language Espanyolit, Spanyolit, and only in recent years LADINO.