In this video I teach basic essential grammar of Ladino, also known as Jewish Spanish (Judeo-Español), Judezmo. I also compare it to Modern Spanish for reference.
Great vid! Just wanted to add that Solitreo is the cursive form of the Ladino alphabet. Ladino still uses the common Meruba/Hebrew alphabet in its square form, but the most common form of early Ladino printed materials used Rashi/Rabbinical script.
Fantastic illustration, I was struggling on how to use vos in the Ladino sense and was confused with the South American voseo sense. I noticed Ladino doesn't use leismo either.
Thanks! It's a very interesting language. The situation reminds me of Cajun French in that it's very similar to some of the most spoken languages in the world, but the nuances are different and they carry a very strong cultural significance. Good luck with your doctoral work!
Yes. The phonology was different and modern Spanish didn’t “establish”itself until much later. “Bivir” is another example of voicing, but it shows how early some of these tendencies began.
@@LastLangue In the specific case of b-v or d-dh like /b/ivir = [vivir], the phonology is of course no different than modern standard Spanish. Generally though, one is justified in thinking that 15th Century Spanish spelling, haphazard as it was at times, would be much better fitting than the almost-Turkish one used nowadays (and certainly way superior to Solitreo or anything in Semitic letters)
Thanks for the illuminating introduction. Quick question: in Judeo Español, would a final Z be prounounced as an English Z, or as S? For example, "luz": would that be luz (like azer, dulze, etc.) or might it perhaps be lus, because of the Z''s final position?
"Z" is always pronounced like in English (like a buzzing sound) and "S" like "Sarah" in English, regardless of the position in a word. Thank you for your question!
Interesting! Thanks for your prompt response. I was just told by a speaker of the language, however, that a final Z is always prounounced as a voiceless S. And that a Z is pronounced as in English (voiced) between consonants (e.g., azer).@@LastLangue
@@Unicornkittycat17 Usually they write the difference if there is one, for example "una ves" as opposed to the Spanish "una vez", instead of writing "vez" and pronouncing it differently. I think this is because the Latin script is a phonetic transcription of the Hebrew script. Was this person a native speaker of a certain dialect or did they learn it as second language?
@@LastLangue Thanks for your reply. The person is not a native speaker, but a keen student of the language. I noticed, for example, that a Ladino newspaper from about a hundred years ago is called "La Bos [sic] del pueblo" -- which suggests a voiceless S sound. On the other hand, the title of this publication in Hebrew characters is לה *בוז* דיל פואיבלו (the word between asterisks would be pronounced BOZ). I suppose there might be some variation, and that Ladino speakers are (were) not too particular on this point.
@@Unicornkittycat17 There is a lot of variation, but for example, they wouldn't write "aser" for "azer" because an /s/ is always pronounced as "s" even though it's between vowels. And a /z/ would be used instead of a /z/ sound is required. This is what I studied, but I'm positive there are different ways to pronounce different letters and variations in writing. I've come across different writings sometimes so it doesn't surprise me that this could happen.
Interesting… hazino is originally Arabic “hazin” حزين which is literally sad not sick but the correlation is there … I’m curious to know if in hakettiya the word “hazino” would be used more literally for “sad” rather than sick since the language derived from the Berber / darija speaking Jewish communities.
"Hazino" is an Arabic borrowing from Old Spanish that still exists in modern Spanish, but is in disuse, and is spelled "hacino." However, in the modern Spanish dictionary "hacino" means "sad" as in Arabic, but also "stingy", "miserable", and "petty." Since it entered Ladino (and Spanish) before, Ladino speakers might have maintained it as a "false friend", but this is just an assumption.
"Hazin " ..Türķçede de mutsuz , acıklı anlamına gelir ... "Hazin" ile " hazino" nun paralel sözcükler olduğunu şimdi öğrendim ...Teşekkürler . Bir Türk yahudisi olarak ladino lisanını biraz bilirim .....
Indeed. This is probably because Ladino is an amalgamation of different Iberian languages and trends at the time that mixed and started to become more streamlined. Also, the RAE still includes the verb "caler" in Spanish as "to be necessary", but lists is as no longer in use. Ladino has remnants of Medieval Spanish that later stopped being used in modern Spanish or changed.
But of course, the grapheme z in Ladino, the letter 'z' is pronounced as '«voiced» alveolar fricative', e.g. English: zoo [zuː], zero [ˈzɪərəʊ], easy [ˈi:zi]; French: rosat [ʀoza], hasard [ˈazaʀ], zoom [zum], maison [mɛzɔ͂]; it is not the case of distinction, seseo or ceceo.
You mention (time 1:42) what is not ladino, it is better to say what "is" ladino because at this point there are three variants: 1) the "distinguishers": casa - caza, pronounced different: [kasa] ≠ [kaθa] 2) the "seseantes" (speaking in an accent that pronounces z as /s/ and c before e or i as /s/): casa - caza, both pronounced as 'casa' [kasa], which is probably the case of Ladino; and 3) the "ceceantes" (speaking in an accent that pronounces s as /z/ and c before e or i as /z/): casa - caza, both pronounced as 'caza' [kaθa]. If you say that Ladino is not 'ceceante' "No ceceo", this is ambiguous because there are two possibilities, it is distinguishing or it is 'seseante'.
Hello. It’s not ambiguous. I gave the example of what I was saying in the video, and which ceceo I was referring to in reference to the modern latinized script of Ladino. Thanks for commenting.
@@LastLangue The arguments do not convince me. In other words, the Spanish of Spain, apart from some areas in Andalucia, does not know the 'ceceo', neither in the Canary Islands nor in Latin America (if perhaps in specific areas), but the sound they use is different, in the Peninsula, a part of the regions in Andalusia, there are differentiators "creating the norm known as distinción", there are the sounds [s] and [θ], while in the Canary Islands and Latin America only the [s], 'z', 'c-' in front of 'e' and 'i' = [s]. So when saying what the Ladino is not, I remain in the expectation of what it is because there are three possibilities and one is discarded, it means, what was said is ambiguous. "The interdental fricative /θ/ is found in northern and central Peninsular dialects, where we observe a phonemic contrast between /s/ and /θ/ (e.g. [ˈmasa] masa ‘mass’ vs. [ˈmaθa] maza ‘sledgehammer’). The presence of this contrast is known as distinción in the Hispanic linguistics literature (Hualde 2005:153). In the majority of dialects, including most of Latin America, Andalusia, and the Canary Islands, this contrast is not present, and we find only the alveolar fricative /s/ (e.g. [ˈmasa] masa ‘mass’ vs. [ˈmasa] maza ‘sledgehammer’). This phenomenon is called seseo (Hualde 2005:153). This lack of contrast has yet another manifestation which is what we encounter in a few dialects that have only a dental fricative, very similar to /θ/. This is called ceceo and can be found mainly in eastern Andalusia and some parts of central America (Hualde 2005:153-154; Quesada Pacheco 2010)." Campos-Astorkiza, R. (2018). Consonants. In K. L. Geeslin (Ed.), "The Cambridge Handbook of Spanish Linguistics" (pp. 165-189). chapter, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (in doi.org/10.1017/9781316779194), Some links about it:
1) Regan, B. (2022). The social meaning of a merger: The evaluation of an Andalusian Spanish consonant merger (ceceo). Language in Society, 51(3), 481-510. doi:10.1017/S0047404521000543. 2) Regan, B. (2020). The split of a fricative merger due to dialect contact and societal changes: A sociophonetic study on Andalusian Spanish read-speech. Language Variation and Change, 32(2), 159-190. doi:10.1017/S0954394520000113. 3) Noll, V. (2021). The Emergence of Latin American Spanish. In D. Perez, M. Hundt, J. Kabatek, & D. Schreier (Eds.), English and Spanish: World Languages in Interaction (pp. 76-91). chapter, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
@@analitico286 The interdental fricative does not exist in Ladino, so it is not ceceante as stated in the video. Whether it be in an Andalusian fashion or one that makes a distinction as you stated. And the spelling is a variant that was made as a phonetic transcription more than it is based on modern Spanish writing because people used the Hebrew alphabet. The "z" sound (like the English z as in vozotros) is not a ceceo. If you see a "z" it is phonetic, not based on modern Spanish norms.
@@LastLangue It seems to me that you confuse terms, under 'ceceo' we understand the incongruity between phoneme and grapheme, the ceceante write 'si' and pronounce /θi/, the 'ceceo' is not a dyslalia that they pronounce /θi/ due to a linguistic defect, due to sigmatism (the pronunciation of /vozotros/ with /z/ and not as /s/ or as /θ/ implies that it is neither 'seseante', nor 'distinguishing' nor 'ceceante'). Are the English speakers, Arabic speakers, Greek speakers, etc. 'ceceantes'? No, they do not have the incongruity, but they do have the interdental sound /θ/ and also the voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ and they differentiate them. If the Ladino uses the grapheme 's' only for the sound /s/ and the grapheme 'z' for the phoneme /z/ then there is neither 'ceceante' nor 'seseante' if the latter is closer to the phonetic description of the Ladino. Something similar happens with 'y' and 'll'. Are Ladino-speakers 'yeistas'? It depends a lot on the type of orthographic norm in the use of the Latin alphabet, with that of 'Aki Yerushalayim' there is no incongruity, but saying that it is 'yeista' is the closest to the phonetics of Ladino. What do you think?
Ladino es Español Los Sefardíes siempre responden Que están hablando Español. Only for the Non-Spanish speakers Ladino is different than Spanish. But for the Spanish Speakers is the same Spanish. You can take a Ladino Speaker To any Spanish Country They will be Speaking the same Spanish.
They aren't identical. They both derived from a common language not too long ago, but we can't ignore nuances of language, like grammar and vocabulary, when making bold statements.
@@LastLangue Ellos y Yo Hablamos el mismo Español. Por eso ellos siempre dicen Que están hablando Español. Si los que hablamos Español Decimos que ambos Hablamos Español ... Es ESPAÑOL
There are a lot of similarities with Portuguese, too. Could be because it is closer to old Spanish and also because the jewish disapora in Portugal and in the other kingdoms that would later become Spain were moving around in the whole iberian peninsula?
@@CamarelliLadino only gained its Portuguese influences after the expulsion. There were jewish versions of some of the languages spoken in the Peninsula. There was a Judeo-Catalan, Judeo-Portuguese, Judeo-Asturian. After the expulsion these languages were present in the diasporas of the Sephardic, but only the Castillian jewish dialect prevailed since it was the most spoken one. And that's how Ladino came to have those Portuguese and Catalan influences.
Puede que haga uno para castellanoparlantes pronto. Tené en cuenta que hay mucha gente de la diaspora judia que no habla castellano y creo que fue un aporte para ellos tambien.
