Judaeo-Spanish
language derived from Medieval Spanish spoken by Sephardic Jews
Judaeo-Spanish (alternatively spelled Judeo-Spanish; autonym Djudeo-Espanyol, Hebrew script: גֿודֿיאו־איספאנייול), also known as Ladino, Judezmo, or Spaniolit, is a Romance language derived from Castilian Old Spanish.
It has been spoken by Sephardic Jews since they were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula after the Edict of Expulsion, and with their migrations it spread throughout the Ottoman Empire (the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, West Asia, and North Africa) as well as France, Italy, the Netherlands, Morocco, and England. It is today spoken mainly by Sephardic minorities in more than 30 countries, with most speakers residing currently in Israel. Although it has no official status in any country, it has been acknowledged as a minority language in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, and France.
The core vocabulary of Judaeo-Spanish is Old Spanish, and it has numerous elements from the other old Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula: Aragonese language, Old Catalan, Asturleonese, Galician-Portuguese, and Andalusi Romance. The language has been further influenced by Ottoman Turkish and Semitic vocabulary, such as Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic—especially in the domains of religion, law, and spirituality—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. Judaeo-Spanish 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).
“Judaeo-Spanish” enters the record as language derived from Medieval Spanish spoken by Sephardic Jews. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Judaeo-Spanish, language and derived can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q36196. The Library of Congress control number is sh85073893. Authority coordinates are 40.700, 22.900. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Judaeo-Spanish” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.