Ladino in Israel: 15th-century Spanish still spoken

Ladino: The 15th-century Spanish still spoken in Israel

In Israel, a puzzle magazine is sold in Spanish. It is not an edition for tourists nor an import remainder: it consists of 25 issues written in Oooo-Spanish, the language Sephardic Jews took from the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 15th century and which is still preserved, between Israel and Turkey, with more nostalgia than actual speakers.

Ladino sounds like Old Castilian or Galician. This impression is not arbitrary. What is spoken today in these communities is not an intact fossil, but a branch that evolved on its own over five centuries, without an Academy or unified rules, preserving structures and vocabulary from before the normative fixation of Castilian.

What remains of 15th-century Castilian in Ladino

The grammar is practically the same as current Spanish. What changes is the lexicon, not because it is rare, but because it designates objects and uses that have disappeared: sayo (tunic), velar (to watch/keep vigil), vellón (fleece), calzas (hose) or velludo (velvet) are still there, and several of these terms remain alive in today's Spanish or neighboring languages. Galician still says veludo for velvet; in Spanish we still say someone spends the night awake (en vela). The complete list of words that have survived the passage of centuries is longer than the cliché of a dead language suggests.

Don Quixote is not medieval: the key to understanding Ladino

Here lies the fundamental misunderstanding. Don Quixote was written between the 16th and 17th centuries, meaning in modern Spanish, and yet it is difficult. A truly medieval text, the Libro de los enxiemplos attributed to Don Juan Manuel, written between 1330 and 1335, can be read acceptably well without a dictionary. Some argue that this Castilian is understood by 85% or 90%; others respond that a traveler today would understand almost nothing in the court of the Catholic Monarchs. Both statements can be true at the same time, because the distance between languages is not measured in centuries but in concrete changes.

Isolated words and changing sounds

Those who have dealt with Sephardim for work reasons report that most only retain isolated words taught by their grandparents, and that some letters have changed sound over the centuries.

Expulsion, kashrut, and baseless accusations

The issue carries a residue of historical distrust. Around Ladino, conflicting versions appear regarding the departure of Jews from the peninsula: some speak of pure expulsion, while others maintain that the majority converted and stayed. Also, unfounded accusations against the Jewish community surface, refuted by the very norms of kashrut, which prohibit consuming blood and require salting meat to eliminate it.

The detail that disorients

A text from around 1335 is understood acceptably well, while Don Quixote, three centuries more modern, remains difficult to read. The boundary between what is understood and what is spoken has never been a straight line. And a language that no one considers alive continues to sell puzzles in Israel.