Ladino survives in Israel: 15th-century Castilian still alive

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

In Israel, a hobby magazine in Spanish is being sold. It is not a tourist edition or an import surplus: it consists of 25 issues written in Oooo-Spanish, the language that Sephardim brought from the peninsula at the end of the 15th century and which is still preserved, between Israel and Turkey, with more nostalgia than speakers.

The Ladino sounds like ancient Castilian or Galician. This is not a whimsical impression. What is spoken in these communities today is not an intact fossil, but a branch that evolved on its own for five centuries, without Academy or unified rules, and which preserves 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 modern usage. What changes is the lexicon, and not because it is strange, but because it refers to objects and uses that have disappeared: *sayo*, *velar*, *vellón*, *calzas* or *velludo* are still used, and several of these terms remain alive in modern Spanish or neighboring languages. Galician still uses *veludo* for velvet; in Castilian, we still say that someone spends the night awake. The full list of words that have survived the passage of centuries is longer than the cliché of a dead language suggests.

The Quijote is not medieval: the key to understanding Ladino

Here lies the underlying misunderstanding. The Quijote was written between the 16th and 17th centuries, in other words, in modern Spanish, and yet it is difficult to read. A truly medieval text, the Book of Examples attributed to Don Juan Manuel, written between 1330 and 1335, can be read acceptably well without a dictionary. Some maintain that this Castilian is understood in 85% or 90%; others respond that a modern traveler would understand almost nothing in the court of the Catholic Monarchs. Both statements can be true because the distance between languages is measured not in centuries but in concrete changes.

Isolated words and changing sounds

Those who have dealt with Sephardim for work mention that most only preserve isolated words taught to them by their grandparents, and that some letters have changed sound over the centuries.

The expulsion, Kashrut, and unfounded accusations

The matter drags along a residue of historical suspicions. Regarding the Ladino, there are conflicting versions about the departure of the Jews from the peninsula: some speak of pure expulsion, while others maintain that most converted and stayed. Accusations against the Jewish community without any foundation also arise, refuted by the very norms of Kashrut, which prohibit consuming blood and require salting meat to eliminate it.

The detail that throws things into perspective

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