In Europe, Romance languages are usually spoken in southwestern Europe, namely in France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. Romania, a country nestled in the far east of Europe that speaks its own Romance language, Romanian, is generally considered an outlier. But in fact, minority Romance languages are plentiful, and while most of them can be found in the primary Romance linguistic region, a few are found further east. Such is the case of Ladino, a particularly unique Romance language also known as Judeo-Spanish.
Ladino originated in Spain, as can be assumed from its alternative name, but spread through the Ottoman Empire after the expulsion of Jewish people from Spain in 1492. This forced migration has resulted in Ladino-speaking communities in a variety of countries around the Mediterranean, specifically Israel, Turkey, Greece, Morocco, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Tunisia, Romania, and more. Some Ladino speakers further relocated to North and South America. With the majority of speakers elderly, Ladino is under serious threat of extinction, and that’s why we at TranslationServices.com are proud to step in with our Ladino translation team, doing what we can to help preserve this precious language.
Learning more about Ladino, the Romance language of the Jewish People
Even though Ladino is seriously endangered, given that few youth are being taught the language, there has been a resurgence of interest in the language among some speaker communities in the US and Israel, particularly in music. Ladino is usually written in the Latin alphabet and sometimes the Hebrew or Cyrillic scripts, with the Greek and Arabic scripts rarely used. While the language’s biggest influences come from Spanish, historical forms of other Romance languages, such as Portuguese, Galician, Aragonese, and Catalan, also provided influence. Outside of the Romance sphere, Ladino has been influenced by Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Bulgarian, Greek, Serbian and Croatian.
Ladino generally follows a subject-verb-object word order and makes use of inflection to indicate grammatical relationships. Ladino uses the second-person plural pronoun as its formal pronoun, unlike Spanish, which uses a separate, dedicated pronoun for formal situations. While the language generally uses the Spanish -(e)s to create the plural form of nouns, some nouns take the Hebrew-derived -im or -ot, and while most of these words come from Hebrew, some of them come from Spanish. Some words can even take either the Spanish or the Hebrew plural form.
We’re eager to translate to and from Ladino—for whatever you need.
Ladino speakers are proud of their unique language, and they’re passionate about preserving it for generations to come. That’s why the translators on our Ladino team work so hard, faithfully translating all sorts of documents to and from Ladino in whichever writing system you want. We can translate any number of historical, liturgical, or literary documents from Ladino to English, which allows for easy promotion of this beautiful but oft-overlooked culture. We can also translate various types of materials into Ladino, such as educational materials designed to help teach Ladino children their language in a fun and constructive manner. We’d also love to help translate literary materials like books or poetry, or digital content like websites, apps, and games, into Ladino, as these are excellent ways to help the language thrive into the future.
Our translators are eager to help you with your Ladino translation project—so why not reach out to us today with the details?