Basic Ladino and More

About
Judaeo-Spanish or Judeo-Spanish (judeo-español, Hebrew script: גֿודֿיאו-איספאנייול, Cyrillic: Ђудео-Еспањол ), commonly referred to as Ladino, is a Romance language derived from Old Spanish. Originally spoken in the former territories of the Ottoman Empire (the Balkans, Turkey, the Middle East, and North Africa) as well as in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Morocco, and the United Kingdom, today it is spoken mainly by Sephardic minorities in more than 30 countries, with most of the speakers residing in Israel. Although it has no official status in any country, it has been acknowledged as a minority language in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, France and Turkey. It is also formally recognised by the Royal Spanish Academy.

The core vocabulary of Judaeo-Spanish is Old Spanish (as Old Portuguese is of Judaeo-Portuguese) and it has numerous elements from all the old Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula: Old Aragonese, Astur-Leonese, Old Catalan, Galician-Portuguese and Mozarabic. The language has been further enriched 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 Judaeo-Spanish. 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 is known by many different names, mostly: Español/Espanyol, Judió/Djudyo (or Jidió/Djidyo), Judesmo/Djudezmo, Sefaradhí/Sefaradi and Ḥaketilla/Haketia. In Turkey and formerly in the Ottoman Empire, it has been traditionally called Yahudice in Turkish, meaning the Jewish language. In Israel, Hebrew speakers usually call the language (E)spanyolit or Ladino.

Judaeo-Spanish, once the trade language of the Adriatic Sea, the Balkans and the Middle-East and renowned for its rich literature especially in Salonika, today is under serious threat of extinction. Most native speakers are elderly, and the language is not transmitted to their children or grandchildren for various reasons. In some expatriate communities in Latin America and elsewhere, there is a threat of dialect leveling resulting in extinction by assimilation into modern Spanish. It is experiencing, however, a minor revival among Sephardic communities, especially in music.

At the time of the expulsion from Spain, the day-to-day language of the Jews of different regions of the peninsula was hardly, if at all, different from that of their Christian neighbors, but there may have been some dialect mixing to form a sort of Jewish lingua franca. There was, however, a special style of Spanish used for purposes of study or translation, featuring a more archaic dialect, a large number of Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords and a tendency to render Hebrew word order literally (ha-laylah ha-zeh, meaning "this night", was rendered la noche la esta instead of the normal Spanish esta noche ). As mentioned above, some authorities would confine the term "Ladino" to that style.

Following the Expulsion, the process of dialect mixing continued, but Castilian Spanish remained by far the largest contributor. The daily language was increasingly influenced both by the language of study and by the local non-Jewish vernaculars, such as Greek and Turkish. It came to be known as Judesmo and, in that respect, the development is parallel to that of Yiddish. However, many speakers, especially among the community leaders, also had command of a more formal style, castellano, which was nearer to the Spanish at the time of the Expulsion.

The grammar, the phonology and about 60% of the vocabulary of Judaeo-Spanish are basically Spanish but, in some respects, it resembles the dialects in southern Spain and South America, rather than the dialects of Central Spain. For example, it has yeísmo ("she" is '/' (Judaeo-Spanish), instead of ) as well as and seseo.

Table of Contents
Chapter 1- Verbs

Chapter 2- Nouns

Chapter 3- Adjectives

Chapter 4- Grammar

Chapter 5- Adverbs

Chapter 6- Helping Verbs

Chapter 7- Articles

Chapter 8- Slang

Chapter 9- Words by Category

List of Infinitive Verbs by Alphabetical Order (Chapter 1)
Abafar- to suffocate; to extinguish

Abarabar- to become too familiar with an subordinate; bring oneself down to the level of an inferior

Abashár- to go down; lower; to descend/ascend

Abastadrear- to bastardize; degenerate; corrupt

Abastessir- to supply the necessary

Abastissiar- to have enough; to have enough time

Abidugar- to save

Abiguar- to conserve

Abiuiguar- to conserve

Abokar- to bend-Abolcear- to put at the disposition of a person

Aboltar- to turn

Abrasar- to embrace; to hug

Abreuar- to irrigate;

Abruera- irrigates

Abrir- to open

Abuzar- to abuse

Acabár- to end

Acavidar- to warn; advise

Achetar- to accept; to give ones agreement

Achilear- to emancipate; to open ones self up

Achunkar- to sit in a camel like position; to sit in a collapsed position

Acimentar- to lay the foundation

Acompañar- to accompany

Aconsejar- to tell; to mean

Acontesser; to happen

Acusar- to scratch

Adanear- to sustain; to support

Adelantar- to move forward; progress