HISTORICAL AND LINGUISTIC STUDY OF THE LADINO LANGUAGE SPOKEN BY THE SEPHARDIC JEWS OF THE BALKANS IN THE AGE OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
HISTORICAL AND LINGUISTIC STUDY OF THE LADINO LANGUAGE SPOKEN BY THE SEPHARDIC JEWS OF THE BALKANS IN THE AGE OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

Summary/Abstract: The present study is a short overview of some Ladino (Jewish￾Spanish) words and expressions spoken by the Sephardic (Spanish) Jews in their everyday life in the Balkans before WWII. Until 1914 they were citizens of the Ottoman Empire but kept Ladino as their main language with many borrowed Turkish, Greek, or Slavic words, the so-called Balkan￾Ladino. Multiple words and expressions reflecting life, health, home, kitchen, or garden will be presented with some explanations about their historic or linguistic origin. In the 18th and 19th centuries some Sephardic Jews from the Balkans, mainly for business and development emigrated and settled in big cities of the Habsburg Monarchy, like Vienna, Budapest, or Prague. Thus some modified Ladino words influenced by the German￾speaking environment were introduced in the Balkans, which are also presented for discussion. There are some further studies based on the documents found in the Genizah of Ben-Ezrah-Synagogue in Cairo's ancient Fustat area. A Genizah means storage designated for burying old, broken Hebrew books with sacred texts. Since 1896 the contents of the Cairo￾Genizah of about 400.000 documents of different kinds, the oldest from the 9th century have been kept in the Genizah – Research Unit at Cambridge University’s Library, where they are cleaned and read. In 1517 Cairo was conquered by Sultan Selim I and became a part of the Ottoman Empire until 1914. It is quite probable, that during 400 years some documents originated in the Balkans or other parts of the Ottoman Empire that could explain important issues of the life and business of the Jews.

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