In Reply to: Question posted by steve barry on Thursday, May 8th 2008:

Steve - Are you sure that it was Yiddish that she was speaking? The fact that she spoke languages like Italian and Spanish suggest the possibility that she may have had a Sephardic background. These are people who were kicked out of Spain in the late 15th century as part of the Spanish Inquisition and then migrated to other places, especially countries of the middle East and north Africa. They and their descendants are known as Sephardic Jews (after the biblical term for Spain). Aside from speaking languages of the country in which they were living, they also spoke Ladino (also known as Judeo-Espagnol). Just as Yiddish is a mixture of Hebrew and various European languages, Ladino is a mixture of Hebrew and medieval Spanish. Is it possible that she was speaking Ladino (now that is a real dying language) or was it really Yiddish.

Reference ID: BX22059

Responses:

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