Ladino Language - Orthography

Orthography

The following systems of writing Judeo-Spanish have been used or proposed.

• Traditionally, especially in Ladino religious texts, Judeo-Spanish was printed in the Hebrew alphabet (especially in Rashi script), a practice that was very common, possibly almost universal, until the 19th century (and called aljamiado, by analogy with the equivalent use of the Arabic abjad). This occasionally persists today, especially in religious use. Everyday written records of the language used Solitreo, a semi-cursive script similar to Rashi script, shifting to square letter for Hebrew/Aramaic words. Solitreo is clearly different from the Ashkenazi Cursive Hebrew used today in Israel, though that is also related to Rashi script. (A comparative table is provided in that article.)
• The Greek alphabet and Cyrillic have been employed in the past, but this is rare or nonexistent nowadays.
• In Turkey, Judeo-Spanish is most commonly written in the Turkish variant of the Latin alphabet. This may be the most widespread system in use today, as following the decimation of Sephardic communities throughout much of Europe (particularly in Greece and the Balkans) during the Holocaust the greatest proportion of speakers remaining were Turkish Jews. However, the Judaeo-Spanish page of the Turkish Jewish newspaper Şalom now uses the Israeli system.
• The Israeli Autoridad Nasionala del Ladino promotes a phonetic transcription into the Latin alphabet, making no concessions to Spanish orthography, and uses it in its publication Aki Yerushalayim. The songs Non komo muestro Dio and Por una ninya, below, and the text in the sample paragraph, below, are written using this system.
• Works published in Spain usually adopt the standard orthography of modern Castilian, to make them easier for modern Spaniards to read. These editions often use diacritics to show where the Judaeo-Spanish pronunciation differs from modern Spanish.
• Perhaps more conservative and less popular, others including Pablo Carvajal Valdés suggest that Judaeo-Spanish should adopt the orthography used during the time of the Jewish expulsion of 1492 from Spain.