AviK,,,,,,,,,,
Ladino added far fewer words to the vocabulary over the centuries than Yiddish. Most families who speak Ladino went to one country when exiled from Spain and remained there. They had little interaction with travelling Jews from other Sephardic lands who used the language as common communication.
The Jews of Ashkenaz moved in stages, east to Poland, then the Russian Empire. In the 1870s they started a westward migration to France, Belgium, England USA, Canada and South America (Australia and South Africa came later). Settling in poor immigrant areas such as the lower East Side (NYC) or the East End (London) Yiddish was a common language for native speakers of Polish, Russian, Estonian,Czech, etc. It had a large publishing presence for books, magazines and newspapers as well as Radio. This never happened with Ladino, so it stayed ‘more pure.’
Menu