Seattle Ladino data

"Mi padre i mi madre siempre avlavan ladino i todos los otros sefaradis ke moravan muy serka de mozotros, era siempre ke avlavan endjuntos ladino, i yo oyi ladino, supe kualo estavan avlando, ma kuando yo avli atras a eyos, respondi en inglez."

Language shift is a process where a whole group of speakers, generally an entire community, goes from speaking one language (in this case, Ladino) to speaking another language (English). Here, a Seattle Ladino speaker explains a huge part of the reason why this shift happened in Seattle. He talks about how he always heard and understood Ladino at home, but he replied to his parents in English. My research shows that this was a common trend among speakers of this generation. These speakers generally learned Ladino before English, but they learned English at school and then began to use it with their friends and siblings. These speakers are now more comfortable speaking English than Ladino.

"Oh, komidas, my mother was a great cook. Agora, antes teniamos de lenya i kimur estovas and gizavan las komidas kon savor i de alma i korason, you know? And kada viernes, well, first of all, on Thursdays, they would go shopping, and no avia automobil. Era todo kon shopping bags."

You may have noticed that the Ladino words are bolded in my transcription, and the English words are not. What's special about this quote is just how this speaker mixes the two languages. A lot of times, when a Ladino speaker uses English words, it's because that's their more dominant language, so they'll borrow from English when they can't remember or don't know a word in Ladino. In this case, however, that's not what's going on. If you listen, you can tell that this speaker is very proficient in Ladino, and is switching back and forth comfortably. If you grew up in the United States, you've probably heard of Spanglish, when native English-Spanish bilinguals switch between the two to form a unique language variety. That's what's happening here, sort of. You can think of this as Ladinglish!

borecas di patata

1 patata grandi mundala azila

pedasos tapala di agua mitila a

escaldar cuando ya si escaldo kitala

dila agua azila mash echa

1 cucharica sal

1 bekin pader

pisico marcherin

kezo raedo

1 guevo batido

minealo todo juntos e gosta si

esta bueno di sal e di kezo si es

ke si keri mas echa ke si aga

savorido disha la patata

sierni

2 filchanis arina

1 cucharica sal

1 cucharica bekin pader

1/4 bekin soda ke este pronto

agora toma

1/2 cupica di kidush azeyti

2 cupicas di agua

ke buega apenas buyo

echa la arina ki esta sirnida

e mineala e deshala ke si yeli

si esta blanda la masa echa un

poco di arina e azis bolizicos ela

azis dilgada e la enchis di patata

echas azeyti ala marina elas azis

elas metis enmedio del orno

400 por 25 minutos sino estan

bran las deshas 5 minutos

otros ya vas aver la color le

asis help tu ya van salir

buenas gud lak mi alma

si sierno masa azis duranchas

This is a recipe for potato borekas written in approximately the 1950s in Seattle by a native Rhodesli Ladino speaker. You can access the original scans of this recipe here. The sound clip here is of the recipe author's son (now in his 80s) reading the recipe to me in 2016.

If you know Ladino, you might listen to this sound clip and think that this speaker speaks Ladino "badly" or "wrong." It's important to state unequivocally here that this speaker grew up hearing Ladino at home and does not speak "bad" or "wrong" Ladino. This speaker just has variable vowel raising and is reading a somewhat unfamiliar document in his second language. This speaker is, in fact, a very good example of what a "normal" Ladino speaker in Seattle sounds like these days.

There are lots of things to be said about this boreka recipe, but to me, what it shows us most clearly is the different ways that vowel raising can be variable in the Rhodes dialect of Ladino.

Firstly, the author's spelling tells us that she was a vowel raiser for sure. You can see that she has raised unstressed mid vowels in words like "grandi," "azila," "di," and "mitila" in the first two lines. Note that she doesn't spell all of the raiseable vowels with <i> though; some of these vowels, like in "pedasos" in the second line, are left spelled with <e>. Since we don't have a recording of the author herself reading this, we're left to wonder if she didn't raise these vowels spelled with <e>, or if she just didn't spell them with <i> for some reason. (My guess is that it's the latter.)

Secondly, when the author's son reads this recipe, not only does he read the words with <i> with raised vowels, but he reads most of the words that still have <e> with raised vowels! This shows us that vowel raising is a phonological rule that speakers just know, and hasn't just been memorized by speakers and passed down only in certain words. You can think of this as like how you just know in English that the plural of "match" isn't "matchs" but "matches."

Also really interesting here is the fact that the author doesn't spell raiseable o's as <u>. It's hard to say why that is, but it's very unlikely that she never raised /o/ to [u], since her son definitely has lots of raised [u] in his speech.

While you're reading this recipe, check out all of the fascinating borrowings from English here, like "marcherin," "bekin pader," "bekin soda," "bran," "help," and "gud lak." These borrowings are somewhat unique to North American Ladino, though I'd guess that Ladino speakers who immigrated to other English-speaking countries adopted similar borrowings.