Julia Peck · Ladino 1

Haberes buenos (good news): you’re invited to join New Lehrhaus’s brand-new Ladino course! This six-session course offers an introduction to Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish language whose evolution traces the very history of the Sephardic people. With roots in 15th-century languages of the Iberian Peninsula, Ladino has spent the past five centuries evolving separately from Spanish and in close contact with languages of the Mediterranean, especially Turkish, Arabic, Greek, and other Balkan languages. The result is a unique, diasporic, Jewish language that has been cherished and transmitted by Sephardim for generations.

This course will ground itself in Sephardic history and culture and will also get you speaking right away. We will primarily be learning the Istanbul dialect of Ladino, but you will learn to recognize other varieties.

• the socio-historical context of Ladino (where does it come from? who speaks it today?)
• the sounds of Ladino and pronunciation
• how to read Ladino in its contemporary Latin-based script
• greetings and introductions
• regular and irregular verbs in the present tense
• basic sentence construction
• simple conversation about everyday topics
• how to build an at-home Ladino "language nest"!

Bring Ladino into your daily life with our Ladino en Kaza (Ladino at Home) kits! Each boxed kit includes about 30 prompt cards, guiding you through everyday activities in Ladino—from washing your hands to making breakfast and more. The kits will be mailed straight to your home, so all you need to do is register and email us your address. Start enjoying Ladino in a fun, hands-on way—one daily activity at a time!