Can Spanish speakers understand Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish)? In this episode we test the degree of mutual intelligibility between Ladino and Spanish.

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Ladino (גﬞודﬞיאו־איספאנייול) is a language derived from Old Spanish that used to be spoken by the Jewish community of the Iberian Peninsula. However, in 1492 the Catholic Monarchs of Spain (Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon) ordered the expulsion of all Jews. This was known as the Alhambra Decree or the Edict of Expulsion. As a result, the Jews of present-day Spain and Portugal were expelled and mainly spread to North Africa, the Middle East, Balkans, and other parts of the Ottoman Empire, as well as other regions of Europe. As they settled in new territories, many of them preserved their language, maintaining its Old Spanish core while being influenced by other languages. Today, Ladino is primarily spoken mainly by Sephardic Jewish minorities around the world, and has been acknowledged as a minority language in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, France, and Turkey.

Spanish is a Western Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain which has expanded to become the world's second-most spoken native language group of languages. Most of modern Spanish comes from Latin, with ancient Greek and Arabic also having an impact on the language. It has also been influenced by Basque, Iberian, Celtiberian, Visigothic, French, Italian, Occitan, Catalan and Sardinian, as well as from Nahuatl, Quechua, and other indigenous languages of the Americas. The Spanish language evolved from Vulgar Latin, which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans during the Second Punic War, beginning in 210 BC. Previously, several pre-Roman languages, unrelated to Latin, and some of them unrelated even to Indo-European, were spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. These languages included Basque (still spoken today), Iberian, Celtiberian and Gallaecian. Today, Spanish is the official language of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay, and Venezuela.