General Discussion

I met my first Sephardic when I was still living in Barcelona as a teenager. He said he had grown up in Turkey, but had this old version of Castilian as a mother tongue. He was the one who first told me about the Sephardics, Ladino, and how their antiquated Castilian was so very close to the modern version. I was amazed, because I knew that I were to run into someone who could only speak contemporary Shakespearian English, I wouldn’t understand a word. It was as big a revelation to me as when, a few years later, I met my first live Assyrians. For me, that was like seeing a Stegosaurus munching on plants in some zoo enclosure. I knew they HAD existed. I just never thought I would ever meet one.