Ladino in the United States: Linguistic Vitality and Contact

This abstract is intended for the Ladino section/ panel dealing with the current situation of the Ladino language around the world. In this presentation, I focus discussion on Ladino in the United States, from the frameworks of linguistic vitality and language contact.

I begin my paper by addressing the vitality of the Ladino language from initial waves of Sephardic migration into the United States early in the 20^th century (Ben-Ur 2009, Angel 1973) to the current situation as of the 21^st century (Kirschen 2016). In ascertaining the level of vitality (Fishman 1991), I consider processes of endangerment, preservation as well as revitalization in four of the largest Sephardic populations in the United States: Los Angeles, New York City, Seattle, and Miami. After describing the sociolinguistic situation within each of these cities, I reveal how language contact contributes to our understanding of Ladino language vitality. Exploring the languages with which the Sephardim regularly come into contact allows us to trace changes occurring within the language, some of which include: code-switching, translanguaging, phonological shift, and lexical replacement. My study also sheds light on how such processes may vary both diachronically and synchronically. I address recent linguist research carried out in the United States (Harris 1994, FitzMorris 2015, Romero 2016) in order to review general tendencies across communities, while also comparing them to my findings based on a collection of sociolinguistic data on the United States Sephardic experience today.