Beginners Guide to Ladino/Nouns in Ladino
Nouns: Gender
[edit | edit source]It is important to know the gender of nouns in Ladino so that the correct adjectives can be used with the noun. It is very simple to know if a noun is masculine or feminine with a few rules:
- Nouns ending in -or, such as kalor (heat) and kolor (color) are feminine.
- Nouns ending in -a such as klima (climate) and planeta (planet) are feminine.
- Most place names such as Ungaria (Hungary) will be feminine, as they end in -a.
- Everything else is masculine.
Nouns: Number
[edit | edit source]If a word ends in a consonant, to pluralise it, the most common ending is '-es'. If a word ends with a vowel, then it most commonly simply gains just '-s'. For example, the plural for 'purimlik' (a gift, usually of candy, given on the Jewish holiday of Purim) is 'Purimliks', but the plural for 'mano' (hand) is 'manos'. However, if a word is of Hebrew origin, it is a commonly accepted practice to retain its original Hebrew plural ending. Most Hebrew words gain the '-im' ending, except for those ending in an 'a' which drop the 'a' and gain an '-ot' ending. Examples would be 'sefer' (a religious book) becoming 'sefrim', and Torah (literally; law - though it typically refers to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible), becoming 'Torot'. There are exceptions to this though, where words ending in consonants do take on the '-ot'. There is no way of recognising these words though, and they must be learned.
Diminutives
[edit | edit source]It is very common to use diminutives in Ladino. A diminutive is a special version of a word which either denotes literal smallness In size, or in a more poetic sense - a speaker's affection for something. In English, a very common diminutive is '-ie', like 'dog' informally becoming 'doggie'. The Ladino diminutive is '-ik-'. To use it, you drop the vowel at the end of a word, add the ending, and then place the original vowel ending back at the very end. For example, 'kandela' (candle) becomes 'kandelika'. Diminished words still follow the pluralisation rules of any other words. It is very common practice in Sephardi culture for various food endings to be in a diminished form, and it is odd to remove their endings.