“Las Ultimas Palavras” reveals Ladino language to be almost extinct in Turkey

The recently screened documentary “Las Ultimas Palavras” (The Last Words) has revealed that the Judeo-Spanish language, also known as Ladino, is on the verge of extinction in Turkey, which director Rita Ender believes to be the result of violations of minority rights.

The documentary was shown in Turkey for the first time on Thursday evening at the Lale Movie Hall on Büyükada, one of İstanbul’s Princes’ Islands. The islands — which are located just an hour by ferry from the metropolis — are one of the few places with sizable populations of non-Muslim communities in İstanbul, especially in the summer months. Each island is known for housing a non-Muslim minority: Kınalıada is known for its Armenians, Heybeliada for its Greeks and Büyükada has long been something of a safe haven for local Jews.

The film featured young people from the local Sephardic (Jews originally from the Iberian Peninsula) community between the ages of 25-35. Through the interviews with young people, the film came to the conclusion that Ladino will die with this generation. A large population of Sephardim migrated to the Ottoman Empire, finding refuge from the Spanish Inquisition and bringing with them their culture and language, which is now on its last legs. While some of the people featured in the film explained that they view this to be natural, considering how 500 years have passed since the community arrived in Turkey, the director of the film thinks differently.

“I am a lawyer and I work on minority rights, so naturally I’ve always been interested in these subjects. I believe that for me, to not know myself [my own culture] is the result of violations of human rights,” Ender explained to Today’s Zaman. In addition to being a lawyer, Ender is involved with the “Social Media and Minorities” project sponsored by the Civil Society Dialogue between the European Union and Turkey and the author of the book “Kolay Gelsin,” in which she investigates dying professions historically practiced by local minorities.

“I felt that a debate needed to be held questioning whether a language dies because of natural causes or because it is killed,” she noted.

“Las Ultimas Palavras” includes scenes where young Ladinos share the few words they know of their culture’s language, revealing two themes: food and curses. As the young people spoke these words on the big screen at the open-air theater on Thursday, the audience — many of whom were Sephardic Jews themselves — laughed along to the shared tradition and resonance these words held.

“Personally, it saddens me that I do not know my mother tongue. The documentary features people who are of my generation, people between the ages of 25 to 35, and we cannot even form a sentence,” Ender lamented.

One of the major factors in the loss of Ladino is the “Citizen, speak Turkish” campaign from the 1930s sponsored by the government, where citizens of the newly formed Republic of Turkey were told slogans such as «Speak Turkish or leave the country!» This campaign, along with various other major events — such as the 1955 pogroms and the “Varlık Vergisi” (Wealth Tax) — have led to the flight of minority populations. Soon, the language of the Sephardi community will be an artifact of the past, which we will be reminded of when seeing its script on tombstones in Turkish-Jewish cemeteries.

Fuente: todayszaman.com