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>>>Just curious.........which language (Yiddish or Ladino) is part of your family's background? Your name says Yiddish, but your origin (Argentina if I remember correctly????) says Ladino.
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>>Yiddish, which my grandparents spoke when in front of us kids so we wouldn't understand. My mother speaks it too.
>>Ladino would only be for Sephardic Jews, not Ashkenazi. It is a kind of ancient Spanish, a remnant from the expulsion from Spain during the Inquisition.
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>We share a common background on Yiddish with the same grandparent/parent hidden conversations. It's one of my life's major regrets that I didn't learn it and the language is probably going to be gone in not very many more generations. While I wish the Spanish and Asian communities would be more truely bi-lingual and assimilative (???), I do admire that they are keeping a great deal of their language and culture. My grandchildren will probably lost much of their ethnicity - even if my children marry Jewish.
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>My one experience with Ladino was at a synagogue in Austin, Tx. It was 95% percent Ashkenazik, but frequently did a Ladino version of "Ein Kelohanu" as the closing song.

I think there is a trend currently in Israel to revive Yiddish. And of course there is Williamsburg in NY, there only Yiddish is spoken <g>