Komo se aze un nido?
How to Nest and FAQs
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How does it work?
1. Choose a room for your nest
This kit includes resources for nests in the kitchen and the bathroom. You can eventually do both, but choose one for now. The kitchen will be best for those who regularly cook or help in the kitchen and those who want to include others (housemates, family members, guests) in the nesting process. The bathroom will be best for those who don't cook, are the only ones in their home nesting in Ladino, or are nesting with young children with whom you spend more time in the bathroom (bathing, etc.) than in the kitchen. Do something to inaugurate the nest: post a sign that says "Zona del Ladino" (Ladino Zone) or "No English", say the Shehecheyanu, etc.!
2. Identify your domains (daily activities)
We build up to a language nest by learning to carry out the daily activities we already do in that room (called "domains") one by one in Ladino. For the room you've chosen, make a list of the activities you do regularly. For example, in a kitchen nest your domains might be washing your hands, making coffee, chopping vegetables, etc. Aim for about 15 domains in your list.
3. Post the domain cards
This kit offers 5x7 cards with language in Ladino for many common domains in the kitchen and bathroom. The cards will be available to order as a set soon — for now they are freely available to print from the webpage for each room. Use putty/sticky tack to hang up the cards somewhere relevant and visible (i.e. for washing your hands, put it over the sink). If a card isn't useful or relevant to you, you don't need to post it. The idea is to capture the things you actually do in your everyday life.
4. Narrate your activities in Ladino!
One by one, focus on a domain in your list. Whenever you do that domain in your nest (i.e. whenever you wash your hands in your kitchen), use the domain card to help you carry it out in Ladino. At first, read off of the card. Gradually, you'll get the hang of it and no longer have to read. Progressively add on more domains until you cover all the ones in your list; you might need to create some of your own. See "How should I progress?" for more details.
5. Use this website for help
Each card has a QR code leading to a webpage where you'll find the text for each domain with audio recordings of native Ladino speakers modeling pronunciation, as well as extra information about vocabulary and variation in Ladino's diverse dialects. You can bookmark ladinoenkaza.com/kitchen or ladinoenkaza.com/bathroom to your phone's home screen for even quicker access.
6. Build up your nest
Make your nest strong by including others: once you have a domain down, or even just learn a phrase or vocabulary item in Ladino, teach someone else. See "How can I include others?" for more details. Once you've mastered your everyday domains, move on to improvising and trying to use Ladino for everything you do in your nest.
What is a home language nest?
A language nest is a dedicated room in your home where you try to use as much Ladino as possible. Many nesters strive to use exclusively Ladino in that room. It draws on the metaphor of a nest to denote a safe place for the language to thrive and for you to grow as a speaker. This method was developed for minoritized languages by Dr. Zalmai "Zeke" Zahir, a linguist and teacher of the Lushootseed language spoken in the Pacific Northwest.
This website is the digital component of a kit to support you to create a language nest for Ladino in your home. The heart of the kit is a set of physical cards designed to be hung up in your home language nest. These cards will be available to order as a set in the near future — for now, they are freely available to print yourself on this website.
Why make a home language nest in Ladino?
Many users of Ladino today — from new learners to fluent speakers — have a difficult time finding places to speak the language. The language nesting method helps fill this gap by guiding learners to carve out space for Ladino themselves, incorporate the language into their daily activities, and make a habit of using it. Dedicating a particular room to Ladino makes regular, committed use of the language more manageable: outside of that room you can speak other languages freely. Soon, you'll see how natural it will feel to use Ladino in your nest.
Bringing Ladino home is also important for the vitality of the language. The home is where we often spend time with loved ones and family, raise children, engage in rituals and cultural practices, form our daily habits, and in general do lots of talking. Research on language preservation shows that speaking at home is a crucial step towards keeping a language alive and thriving.
Take it from Zeke Zahir: after twenty years of teaching Lushootseed classes, he noticed that his students didn't have opportunities to speak the language after the course ended, and this affected their language skills. Once he started helping his students set up language nests at home, Lushootseed went from zero regular speakers to over a hundred in a handful of years.
Who should use this kit?
This kit is designed for anyone — with any level of knowledge — interested in speaking more Ladino. However, the focus is on language use rather than on language learning. While you will likely learn things about Ladino sentence structure from the materials, they aren't designed to teach grammar. For those who want to reach high levels of Ladino proficiency, language nesting can be an excellent accompaniment to language classes or other forms of study.
This kit is also apt for people living in a wide variety of housing situations, and we particularly encourage those with children to use it! Some domains, particularly in the bathroom nest, are intended especially to be done with young future speakers of Ladino.
How do the domain cards work?
The domains come in three types:
Self-narration: written in the first person. Talk out loud while you do the activity, following along with the domain card as long as you need.
Dialogues: modeled conversations about a particular domain. You can get family/housemates to talk with you, or you can talk with an imaginary friend.
Sentence frames: structures with blanks where you can insert the information that’s relevant to your life, a bit like Mad Libs. Make it yours! Each sentence frame card comes with a filled-in example so you can see how it works.
Color-coding
The text on the cards is color-coded so that words in Ladino are the same color as their English equivalents below. For example, in the below sentence, Está is brown, which corresponds to English "it is", also in brown. The colors have nothing to do with parts of speech; it's all about matching the Ladino with English translations.
Está pronto para bever.
It is ready to drink.
Variation
Ladino has lots of wonderful diversity across its dialects. We represent this using slashes separating two possible ways of saying something in Ladino, and you are free to choose which one to use. For example, to say "I go to the sink," you could say "Vo al lavabo" or "Vo a la pilá."
Vo al lavabo/a la pilá.
I go to the sink.
You'll see on the webpage for each domain under "Komentaryos" where we give a little information about the variant terms (in the example above, lavabo is the word used for "sink" in Istanbul, while pilá is used in Izmir specifically for the kitchen sink). In some cases, more than two options are possible, but in the interest of space and clarity we have limited the variants to two and tried to provide more information on the webpage.
Where does the Ladino in this kit come from?
This kit is based on the speech of several native Ladino speakers from Istanbul, Edirne, and Izmir. Many domains were developed from recordings that Julia Peck and Nesi Altaras made when they visited several native speakers in their homes and kitchens in Istanbul in 2023. Once drafted, each domain was edited by a team of fluent speakers for accuracy and variation. The model recordings on the website were generously made by Rachel Bortnick, native Ladino speaker from Izmir and founder of the online forum Ladinokomunitá. The webpage for each domain credits the contributors and editors by name and variety of Ladino spoken.
Where possible, we strive to include variation from other parts of the Ladino-speaking world: this is an ongoing process and we will never be able to make it as comprehensive as we would like. Users should feel free to replace language in the kit with variants that they know from other dialects — make it yours! The content in this kit is absolutely not the only way to speak Ladino.
Who made this kit?
The development of this kit was led by me, Julia Peck, during my doctoral work in linguistics at UC Berkeley. I am an Ashkenazi Jew from the United States who became dedicated to Ladino after my interests in language revitalization and Jewish cultures converged with a happy accident in my personal life: I became the spouse of a Spaniard and a Jewish resident of Spain. Inspired by a lecture on language nesting by the method's founder Dr. Zalmai "Zeke" Zahir at UC Berkeley, I built a nest for Ladino in my own kitchen and was amazed by how powerfully it advanced my fluency and my feelings of closeness to the language. This kit was born out of the desire to share that with others.
This project was also shaped by the brilliance of Nesi Altaras, whose grandparents Eliezer and Ester were the first speakers we recorded in Istanbul. Rachel Bortnick was instrumental in editing the Ladino content and recording her voice. Several wonderful UC Berkeley undergraduates volunteered their skills: Julian Vargo, Karleigh Dehlsen, Adrienne Fleming, Hadley Schachter, Zag Hervas, and Parth Patel. It was also generously supported by the UC Berkeley Department of Linguistics, the Sultan Program in Arab Studies, the Berkeley Language Center, and the Diller Family Foundation.
How do I involve others? Can I nest alone?
Anyone can have a language nest in any living situation. It does take creativity and commitment!
The most important thing about involving others in your nest is to keep it positive. Tell your housemates/family and frequent guests that you want to have a nest for Ladino — and why — and invite them to participate but do not obligate them. As soon as it becomes a chore for anyone or a source of conflict, it stops working well. Have ongoing conversations about how to make it work best for your unique situation.
When guests come over, tell them about your nest. You can point them to the cards and invite them to self-narrate or join you in a dialogue.
If others don't understand Ladino, you can address them in Ladino in your nest and then follow it with a translation in English (or another language they speak). They might answer you in English and that's okay.
If you have kids, check out the resources for language nesting in the bathroom: there are domains specifically for those with children.
You can nest if you live alone or if your housemates aren't interested. Talking to yourself will take some getting used to, but it's an excellent language-learning tactic.
How should I progress?
Start with a self-narration domain that you do every day. For a kitchen nest, Lavarse las manos, Azer chay, Azer kafe, and Azer el fregado are all especially good domains for starting out. At first, read off of the card. Gradually, you'll get the hang of it and no longer have to read.
When comfortable with your first one, add in other self-narration domains. Go at your own pace: some people add a new domain every week, but you might need more or less time.
Consider keeping a language journal to track your domains and reflect on the process.
When ready, add in dialogue domains.
Next, add in sentence frame domains. These will help you start improvising in Ladino.
Once you have ~15 domains going, you're ready to declare a language nest! Do your best to use only Ladino in your nest.
Consult the American Ladino League’s Resources page for tools to enrich your Ladino skills, including classes, textbooks, and conversation groups.
Group up with others who are nesting in Ladino for support, accountability, and more speaking opportunities. You might find them by writing in the Ladinokomunitá forum (also a great place to read Ladino daily), or by emailing juliafpeck@gmail.com to find out about current groups.
More tips for a successful language nest
Be kind, patient, and flexible with yourself. Don’t worry about getting the pronunciation perfectly right. Feeling self-conscious around others at first? You can do the domain in your head rather than out loud. Language nesting can be extremely rewarding and fun, but it may offer slower gratification than language-learning apps or games and it will be hard at times. Find ways to keep it doable and — even better — joyful.
If a provided domain doesn’t work for you, change it!
Write your edits on the domain card or in your journal.
Need a word you don’t know on the spot? Use English inside the Ladino sentence as you talk. Note it down in your journal and look it up later in a dictionary.
Consider timing yourself in your nest in order to celebrate your progress. Are you speaking Ladino for 5 minutes per day? 15? 30? Many language nesters say that getting to the one-hour mark represents a sea change in their proficiency and relationship to the language.
Consult the American Ladino League’s Resources page for tools to enrich your Ladino skills, including classes, textbooks, and conversation groups.
Group up with others who are nesting in Ladino for support, accountability, and more speaking opportunities. You might find them by writing in the Ladinokomunitá forum (also a great place to read Ladino daily), or by emailing juliafpeck@gmail.com to find out about others who have home language nests.
Spelling and Pronunciation
This project uses a Latin-based spelling system for Ladino called the Aki Yerushalayim orthography, named after the Ladino journal that proposed it in 2004. The table below shows the letters of the alphabet and the sounds they each correspond to.
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