There are three main groups of Jewish populations: Oriental, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews.
A) The Sephards originate from the Pyrenean Peninsula (Spain, Portugal). Their mother tongue is Ladino (Jewish Spanish). In 1492 the great exodus of the Sephards began. They were absorbed in the Balkan region and in Holland.
B) Ashkenazim in the Middle Ages were generally referred to as the Jews of Central Europe (Germany, France, England). Between 1050 and 1300, the Jews in the German-speaking countries dominated in terms of population and cultural activities. Their mother tongue is Yiddish. However, the number of ethnic Ashkenazim today is significantly larger than the number of speakers of Yiddish.
C) All Jewish populations that are not Sephardic or Ashkenazi are called Oriental Jews. Their settlements can be found from Morocco in the west to Iran in the east, from Georgia in the north to Yemen in the south. Oriental Jews speak a wide variety of languages: Jewish-Moroccan, Jewish-Tajik or Bukharian, Jewish-Tatarian, etc. These are fusion languages. On the whole, Oriental Jews have suffered less from the anti-Semitism of their contact peoples than comparatively speaking the Sephards and especially the Ashkenazes.