What does ghetto mean today?

Answer 1

1. A ghetto was an enclosed (walled in) area where Jews had to live - by law. The first ghettos were established in Europe in the Middle Ages, when the Catholic Church ordered their creation (in the 1200s).

2. Ghettos were revived from 1939 onwards by the Nazis.

In the Holocaust, Jews were sent to ghettos by the Nazis. It was a horrible place where they were forced to work and only given limited amounts of food! Basically, a ghetto was a small town with a huge wall round it. All the Jews got sent there and it was packed full with sick and dying people. If the Jews look ill then they would not be fed and were left to die of starvation. Some Jews were lucky enough to escape and live today. Not many do but their relatives and other generations do.

3. In the 1960s the word was extended (figuratively) to run down inner city areas where Black Americans and others lived.

Answer 2

The word "ghetto" actually comes from the word "getto" or "gheto", which means slag in venetian and was used in this sense in a reference to a foundry where slag was stored located on the same island as the area of Jewish confinement (thevenation ghetto). An alternative etymology is from Italian borghetto, diminutive of borgo 'borough'.

Answer 3

The term first appeared around 1600 and referred to those areas of cities where Jews were required to live by law. (In many European countries they were not allowed to live outside these areas). This was the only meaning of the word until sociologists extended it in the 20th century to denote any run down inner-city district inhabited mainly by members of disadvantaged ethnic minorities.

Answer 4

hanging around a low class of friends who have influence on you and personality change from not hanging with.

Answer 5

"Ghetto" is an Italian word, the name of the part of Venice where Jews were required to live.

Answer 6

a photograph probably.