>The East Central German features are rather few: the monophthongal
>realisation of MHG ie, üe and uo, and the absence of affrication
in
>Germanic *p (<epl>, <kop> for Standard German <Apfel>, <Kopf>);
... yet <Fejfe> (<fajfe>?) instead of <Pfeife>, but nut *<paipe>
(unlike the also Plattdeutsch-speaking English :-))...
>the vowel in <be-> and <ge-> is a shared retention
What do you mean by vowel retention here? (Something similar
to <Gesundheit> > [xunthait], <geschissen> > [gSIsn]? <besorgt>
> [bso&kt]? (the latter are in Bavarian))
>On the other hand, a long list of structural features shared
>with Bavarian can be compiled, including such characteristic
>things as the graded diminutive pattern (<-l>, <-ele>).
<-le> rather in common with Schwäbisch, Alemannisch (i.e.
ink. Schwyzer Düütsch: -li) and Frankonian (in this one, the
usus is to write it -la and to pronounce it approx. [l&] almost
as in Suebian); also in the neighboring Mitteldeutsch of
Hessen, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saar. All of them can actually
be deemed short forms of <-lein> (that's known in standard
German a.k.a. "Hochdeutsch," an... artificial dialect).
>What's really interesting is that other German dialects
>(and in particular those of Rhineland, against all expectations
>based on the early history of German Jewry) did not influence
>Yiddish during its formative stage.
This is why a mass exodus from there to Poland has been put
under a question mark (of course, by those who give a darn
on these linguistical aspects :-)). OTOH, one shouldn't ne-
glect the Jewish presence in the South-Eastern provinces of
the medieval "Reich", esp. in the areas of the Bavarian and
Franconian dialects, incl. Bohemia and Prague.
>>The forever mentioning of the Mittelhochdeutsch thing is
>>quite misleading:
>
>Well, the formation of Yiddish must have taken place between
>ca. AD 1000 and 1400, and that's the Middle German period.
That's right. But I meant something different: namely that upon
thinking of Mittelhochdeutsch one might be tempted to expect
Yiddish to be as remote -compared to contemporary German
dialects of the Mittel- and Oberdeutsch kind- as is Mittel-
hochdeutsch. But in this respect, I simply beg to differ.
>Of course the Jews did not move far enough to lose contact
>with the German dialectal network
Let's take a simple example: it's difficult to understand simple
items in a newsbulletin broadcast by, say, Radio Hilversum (in the
Netherlands) or by a Schwyzer Dütsch station (to add an
Oberdeutsch); while a similar news bulletin in Yiddish, e.g.
broadcast by Kol Israel, is easier to understand. (I live in
an Oberdeutsch environment, and I lived for a while in the
Aachen area.)
>(and Yiddish was not the only dialect of German exported to the
>east),
Oh, thanx for this hint: let's take the so-called Transylvanian
Saxons, who were colonized by the Hungarian kings in the 12th-13th
c., and whose Heimat was the Rhineland-Mosel-Luxembourg area,
as well as Wallony. In much later epochs there were some German
waves from other provinces, chiefly of the Austrian part of the
empire (even Silezians with Slavic names). Well, this kind of
dialect (or better dialects) are much harder to understand than
Yiddish to anyone who speaks German. I mean: in spite of the
"exotisms" contained in Yiddish, it is closer to a kinda common
German than the Transylvanian variant of German.
>so diffusion from German to Yiddish has always been easy.
Only because of the... Ober- and Mitteldeutschness. Had German
heavily been influenced by Niederdeutsch, then it wouldn't have
been so easy. (This differentiation is also given as explanation
for why North Germans, "die Preissn", have such a... good
Hochdeutsch: because they have had to learn... German, whereas
for those speaking Mittel- and Oberdeutsch dialects this hasn't
been such a stringent necessity. Well, except for the Swiss. :-))
>As for the demographic question, it's clear that the Ashkenazic
>Jewry of Eastern Europe must have absorbed a lot of people from
>non-Western sources; however, there are hardly any linguistic
>traces of the process.
What if in their case a majority adopted this kind of lingua
franca, and those who spoke German/Jiddisch as newcomers from
the Reich were in minority? Besides, one will never know how
many Slavs were converted in the Khazar realm after Bulan khan's
conversion...
>Piotr
George
PS: Along with the *Turkish* speaking Karaites, there were
other Judaized Turks as well: some Couman groups, some Crimea
Tatar groups, some Caucasian Turks, i.e. "mountain Jews"...
But no Turkish group remained as continuing to speak the
turanic idiom, except for the Karaites (I don't know whether
in the 20th c. they ceased to speak Turkish and replace it
with Yiddish. Gotta Google. :-)