Re: Riddle: who spoke first Greek, and then a German dialect?

From: Torsten
Message: 67158
Date: 2011-02-09

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
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> For those who think it unlikely that Jews in Eastern Europe would hold on to an obsolescent Bastarnian/Proto-Hochdeutsch language after it ceased to the language of the land, as my proposal envisages it:
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> Paul Wexler
> Explorations in Judeo-Slavic Linguistics
> pp. 6-8
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> 'Research in comparative Jewish interlinguistics has revealed four distinctive types of language developed by Jews:
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> Type 1: Most Jewish languages are created on the basis of a Jewish linguistic substratum, leading back in an unbroken chain to spoken Hebrew. I give these languages the epithet "Judeo-", e.g. Judeo-Latin, unless a native epithet is available, e.g. Yiddish, Judezmo. A characteristic feature of such languages is the fusion of components taken from a coterritorial non-Jewish language and heterogeneous non-native components, among which Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic are the only components common to all Jewish languages. In the case of Yiddish and Judezmo, the chains of language shift can be conceived, in part as follows: Hebrew > (Judeo-Aramaic c. 6th c BC >) Judeo-Greek (c. 4th c BC) > Judeo-Latin (c. 1st c AD)/Judezmo; Judeo-French and Judeo-Italian > Yiddish (9-10th cc). A small Greek substratal element can still be identified in both contemporary Yiddish and Judezmo; in addition, Yiddish has acquired Grecisms through its Judeo-Slavic substratum and through direct contact with Judeo-Greek (see sections 3.13-3.163 below), just as Western Judeo-Greek was supplanted by Judeo-Latin (and Judeo-Berber in North Africa?), I suppose that Eastern Judeo-Greek was supplanted by Judeo-Slavic (see also section 3 below).
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> Type 2: Languages may also acquire a Jewish identity because of linguistic shifts affecting either the Jews or the non-Jews, but not both groups, and/or displacement of the Jewish speakers from their original habitat without subsequent acquisition of the newly coterritorial language.3 Languages which become Judaicized "by default" may lack a significant Jewish linguistic substratum. I propose to give these languages the prefix "Judaicized", e.g. Judaicized Iraqi Arabic, Algerian Arabic.
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> Type 3: There are Jewish languages which are created solely for the purpose of translating a Hebrew or Judeo-Aramaic text. Such languages lend to follow the syntax and word-formation of the original language rather faithfully and rarely have a spoken function in the community. I will call such languages "Judeo-X calque" languages, e.g. Judeo-East Slavic calque language (see sections 4.4-4.4125 below).
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> Type 4: Finally, there are languages used by Jews which hardly differ from the language of the coterritorial non-Jewish population in their native corpus, but may occasionally employ Hebrew or Judeo-Aramaic elements, as well as elements from an obsolescent Jewish language. Such languages are either obsolescent Jewish languages or non-Jewish languages in the early stages of Judaicization. These languages will be given the prefix "Jewish-" to distinguish them from types 1 and 2, e.g. Jewish-Russian, Jewish-Polish.4 A distinguishing feature of these languages is the tendency to avoid Hebrew morphological machinery when borrowing Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic components, e.g. Jewish-Czech bochr 'Jewish seminary student' takes the Czech plural marker, e.g. bochři pl vs. W, NY boxer 'young man': boxerim pl (< He bāhūr:bāhūrīm pl).5
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> In all likelihood, the Slavic Jews developed at different periods all four types of Jewish linguistic expression, in addition to speaking the majority variants of Slavic. In the early Middle Ages the Slavic dialects of the Jews were probably of type 1 - i.e. distinct from the coterritorial non-Jewish Slavic speech by virtue of a Judeo-Greek (and possibly other) substratum, a Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic sub- and adstratum, and a unique selection of Slavic linguistic material - not all of which was necessarily of coterritorial Slavic origin. At the same time, other forms of Slavic could have become Judaicized in the manner of type 2. In practice, however, it is not always possible to distinguish between type 1 and type 2 due to the fragmentary nature of the data and our ignorance of the sociolinguistic factors. A Judeo-Slavic calque language - an example of type 3 - existed in the East Slavic lands in the 15th-16th centuries and possibly in the West Slavic lands several centuries earlier. Finally, distinctive forms of transitional Jewish-Slavic speech came into existence among speakers of Yiddish and Judezmo shifting to Slavic; these languages would constitute examples of type 4. It is interesting that the de-Judaicization of Judeo-Slavic speech took place under rather unique conditions. Linguists are accustomed to finding indigenous Jewish languages replaced at some point in time by the coterritorial non-Jewish language, e.g. German Yiddish by High German. But in the Slavic lands, some (most?) of the indigenous Judeo-Slavic dialects were directly superseded by one of two imported Jewish languages - Yiddish or Judezmo; the latter ultimately became superseded in turn in the 19th and 20th centuries by standard variants of Slavic - though for some speakers not without passing through a transitional stage of Jewish-Slavic. I do not rule out the possibility that Yiddish and Judezmo were also directly adopted by Jewish speakers of standard Slavic. In recent times, even after acquiring a standard Slavic language, Jews may continue to differ in their speech habits from the coterritorial non-Jewish population. For example, many Jews in interbellum Slovakia preferred Hungarian to Slovak (the indigenous Jews in the Subcarpathian Ukraine still do), while the majority of the Jews in the non-Russian-speaking Soviet Republics today speak Russian rather than the coterritorial languages (but see also section 1, fn. 3 above). The present study will consider examples of types 1, 2 and 3 only.
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> 3 For example, Jews characteristically lag behind non-Jews in carrying out a language shift. On the prolonged use of Arabic by Jews in Toledo, see Wexler 1981b: 114; in late l5th century Palermo, see Bresc and Goitein 1970:905-6. See also the longer retention of Greek by Roman Jews discussed in section 3 and of Altaic toponyms by Ukrainian Karaites in section 6.7, fn. 244 below. Also relevant is Kessler's discussion of the Judaicization of German names among German Jews (1935:24) and Mieses' discussion of Germanic elements that are preserved only in Yiddish and hence become re-defined as uniquely Jewish (1924:261). See also the existence of Slavic folksongs and proverbs preserved now only among Jews (Brutzkus 1945; Goldberg 1928 and section 6.6 below).
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> 4 Wexler 1981b: 105-7.
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> 5 Ibid, 107, fn. 13.'
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> For Yiddish, instead of Wexler's
> Hebrew >
> (c. 6th c BC >
> Judeo-Aramaic)
> c. 4th c BC >
> Judeo-Greek
> c. 1st c AD >
> Judeo-Latin /Judezmo; Judeo-French and Judeo-Italian
> 9-10th cc AD >
> Yiddish
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> I'd propose for Yiddish instead:
> Hebrew
> (c. 6th c BC (type1)>
> Judeo-Aramaic)
> c. 4th c BC (type 1)>)
> Judeo-Greek
> c. 2nd c BC (type 1)>
> Judeo-Bastarnian
> (c. 5th c AD) (type 2)>
> Proto-Yiddish
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> and I don't think his Judeo-Slavic is a necessary link in the
> sequence, whether it existed or not (Slavic might just have been an
> adstrate).
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More from Wexler:
'3.312 A Judeo-Iranian Hebraism in Karaite: h.ag.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaim_language
At present, I can only identify a single Judeo-Iranian element in Karaite. In both the Crimean and Lithuanian (Trakai) dialects of the language, xydž (< Ar h.adždž 'pilgrimage to Mekka') is used in the meaning of 'Karaite yearly festival' (see also xydž ét- 'celebrate').355 The semantic innovation seems to be due to contamination with the Hebrew surface cognate h.ag 'holiday', which is found in Judeo-Persian as well.356 Alternatively, I could also assume that both Karaite and Judeo-Persian continue a common Judeo-Arabic innovation, traces of which are now lost in the source language.357 A Judeo-Arabic substratum in colloquial Karaite could come either from the theological and scientific texts composed by Arabic-speaking Karaites or from direct contact with spoken Judeo-Arabic in the Middle East.358 The systematic study of (Judeo-)Iranian elements in the Karaite dialects remains an urgent desideratum of Jewish interlinguistics.


355 In the Karaite spoken in Halyč, West Ukraine, we find the Arabic cognate in the forms adzy with a meaning closer to that of Arabic, i.e. 'pilgrimage (to the Holy Land)'; see also Crimean Kar (jəru)xadži fam, literally 'pilgrim to Jerusalem' (Weissenberg 1914:104). Karłowicz cites the Serbian surface cognate (h)adži(ja) in the meaning 'pilgrimage to Jerusalem [for Christians], Mekka' (1894-1905, under hadży); see also Smailović 1977:259-260.

356 Paper 1978:109.

357 I know of no parallel development in Iraqi Judeo-Arabic. See stPers hádž(dž) 'pilgrimage to Mekka'. In his discussion of JAr h.ādž family name (< 'Jew who has performed the pilgrimage to Jerusalem'), Laredo implies a connection with He h.ag (1978:559).'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajj#History
It seems to me that a better proposal would that the word has been borrowed in its original pre-Islamic sense "pilgrimage to a (any) holy place" instead of assuming parallel identical semantical developments in two separate languages. That would imply some form of pre-Islamic contact between the early Karaites and some Arab-speakers, either directly or through an Iranian language, which in turn entails that Karaites are descendants of conservatives in the Bosporan Kingdom who didn't join the innovations of the mainstream after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.

It is interesting to note that the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabataeans
cf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabatean_language
and the Bosporans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosporan_kingdom
worshipped the same godess
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Uzza
['Al-‘Uzzá was also worshipped by the Nabataeans, who equated her with the Greek goddess Aphrodite Ourania (Roman Venus Caelestis)']
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodite#Aphrodite_Ourania_and_Aphrodite_Pandemos
In the Bosporan Kingdom, she was also identified with the Scythian Argimpasa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythian_religion#Pantheon

Herodotus apparently identifies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodite_Urania
with
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All%C4%81t
another daughter of Allah, according to pagan Arabs
(and, interestingly, with Persian Mithra).


Yulia Ustinova
The Supreme Gods of the Bosporan Kingdom
pp. 27-28
'The Great Goddess of the Bosporus, from the beginning of its colonization by the Greeks to the end of the ancient epoch, was Aphrodite Ourania. The earliest dedication to this goddess (CIRH 1111) is dated to the first half of the fourth century BC, while the last was offered to her in AD 243 (CIRB 35). In the first centuries AD Aphrodite Ourania was the tutelary goddess of the Bosporus, the guardian of its kings and their subjects, the grantor of power and victory in battle, the supreme cosmic deity of this world and the protectress of the dead in the nether world, and a great fertility-goddess, reigning the vegetal and animal kingdoms. This majestic divinity evolved as an amalgamation of two goddesses who bore the same Greek name, Aphrodite Ourania: the Bosporan Aphrodite Ourania, the Mistress of Apaturum, worshipped by the Greeks of the area almost from the onset of their settlement on the shores of the Bosporan strait, and the native Great Goddess, whose Scythian name was Argimpasa, and who was identified with Aphrodite both by the Greeks and by the indigenous peoples themselves.

This combination of the two divine manifestations demands a separate study of each, in order to appreciate their impact on the resulting phenomenon, the late Bosporan cult of Aphrodite Ourania Part I is therefore divided into three chapters: Chapter 1 discusses the Greek goddesses of the Bosporus, Chapter 2 deals with the indigenous cults of the goddesses, and Chapter 3 analyzes the Great Goddess cult in the late Bosporan Kingdom. The goal of the examination of the cults of Bosporan goddesses in the sixth early first centuries BC is to define their role and importance in the emergence of the later cult of Aphrodite Ourania. Although a number of goddesses were worshipped in the Greek cities of the Bosporus, Aphrodite was the leading, yet not totally dominant deity, the only one who had distinct local connections even at this stage. The inqury into the ritual, iconography, and mythology of the native goddesses of Scythia (in a wide sense, including other Iranian peoples of the South Russian steppes) demonstrates that only Argimpasa-Aphrodite Ourania developed a powerful divine personality, involving such realms as fertility, royal power, and the celestial and chthonic worlds. Later, the massive influx of Iraniansâ€"Scythians, Sarmatians and Sindo-Maeotians into the Bosporan cities brought about profound changes in the culture and religion of the kingdom, giving rise to the blending of Greek and native elements. As a result, the image of Aphrodite Ourania, venerated on the Bosporus in the first centuries AD, integrated both Greek and indigenous traits. These features may be traced in the epigraphy, coinage, iconography, and archaeology of the monuments related to the cult of the goddess.'


As for possible holy places worthy of pilgrimage common to Nabateans and Bosporans, the shrine in Ashkelon to the Heavenly Aphrodite might fit the bill.
http://tinyurl.com/6a48nsp




Torsten