>What do you understand by "pre-Yiddish"? The language of the
>Ashkenazic Jews developed from early Middle High German,
>especially the Bavarian dialect of the Regensburg area, with
>some East Central German influence.
I'd rather say it's kind of Oberdeutsch with Mitteldeutsch
influences, and with almost none from Niederdeutsch. (Typical
of Bavarian Oberdeutsch are <gwen> [gve:n], still strong in
use both in Bavaria and Austria, for <gewesen>, and <enk>
for <euch> and <ets> for <ihr>, which are virtually forgotten
in Bavaria and Austria (except for a relic of <ets> linked
as a pseudo-suffix to the verb: <Seids ihr fertig?>).)
The forever mentioning of the Mittelhochdeutsch thing is
quite misleading: aside from accent, Sprachmelodie, overs-
implified grammar and lots of loanwords (esp. Hebraisms and
Slavisms), Yiddish is close to today's/everyday's German esp.
of the area between Hungary-Baden-Wuerttemberg and between,
say, Switzerland and Thüringen-Hessen. I.e., Schwyzer Düütsch
isn't closer to Bavarian than Yiddish (and Münster Platt or
Hamburger Platt are even remoter :-)). A German-speaker will
easier understand Yiddish (at least in written form) than
a Mittelhochdeutsch text (e.g. Walther von der Vogelweide,
Nibelungenlied), despite those numerous non-German lexems.
(It has its place in the "Atlas der deutschen Sprache".)
>This is hardly surprising: until the 11th century there was a
>rich Jewish culture in Western Europe and just isolated spots
>of Jewish settlement in the East.
Doubtful whether those weren't much of Khazarian descent
as well. But AFA the *language* is concerned, the German
dialect Jiddisch (Yiddish) hardly has or doesn't have a
series of peculiarities of German dialects spoken in
the West of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.
Whereas the most important Jewish centers in Germany up
to the 13th-14th c's were those along the Rhine. Then
followed the south-eastern German provinces/countries.
And this was already shown by Jewish & al. scholars in
the 1st 1/2 of the 20th c. (they were quoted by Art
Koestler in his book "The 13th Tribe").
>Some of the Khazarian Jews did disperse in Eastern Europe
>after the collapse of the Khazar state, but they did so
>in small numbers and their contribution to the formation of
>Yiddish was minimal at best.
Most of them, not some of them. They merely replaced the ancient
Turkish dialect, coz, in a way or another, in the relevant
areas of central and Eastern Europe German was sort of
lingua franca (moreover: "lingua franca" was as German as
any other Mitteldeutsch and Oberdeutsch dialect; I leave
out Niederdeutsch as less relevant here).
>After the mass migration of Ashkenazic Jews to Poland and
>Lithuania, Yiddish became relatively separated from
>mainstream German and so lacks many German innovations,
>but it has innovated on its own, as well as borrowing
>from Slavic languages.
That'd be the question whether the German-speaking ones
(from South Germany and Bohemia) outnumbered those living
in E-Eur., between the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea. BTW,
prior to the... Germanization of their idiom, Khazar
branches represented, e.g., the ruling warrior classes
within the Hungarian tribal federation that moved from
Ukraine to today's Hungary, as well as rulers over ter-
ritories in Eastern Hungary (Transylvania) and Serbia
(where, according to chroniclers, they were known as
Cowars).
>Piotr
George