>The more I look at this dialect map of Yiddish
>http://tinyurl.com/35kmwl7
I suppose this map does not reflect the historical phases, but
the modern spreading (from East to West). Instead, look up the
maps contained in the Atlas der Deutschen Sprache (e.g. also in
the abridged paperback version, dtb (Deutscher Taschenbuch-
Verlag).
The Russian map contains IMHO a paradoxon: much of Bavaria
and Austria are white, in spite of all evidence (which is striking to
any *nonlinguist* German-language speaker) that Yiddish is in fact
a modified version of the Bavarian dialect of the German language.
Example:
(YIVO-transcription:)
1 In onheyb hot got bashafn dem himl un di erd.
2 Un di erd iz geven vist un leydik, un fintsternish iz geven oyfn gezikht fun thom, un der gayst fun got hot geshwebt oyfn gezikht fun di vasern.
3 Hot got gezogt: zol vern likht. Un es iz gevorn likht.
4 Un got hot gezen dos likht az es iz gut; un got hot fanandergesheydt tsvishn dem likht un tsvishn der fintsternish.
5 Un got hot gerufn dos likht tog, un di fintsternish hot er gerufn nakht. Un es iz geven ovnt, un es iz geven frimorgn, eyn tog.
(some words - comparative Bavarian&Austrian, in German rendering:)
__hot (hat); Himml (Himmel); de Erd (die Erde); is gwen (ist gewesen);
vist (i instead of ü - also typical of Bavarian, but also of other German
dialects; cf. sentence #5: "frimorgen": "fri" = "früh", cf. Bav. "friah"
['fri&]);
__un (und; this is a pan-German dialectal & colloquial occurrence); fun (von; tendency o > u esp. in Austria);
__hot geshwebt oyfn gezikht fun di vasern ("hat geschwebt uffm
Gesicht von "die" Wassern''. ([oj] is a typical Yiddish development
of [o:] and -here- [au]. My insertion of "uff" is not Bavarian, but
typical of neighboring dialects of the Alemanian-Suebian group.) This
is modern German through and through, despite the "rough",
quasi-"germana vulgata"-like concoction of the sentence; in German
one would expect rather "Wasser(ober)fläche" than "Wassergesicht" /
anyway, it shows something more recent than 13th-14th century
Middle High German)
__az = 'ass = dass (which in German dialects areas which might be
relevant for the NWB theory has stayed conservative: dat & det.
IMHO, this tiny example also shows that Yiddish is a southern
dialectal development after the latest German sound shift.)
__Hot got gezogt: zol vern likht. Un es iz gevorn likht. (Hot Gott
gesogt: Soll wern Licht. Un es is Licht geworn.) This is modern South-
German. Only the verb position differs; and here Yiddish is more con-
servative than Bavarian, since the latter says gsogt/xokt and worn
(standard German: gesagt & geworden); "vern" is the phonetic tran-
scription of werden as it is also pronounced in everyday's "neutral"
German by most of native-speakers (even in high-brow talk): the
second syllable is barely muttered&heard: werden > wern [w3&n].
__un got hot fanandergesheydt tsvishn dem likht un tsvishn der fintsternish (Un' Gott hot voneinandergescheidt zwisch'n dem Licht
un' zwischen der Finsternis) Quite close to modern+common German;
with the simplification of the irregular verb: scheiden-schied-geschie-
den becomes scheiden-scheidete-gescheidet (i.e., "bad grammar" :-));
also note the feeling there's the need of the auxiliary "voneinander",
whereas German doesn't need the help of "voneinander" ("from one another"): "etwas von xyz scheiden": "Gott schied das Licht von der
Finsternis".
_ovnt [o: -] (i.e. Abend: Obent/Obnv [o:-], where, [b > v], which in
this word might be unusual, but extant in similar environments (and
not only in Bavarian, but in other dialects too): e.g. siewe (sieben),
awwer (aber), lewer (lieber), Deibel/Deiwel (Teufel), Duwe (Taube).
Standard German:
1 Im Anfang schuf Gott Himmel und Erde;
2 die Erde aber war wüst und wirr, Finsternis lag über der Urflut und Gottes Geist schwebte über dem Wasser.
3 Gott sprach: Es werde Licht. Und es wurde Licht.
4 Gott sah, dass das Licht gut war. Gott schied das Licht von der Finsternis
5 und Gott nannte das Licht Tag und die Finsternis nannte er Nacht. Es wurde Abend und es wurde Morgen: erster Tag.
>the more I consider it possible to explain the distribution of the
>eastern dialects of that language by an origin as a Przeworsk-
>language based trade language on the river systems (note the partial
>correspondences of major dialect areas with river catchment areas
> http://tinyurl.com/38hgnml
> ) and the distribution of the western dialects by a spread *together* with the Ariovistus and post-Ariovistus campaigns into present southern and western Germanic-speaking areas.
But Yiddish is a dialect that is close to Bavarian (and to a lesser
extent to Suebian+Alemanian & Nürnberg Franconian). The western
and northern German dialects as well as Neerlandisch dialects and
Frisian and Danish are quite remote, by comparison. I'd say, Yiddish
is a simplified *late* southern German dialect (i.e. South of the
Sound Shift "border" Aachen-Cologne-Berlin-Kaliningrad, i.e.
"vos/vus, dos/dus, er, tsu, suffix -l" (was, das, er, zu), and never
"wat, dat/det, he, to, suffix -ke(n)/-gen, that are typical of the
NWB-theory relevant areas, including former German-speaking
regions such as Danzig and Eastern Prussia.)
> Silesian German
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silesian_German
This is something completely different: this is a Middle German
dialect, which means that *of course* it *must* be closer to Yiddish,
since Silesian "Mundarten" are post-the last sound shift and full of
more recent phonetics and lexical idiosincrasies that are typical of
the southern half of the "Holy Empire of German Nation".
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlesisch_(deutscher_Dialekt)
> http://tinyurl.com/35fmga7
> seems to share with Yiddish diminutives in -le and unrounding
Every Middle and High German dialect has this diminutival suffix
(shortening of the suffix -lein): the other Middle German dialects
in Saarland, Hesse, the Mosel-Franconian, the Bavarian Franconian,
Thüringen, Saxen; then the Alemanian-Suebian group (in Switzerland
it tends to be pronounced -li, in Suebia and Franconia more or less
[l&], although Suebians like to write it down -le, and the Franconians
-la. But the Bavarian subdialects (with few lexical exceptions) make
of it -l (from the linguistic "border" to Suebia, Augsburg & the river
of Lech, to the Lake of Balaton in Hungary). And this -l is the main
representative of this suffix in Yiddish too ("Yiddl mitn Fiddl"), al-
though in names -le is also abundant: Yankele, Pinkerle, Yossele).
>note BTW
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilamovian_language
>buwÅa, cf. bubele
Bubele is typical for south-German dialects, above all (of course)
Suebian (in the "NWB"-area dialects of German in stead of "mein
Bubele" you'll hear "meen Jong"; it is possible though that a
Yiddish native speaker from Siberia would understand this too,
since "meen Jong" is close to "common" German: "mein Junge").
>This would also be an alternative source for that influence of
>Semitic on Germanic which Vennemann ascribed to his 'Atlantic' (eg.
>the functional load placed on ablaut and umlaut; AFAIK Yiddish is >more fond of those than even Hochdeutsch).
Show me those elements, I'm curious to see them. I myself am not
able to distinguish them. If leaving out/aside the Hebrew, Slavic
etc. (even Latin) vocabulary, what remains is a recent south-German
dialect. (From the pre-soundshift era, Yiddish has preserved the
long [u:] instead of the modern [au] (hence you may here the
pronunciation Uuschwitz for Auschwitz), but the speakers aren't that
consequent (oyge [ojge] for Auge; so is Augenstein assimilated as
Ojgenstein, as though it contained the word "Auge" (eye): in reality,
Augenstein, Augstein & the like are Germanized forms of Augustinus).
*
I doubt that Yiddish has more elements than other German dialects
that could be interpreted as relics of those NWB peculiarities.
>I'm sure there will be comments to this. Too bad George seems to >have left the building.
You mean George the historian? :^)
George