>That is because we know very little of the migrations of those >historical phases
We know less as far as the 3rd-7th c. migrations are concerned, but
much mor as far as the ones occurred thousand years later on
(when there were more and more scripts, diplomas & al. papers
containing information on who and why came to settle down or
went away or were constrained to do so.
Without having read an iota of the info attached to that Russian
map, I dare say the spread of Yiddish subdialects shown on it do
not reflect medieval Yiddish, but the situation of Yiddish in modern
times (say, the 19th-20th c.). The spreading of Yiddish several
centuries before looks different. (And of course: how on earth can
be Austria and Bavaria be left out, when the Bavarian dialect is
the closest German to Yiddish? From 1000 points of view you can
deem Yiddish as an altered Bavarian. Don't let yourself misled
by superficial listening to it: indeed, the pronunciation of modern
Yiddish is a bit different from Bavarian.)
>I thought we were talking the distribution of Yiddish dialects, not >German dialects?
We *must* talk of Yiddish as of a German dialect. Yiddish is no
separate language. It is n times closer to any (especially Middle
and High) German dialect than, say, Flemish and Danish. Most
morphologic and idiomatic constructions are *recent* South-German
ones. (You might be sceptical because you are, perhaps, accustomed
only to standard German and perhaps to Niederdeutsch/Plattdeutsch
or to Niedersächsisch, that are very distant German dialects as
compared with Yiddish.)
On the other hand, Yiddish consisted of two big branches: Western
Yiddisch (spoken in the "Reich") and Eastern Yiddish. The western
branch of it is... extinct. It disappeared a few *centuries* ago. So,
any Yiddish variant of today (and of the last 2-3 hundred years)
is (was) Eastern Yiddish. (This and various other details you can
read in the paperback version of the Atlas der Deutschen Sprache.
And that'll do.)
>This board contains a paradox: where I want to stick the square peg,
>because I know it belongs there, there is a round hole? You are >supposed to fit your theory to reality, not the other way round.
That's what I'm trying to show you. Starting with the most important
aspect: Yiddish is an utmost new/recent German development (and
this you can yourself analyse by comparing with all German, and
then with Flemish/Nederlandish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian,
English). Therefore, I'd expect that, if German has a sum of elements
to be deemed as relics of that NWB language, then Yiddish has or
might have some of them too, as belonging to the same family, but
I doubt that it could have gotten anything in a separate way, via
a separate "connection", simply because prior to the 12th-13th
centuries there was no Yiddish idiom whatsoever. There is no
"wat is dat; he; to; eten; p (Perd, Appel)" Yiddish. It belongs to the
era after the big soundshift event (was is das; er; zu; essen; and
the pf went on - in Yiddish - becoming f: Ferd, Feife, Feffer, Fundt).
Simply put: Yiddish is no Plattduitse (or tyske, if you prefer :)) spraak.
(And where do you find in the Low German dialects regions something
like Bubele, Medele? Not even *Bubeken, AFAIK.)
> > (which is striking to any *nonlinguist* German-language speaker)
>
> To a nonlinguist German-language speaker, German is the language spoken north of the Weisswurstäquator at the Main river (except perhaps some peasants still speak some weird mix of Dutch and Danish)
Quite the opposite is true! Pay attention: we are talking of
dialects, that is of the "continuum" of Germanic idioms called
"German language". In this respect, the closest German variants
to the standard German called "Hochdeutsch" (or "Schriftdeutsch")
are the Middle and High (Ober-) dialects of the German language,
and the remotest are the North German dialects a.k.a. Niederdeutsch
(Low German) a.k.a. Plattdeutsch a.k.a. Niedersächsisch, which
have preserved the peculiarities that existed prior to the great
soundshift. (wat not, was, et not es, dat not das, he not er, to not
zu, eten not essen, Appel not Apfel, Water not Wasser, Dörp not
Dorf, Huus not Haus, uut not aus, grön not grün, Möller not Müller
& Miller and (Austrian + Yiddish) Millner etc.
Hence, North Germans tend to learn a quite accurate standard
German, which is not necessary for the middle and southern
"belts" of German dialects, since the Southerners understand
standard German and standard German speakers easier understand
their dialects; in contrast, North German dialects are as unintelli-
gible as Flemish and Danish. :-) (In addition, in quite vast areas,
in the latest 100-150 years, the population virtually forgot their
Low German dialects. Hence the saying that Hannover people
speak the best standard German, and not because their own
German would be such: their own German, that is the German
spoken by their grand parents is extremely hard to understand
for any standard-German speaker: it is ... Niedersächsisch. You'd
understand it perhaps better than I do thanks to your... Danish.)
>and south of it they talk funny (ie Bavarian = Austrian = Swiss >German).
Funny, but way much closer to Hochdeutsch than anything spoken
north of the most important separation line which can be
drawn through Aachen - Cologne - Berlin - Königsberg (Kaliningrad).
(Aachen (Oche) - Köln (Kölle) - Berlin represent, as dialects,
mixed forms between Low and Middle German, but 50-100 km
North of them, your "funny" is 100% warranted: to the ears of
all German-language speakers south of that line all those dialects
spoken north of it rather sound like Flemish, Frisian, Danish, Swedish.
By comparison, even Schwitzer Düütsch and Letzebuerger
Düütsch (Luxemburg German) sound familiar. :-)
>If that evidence shows that Yiddish is a Mitteldeutsch or Oberdeutsch
>dialekt
You needn't believe *me*, you can find that in expert books along
with myriads of details and explanations. (But sorry that I can't
resist: I thought it'd be self-understood that you realize this, since
you seem to be in a pretty good command of Hochdeutsch. And
as such, just pick up some Yiddish texts or listen, for example, to
Kol Israel on shortwaves, listen to 1-2 newscasts.)
>what is the evidence then that makes it specifically Bavarian?
I gave you some examples. Some important features I pointed out
in my previous post, from that sample text (I copied from the
wikipedia, along with its equivalent in standard German). I don't have
them all systematically stored on my mind. For that, there are good
books. I for one, am able to detect myriads of common characteristics
since I am accustomed to Bavarian (and to a lesser extent to
neighboring dialects).
> > __hot (hat);
> http://tinyurl.com/35fmga7
Most of Middle and High German dialects pronounce hat ("he, she,
it has / is having") [hot]. (In various renderings, the spelling hod
means nothing; the pronunciation is always the same [t]. The (bad)
habit to write B, D, G instead of P, T, K is only a "whim". (This
is, inter alia, why the name of the California governor is spelled
Schwarzenegger and not Schwarzenecker, as it "should" according
to modern Hochdeutsch rules. For the same reason there are so
many names ending in -hart, -hard, -hardt, while the pronunciation
is always [hart]; and the coexisting spellings: Alptraum - Albtraum.)
> dos "dass"
>
>>Himml (Himmel);
>Not specific enough.
Only the Bavarian dialect eliminates the vowel completely, relying
on the -l syllable only. So, the Yiddish pronunciation [himl] = 100%
the Bavarian pronunciation [himl]. Moreover, many (if not most) of
the names in Southern Bavaria and Austria, ending with the suffix
-el, are written -l. Outside of the Bavarian dialect, only Yiddish
does the same; the immediate next neighbors of Bavarian, Suebian
and Franconian never feel the need to write such consonant
clusters by leaving out the vowel e. So, the English concoction
"Yidl with the fiddl" is actually a Bavarian dialect peculiarity
transmitted to English via Yiddish. (NB: Yiddish has both Yidl and
Yidele, the former having a "Bavarian", and the latter a Suebian
aspect. But Bavarian itself have, in various circumstances coexis-
ting forms (all diminutivals): Herrle & Fraule as well as Mandl &
Weibl. Mandl is the equivalent of north-german(ic) Mänchen &
Menneken; and the diminutive for Meinhart (I ain't sure though),
but if Jewish, then it is the diminutive of Emmanuel, written
Mandl & Mandel as well as Mendel & Mendl).
>>de Erd (die Erde);
>
>Not specific enough.
Lemme explain: the tendency of leaving out the final -e in
feminine nouns is typical of Bavarian (but not only! other dialects
have it too). And there is an additional tendency to a second
rendition, by adding an -en, which is pronounced [n] and written
as such, the most popular being at the Oktoberfest: "auf der
Wiese" -> Bavarian "auf da Wies'n" ['vi:zn].. (cf. in Austrian Bavarian:
"halte deine Gosche" (shut up) "hoit dai Gosch'n" [go:$n]. NB: the
name Hagen esp. as second name; in Bavaria and Austria, it is
frequently spelled this way: Hagn.
Now then: I don't know whether "di Erd" can also be said as
"di Ern" in Yiddish, but I know that it also has this feminine ending
rendered as it were a plural; e.g. "mother tongue/language" in
Yiddish is called "Mam(m)eloschen", pronounced approx. [mame-
lo$n] (Losch'n is from Hebrew, and Mamme = Mamma, mother).
>>is gwen (ist gewesen);
>http://tinyurl.com/3a6fnrq p. 129
>Silesian: geweszen, gewest, gewâst, gwast
Yeah, but gewen, gwen [gve:n] is typical of few dialectal regions
and classic to Bavarian. And to... Yiddish (that also preserves the
old pronouns ets = ihr and enk = euch, that almost disappeared
from Bavarian and several other *southern* dialects).
-> The elision of the -(vowel)S(vowel-.
I.e. this is a splendid geographical marker: g(e)wen shows us
a geographical restriction to areas adjacent to the Alps.
(Your Silezian example, with gewest, gew&st, gwast, is close to
Suebian and other neighboring dialects.)
>vist (i instead of ü - also typical of Bavarian,
>>but also of other German dialects;
>Eg. Silesian.
Of course: I mentioned "but also of other German dialects".
And now I add: esp. those neighboring... Slavic populations,
that don't have [ü] and [ö]. NB: many of the German-speaking
populations in eastern regions of the "Holy Empire" were initially
Slavic (Ka$ubic, Sorabian, Slovenian, Czech etc.) populations,
hence there are some characteristics pertaining to lexemes and
phonetics. What's striking: the Bavarian dialect, by and large,
shares this tendency (ö > e; ü > i) with the Slavs (fri: = früh,
schee(n) = schön; in this respect, it is curious that Bavarian doesn't
say *gri:n instead of grün, but ... grean (with an -ea- as a diphtong);
Blümchen and Blümelr is rendered in a similar way: Bleaml). Blöd
(dumb, stupid) > bled [ble:d]. Süß (sweet) > sieß, zis (feminine: zise).
BTW, Yiddish also shares the Bavarian (rarer) tendency un > in:
gesund > gesind, uns > ins. This is even extended to -ut-, e.g.
"a gitn vain" (einen guten Wein).
>>__un (und; this is a pan-German dialectal & colloquial occurrence);
>Exactly, so no proof for specifically Bavarian.
OK, un' isn't Bavarian only; I underlined that by writing "this is a
pan-German ... occurrence". But if I'd have enough time and if I'd
see that you're receptive enough, I'd give you dozens of examples
picked out of any Yiddish text from among myriads of texts in Yiddish
one can find on the Net. This and the other post are meant to give
you a hint only (sort of an "introduction" into the stuff).
E.g. a (instead of "ein"), an (instead of accusative "einen"), g(e)wen, enk, ets, gesind, azoy (Bav. aso [a-zo] a; both meaning engl. "such
(a)"), hejnt (= heute), dideldumdei (onomatopoetic rhyme in songs),
the tendency of pronouncing the prefix ver- [f&:(r)] -> [far] (esp. in
Austria), e.g. verrückt < farrikt (crazy), Vergnügen > fargnig(e)n
(pleasure, fun, entertainment) etc. (these are only ad-hoc example) from among persuading examples.
Bavarian is the closest; but there are numeours similarities concer-
ning other dialects as well: but only Oberdeutsche dialects. And to
a lesser extent Mitteldeutsche ones. The remotest are the Nieder-
deutsche dialects. In this order. So that e.g. Danish is even more
distant to it. So, I by no mean didn't imply that Yiddish had nothing in
common with the rest of German dialects!
Another example: "is gewejn main hejm, azoj is dus amol gewejn".
This is intelligible based on both standard German and most German
dialects. ((Das) ist mein Heim gewe(se)n, so ist das mal gewe(se)n.)
In which "aso" and "amol" are typical south-German variants (in
Bavarian also "amoi", up to Vienna and beyond, in Western Hungary.)
>I've seen a soccer coach in the Ruhr district in Stern complain that
>his team couldn't be expected to perform well 'mit _die_ vielen >Schäden'. Thus: not specifically Bavarian.
The example "mit die" has nothing to do with Bavarian; it shows
something else: (how should I call it?) the "non-assimilation" of the
obvious grammar thing, which most of German speakers respect:
mit + the dative. But there are exceptions. And the remark made by
the person who worked in Ruhrgebiet is excellent: there, the mit
without respecting the dative is or might be one of the features
existing due to the fact that there most of the population is of
foreign (chiefly Polish) extraction!
Another example is "Butter bei die Fische" (with the meaning "now
let's have facts, let's hear the truth"). I don't know whether this is
also a Ruhr concoction, but it has spread all over the country and
the "disruption" _bei die_ is tolerated. But everyone knows that
_bei die_ is not correct. Whereas in Yiddish and some regiolects
such grammar inconsistencies are *common rules*, they are correct.
A similar occurrence is, in the Berlin and Brandenburg dialect, the
combination of verb + dative where it should be verb + accusative
and vice versa. I have no idea of its origin (only that Berlin also
has a giant Polish immigrant "adstrate").
And various other inconsistencies in various dialects, when compared
with the grammar of "Schriftdeutsch" (the German "of the books").
E.g. almost none dialect respects the adding of the dative plural -n
in words in which, Hochdeutsch speaking/writing, you *must*.
(Yet remember: German is only that what's made of dialects.
Hochdeutsch, i.e. the standard German, is only an "artificial"
language, and perceived as such by all German native-speakers, with
small exception groups of people from cities and small regions where
they forgot their own regiolects in the last century. And of course,
those dialects that participated more to the development of
Hochdeutsch look the less different from it: esp. Middle German
dialects and northern parts of the South German dialects. After
all, Martin Luther lived in the region of the Middle German
dialects.)
> > ([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.)
>
> And typical Berlinerisch too, so not specifically Bavarian.
Lies nochmal, I didn't assert something like that. Read above. I'm
repeating that: "my insertion of "uff" is not Bavarian". And I added
the information that it is typical of the next-door neighbor of it,
the Alemanian-Suebian group. (And I add that in Bavarian "auf"
tends to be "af" [a:f]. So, that Yiddish shares this word with
neighbors of Bavarians.)
I didn't mention the same "uff" uttered by the Berliners and their
surrounding mixed regiolect, since their "uff" is not typical of their
Northern Low German, but it is typical of the dialects South of
them, namely of the Middle German dialects (I don't exactly know
whether all of them or only a part of them). So, even if Yiddish
had had "uff" from Cologne, Frankfurt, Nürnberg, Erfurt or Leipzig,
it still shows an "embedding" of this idiom in the southern realms
of the "Holy Empire" and not in the North (towards the North and
the Baltic Seas, i.e. not in the regions where you expect that "NWB"
to have exerted its influence on German.
So, note that Yiddish doesn't have something like op, up (which
one encounters north of Luxembourg, Aachen and Cologne).
>So?
So, you'll be getting it by now (hopefully) that Yiddish has its place
in the southern half or in the southern 2/3 of the "reich", i.e. it is
not at home in the "North-West Block" area. In other words, if it
however has something to do with that, then no more than Züri,
Bern, Strasbourg, Letzebuerg, Stuttgart, Innsbruck, Munich,
Klagenfurt, Bolzano, Merano, Vienna and Timisoara, Sibiu, Bra$ov,
Breslau/Wroclaw, Danzig/Gdansk, Budapest, Odessa and Kazakhstan
and Uzbekistan German do. :-)
>What on earth are you talking about? I didn't mention the NWB area.
The other context you mentioned (around Anno Domini) has nothing
to do with German and Yiddish. So, I limited my considerations to
Yiddish and its relationship with German (its relationship concerning
the other Germanic languages are not on topic, are they?).
>Erh, are you saying that Yiddish has bad grammar, so it must be
>Bavarian, which also has bad grammar?
No, I ain't saying something like that.
>Erh, yes, and?
I only gave you some explanations, beforehand, in the event that
some of the sentences might be exotic or difficult; I only stressed
that it is a kind of "Volks"-German, mutual understandable as com-
pared with central and southern German.
>>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).
>
> Even I know that Mittel- and Oberdeutsch has *-v- > -b- and Yiddish doesn't; this feature is *contraindicative* of Yiddish being a Bavarian dialect.
Are you paying attention to what you're reading? In the example
above we have another phenomenon: B > V. In the Yiddish sample
chosen, we have OVNT for ABEND, and I showed that Bavarian has
for it the variants OBNT/OMT, which means that Yiddish went on
transforming OBNT in OVNT, which is unusual in this word, but (I
added) it is common in other German dialects (incl. Bavarian).
I did it ANTICIPATING a possible reaction of yours, since for some-
body in command only of Hochdeutsch, there is no link there in
the Duden or Wahrig dictionary between ABEND and OVNT. And
neither your ancient Polish nor your Northwestern Stuff would be
of any help.
>>(and to a lesser extent to Suebian+Alemanian & Nürnberg
>>Franconian).
>
>The thing you were supposed to do here is to prove that is not >closew to Silesian, which I would require for my proposal.
I won't prove anything whatsoever. You've got the idea, and you'll
be able to look for texts in order to verify my assertions.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_language
>is not and has never been a West Germanic language
Why do you mention that in this thread? I didn't assert Danish
were a West Germanic language, nor did anybody else (if I didn't
miss 1-2 messages).
>I read that as that you think that Silesia was originally platt-speaking
>but somehow _became_ Mitteldeutsch later.
Me? Never did I write that. (Whether North Germany, i.e. from
Saxony the proper, exerted its linguistic influence, by occupation,
it could be; since Silezia's neighbor is called Sachsen, although its
dialect isn't a genuine Saxon dialect. I could have implied that, yet
I don't remember the context. But how the heck should I put Silezian
German into the Low German bowl since it is also a Middle+Southern
dialect? Anyone can hear that out of 1-2-3 sentences.)
>That corresponds to no theory I know of. If you have evidence of >Silesian German once being platt, please cite it.
Perhaps you must have read that on another list, which I haven't
subscribed to. (I myself have never read/heard of Silesian German
and Plattdeutsch being put together.)
BTW, that text in Silezian you quoted must be quite old. Modern
Silezian looks somewhat different (and much closer to Hochdeusch;
much closer -- judging from what I've heard from acquaintances
born and raised in Silezia).
>So -l is Bavarian, -l and -le is Yiddish and -le is Silesian.
-le is typical of Suebian, but it is used by most of Germans, even in
Hochdeutsch, not only in their regional dialects. Virtually in the
entire Middle and High German territories. But -l is typical of
Bavarian and Yiddisch, whereas -le is strongly used in the surrounding
territories as well. (And I explained it to you: the Swiss tend to
pronounce it [li], hence they write it -li; the Nürnberg, Bamberg,
Würzburg Franconians perceive it as [la], and tend to write it -la.
And I add that the Suebians, Hesses and the others, incl. "your"
Silezians, actually pronounce it [l&], i.e. that e in -le isn't a genuine
e. Rather some Yiddish "Leit" would pronounce it [e], others [&]
(and many would add to it a further ending -ch, or -kh, as you'll
see in English spellings of Yiddish; e.g. knedelech for Knödele,
Knedele; Bavarian Knedl).
>How does that show that Yiddish is specifically Bavarian?
I nearly decided to gather whole lotta stuff for you next week,
showing you only such examples where the similarities are limited
to the area of the Bavarian dialect or also to the areas of the
next neighbors (with which it shares a big amount of common
Oberdeutsch features). And I did give you some important examples
above.
But I won't give you any further examples.
>And apparently exists in Silesian too.
The -lelele is "at home" not in Silezia, but in Suebia! Schwabenland!
(On top of that, Silezians as well as many of Germans colonized in
the last 200-300 years or so in Eastern Europe have the saying that
goes "we are Suebians". The Hungarians and Yugoslavs call all Germans "$vábok" = "Suebians". So, not only do those middle and
southern dialects all have the -le(in) suffix -- which is pan-south-
German opposed to the pan-Plattdeutsch -ke(n) suffix --, but they
were also influence, here and there, by Suebian immigrants, who
are called Bechtle, Eberle and the like.)
Silezia is only a historic and geographic "appendix" to the East of
the area where the abbreviation of -LEIN > -LE (-l&, -la, -li, -l) has
its highest frequency. It even extended into the Hungarian language,
because of German cohabiting population originating from the
same southern part of the "Holy Empire": it is invariably rendered
by -LI. Even in some names, such as Nyiszli (< Ni(e)ssle).
It has nothing to do with your assumptions. But feel free to imagine
that Yiddish evolved in a way or another somewhere in Silezia or
neighboring Slavic territory and that the common occurrence of
a German diminutival suffix in Silezian German and in Yiddish
German (while you keep your eyes shut re. the rest of the relevant
areas for this suffix, expecially Suebia). I don't mind. Discussion
means putting on display knowledge and opinions and then...
tschüs und ade!
>>Show me those elements, I'm curious to see them.
>
>I think I recall this one (from Sapir?)
>http://tinyurl.com/383h9w6
Tog is nothing unusual. In every German dialect it is at home as it
is in Yiddish (especially, sorry :-), in the Bavarian dialect), except
for those German dialects in which Tag is pronounced Tach or Dach
(esp. in virtually all Low German regions). Tog is as Munich and as
Vienna German as they come. ("bei Tog und bei Nocht") (Occasionally,
it can happen that Tog is spelled Dog.)
>Sez you and most non-linguist German speakers; you haven't shown
>it.
And you're a linguist? Selig der, der's glaubt. EOD.
George