Re: Where and how developed die Jiddische Sproch

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "t0lgsoo1" <guestuser.0x9357@...> wrote:

>
> > Arthur Koestler was mentioned earlier in this thread, and as
> > everybody knows, his views are obsolete
>
> *His* views are not "obsolete", but of no relevance -- since he only
> showed what others have said.

I wish I knew what that meant.

> Of relevance is what some of the scholars had said, who had made
> sci.research before the fifties.

Ie. scientific research? I think that what some of the scholars have said after the fifties is even more relevant, since now they can do actual genetic research.

> Hence

Whence?

> he cites some of them, and thus it is easier to get in a few seconds
> info on them.

A few seconds info?

> And of course those people were among the first from those who ever
> have dealt with the problem scientifically,

'from' <- 'von'? I think you mean 'of'.

> with good scientific conclusions,

Personally I think they make better scientific conclusions in the field of genetics today than they did before the fifties, but to each his own.

> and not merely polluting the environment with heaps of useless
> conjectures, wishful-thinking, tales and bunkum.

I am sorry that I have polluted the environment that you created, George. I am a sinner.

> So, you'd better pay attention to what people like that baron
> Kuc^era, and then Mieses, Poliakov, Dunlop and various other people
> after them have had to say, based on no-nonsense research, if your
> tyske Kenntnisse

tyskkundskaber

> don't suffice as to prompt you realize yourself, without the
> help of linguist's evaluations, where the place of di jiddische
> Losch'n is within the frame of the daitsche Sproch.

I tried translating your attempts at Danish and the Yiddish(?) glosses, and it still doesn't make sense. Could you rephrase it, please?

> >Told you so.
>
> You gotta be kiddin'.
>
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przeworsk_culture
>
> I know that this is one of your hobbyhorses.

Well, the whole thing started when I mentioned my nutty uncle's book on the travels of Odin which I didn't believe myself; the reaction to that made me suspicious that there might be something to it after all. And Odin's travels would have taken him through Przeworsk.

> >I figured I might as well place the origin of Yiddish there, which
> >would resolve all the contrdictions in the material you quote.
>
> Yiddish's origin is not there. There the Ashkenazim only performed
> a switch: from Turkish (in general) to Süddeutsch. And, because
> there was no Kultusministerium and no Duden-Gesellschaft to
> standardize their Süddeutsch, Yiddish is as it is (a simplified sort
> of "lingua franca" or "latina vulgata").

There wasn't? Dang, there goes my theory.

> Because of some pronunciation peculiarities, i.e. differences from
> the "Reich"'s South German, at the first glance, one might be
> prompted to deem Yiddish as a Germanic language very distant
> to German.

I don't.

> Moreover: note that Yiddish always has been written with Hebrew
> letters, and as anyone knows, vowels are scarce (although more in
> use for Yiddish than Ivrit texts). Hence no wonder that some "weird"
> pronunciations evolved. No wonder that such frequent names as
> Halperin/Halpern, Schapira are so different from that what they
> actually are: Heilbronn, Speyer -- the consonants are the same:
> HLPRN, SHPR. Dreyfuss/Dreifuss is closer to the original (the sense
> "tripod" is only popular etymology): Drefes/Drefes, Trefes/Drefes,
> dialectal variants of the place name... Trier (Augusta Treverorum).

No! Surprise!
You do realise of course that those volksetymologische derivations are at variance with the sources you so adamantly insist I take as gospel truth, to wit:

'<<*No linguistic components derived from the parts of Germany bordering on France are found in the Yiddish language. Not a single word from the entire list of specifically Moselle-Franconian origin* compiled by J. A. Ballas (/Beiträge zur Kenntnis der trierischen Volkssprache/, 1903, 28ff.) has found its way into the Yiddish vocabulary. *Even the more central regions of Western Germany, around Frankfurt, have not contributed to the Yiddish language... Insofar as the origins of Yiddish are concerned, Western Germany can be written off…* Could it be that the generally accepted view, according to which the German Jews once upon a time immigrated from France across the Rhine, is misconceived? The history of the German Jews, of Ashkenazi Jewry, must be revised. The errors of history are often rectified by linguistic research. The conventional view of the erstwhile immigration of Ashkenazi Jews from France belongs to the category of
historic errors which are awaiting correction.>>

(!!!)'

Those exclamation signs are your own, George. I thought they meant you'd read the text.

> > That would entail that the first Yiddish-speakers arrived in
> > Bavaria with the Bavarians, speaking Bavarian, with Ariovistus or
> > his
>
> You were given the explanation:

Ooops! I dropped your tables, George.
I think I'll go make my own.

> the language was brought to them (to the population spread in those
> centuries chiefly in Eastern Europe, inter alia in Poland and
> Lithuania) but important contingents of *Germans* and by smaller
> numbers of German *Jews* who emigrated coming chiefly from regions
> of the "Holy Empire" where South-German dialects have been spoken,
> that is German language variants after the great soundshift. And
> this is important, since Yiddish has all characteristics of a South
> and post-shift German dialect. Period.

It is nice theory which would explain the existence of Yiddish in the area of contact with the Germans, but not outside it.

> If you get the geballte information, it is ludicrous to ponder "what
> if those medieval Jews were given Goethe-Institute and Berlitz
> school crash-courses in Vienna, Prague, Munich, Nuremberg,
> Innsbruck and Zurich?" :-)

I don't think you should be talking to people who have such silly ides.

> immediate successors (which in turn would entail that the
> proto-forms of the Oberdeutsch, Mitteldeutsch and Niederdeutsch
> dialects started as sociolects in Prezeworsk, with Oberdeutsch
> socially on top, as it is today).
>
> The protoforms of German evolved and differentiated from one
> another very late, especially in the Mittelhochdeutsch epoch,
> that is way after 1000-1200.

Wikepedia says 600 CE, and cites one word to back up that it happened in situ at all.

> So Przeworsk couldn't have played any role whatsoever, even if it
> had been deadsure that the German language's cradle would've been in
> the environment of the Przeworsk culture.

That conclusion now hinges on the interpretation of one word.

> Already in the 4th-7th-8th centuries the Germanic dialects were so
> mixed and dispersed and remixed and changed places in a "tohuwabohu"
> way, that makes no difference.

Nonsense. There exists, as I've now said a couple of times, one word in the sources supposed to reflect the pre-2ndLV stage (ie that of Platt, Dutch, English) in an Oberdeutsch dialect.

> But if the German language (especially those recent dialects of
> people whose ancestors lived for a while before and during the
> migrations epoch in the territories that are relevant to what
> fascinates you)

I'm not fascinated by anything that happened in the course the great migrations/Völkerwanderungen of the 3rd-6th centuries CE. But I'm very interested in those of the 1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. CE.

> was influenced from a "substrate" or another (be it Przeworsk or be
> it something else), then this happened many centuries before the
> ancestors of the East-European Jewry learnt German, and many
> cventuries before the relevant populations for the conversion to
> Judaism became Jewish, and many cenzuries before this Judaized
> population gradually left (I mean most of it, not all, since not
> everybody left the older country) the territories around the
> Caucasus mountains (cf. the notion "chufut dag"), the territories
> East and North East of the Black Sea, those around the "Khazar"
> (Caspic) Sea, moving to the NW, to what became Lithuania and Poland.

Yes, that is one prevailing theory.

> And: history shows us that the German element came back to Poland
> many centuries afterwards, as colonists, under the rule of Polish
> kings. AFAIK, there was no German continuity from the time of those
> Germanic ancestors of the Suebians, Bavarians, Langobards,
> Alemanians etc. who once lived near Vistula & al. places, and
> those times when the colonists emigrated from the West (from the
> "reich", i.e. "the Holy Empire of German Nation", after the
> 11th-12th century) and spoke genuine German (i.e. no longer
> undifferentiated proto-Germanic dialects, when the König was
> Kuning(az) and when the local village "odin" mumbled "ben zi bena,
> lid zi geliden" (well, this is also about 4-5-6 centuries later, but
> it fits somehow as a figura rhaetorica, since there is pretty much
> difference as compared with today's forms of the same words, either
> in German and in Yiddish).

Yes, that is the interesting part. If I am right, then the Yiddish-speakers were alone in maintaining this dialect, originally a high sociolect of Proto-Germanic, in Eastern Europe, after the departure of the last other Germanic speakers with the arrival of Attila.

> If I were interested in Przeworsk things connected with German(ic)
> occurrences, I wouldn't neglect the elements sketched above. But
> to me, "Odin" and "Przeworsk" is anyway nebbich.

It's a free world, and you can believe anything you want.

> (Nebbich not in the English nebbish sense, but in the German sense.)

As shown by the German Wiktionary entry.


Torsten