From: Torsten
Message: 66610
Date: 2010-09-16
>No, it's Proto-Germanic.
> >Middle German is not = vague Germanic
>
> Indeed. "Your" Przeworsk is (perhaps) Germanic, vague Germanic. It
> isn't Middle German. Right?
> >And relevant to the origin of their language.Genes and language tend to follow each other, with exceptions of course.
>
> What is relevant to the origin of their language? The ...
> haplotypes?
> (I was talking of them. You replied this to that.)
> > Linguists think language change makes a difference. You rarely doErh, was that a question? I think they would speak different, yes.
> > it without trace.
>
> In what kind of a context do you put these sentences? "Difference"
> in which respect? I mean in connection with what I had written. In
> this context, what kind of a difference would be between the Yiddish
> spoken by a native-speaker Sephard of the 1st generation or of the
> 5th generation and the Yiddish spoken by a native-speaker Ashkenaz
> in the 10th or 20th generation?
> >My words exactly.Don't get childish, George.
>
> By using a single word, "tyske", I made no assertion whatsoever re-
> ferring to the Danish language (i.e. to its position amongst all
> Germanic languages). So, I don't get it: why do you insist on
> something which didn't happen, didn't exist. :-)
> > I wish you wouldn't mix religion into it.Odin-Ariovist-Harigasti didn't just 'visit' that area. He most likely built up an army there. So, yes.
>
> I didn't mix anything whatsoever. It was the simplest question;
> namely whether you think that that person <name concealed> "visited"
> the Przeworsk culture area. <fullstop>
> >I assume Odin was a person (as Snorri and Saxo claim)Yes.
>
> Now this is an answer, thank you.
>
> >and the same as Ariovistus and Harigasti (the one with the helmet).
>
> Correct me if I misunderstood this sentence: so, you think that
> Ariovistus = Harigasti = Odin.
> If so, I'd have only one (marginal) question: is it a fact that theYou keep implying that Danish is a kind of Plattdeutsch, so you should have no problem reading this:
> Odin cult was not older than Ariovistus/Harigasti's epoch? (I ask
> this question only for my "Allgemeinbildung", that's all.)
> >There was a significnt Jewish presence in the Bosporan Kingdom.You don't know that.
>
> That Jewry was a different one, not the same as the Ashkenazic
> Jewry.
> The Ashkenazim got admigrations chiefly only as... rabbis fromDo you have any specific objection to what I said?
> the Byzantine Empire and from the Caliphate (after the 8th-9th
> centuries). You have to have this in mind. Prior to those centuries,
> in Eastern Europe and Asia there were no "Israels". The one that
> existed for some centuries, was later on, roughly betw. the 8th and
> 10th centuries, "Khazaria". On the other hand, with the exception
> of that kind of euro-asian Jewish state, everywhere else the
> abrahamite religion was spread only in forms of Christian faith,
> and after starting with the 7th century via the religion of the
> "Ishmaelites". The Jewish "clusterettes" of colonies scattered in
> the former Roman Empire played no role (after all, despite the
> existence of some conversions in the history of the Jewish world,
> one of the main characteristics of the Jewish religion has been up
> to day the lack of the ... "mission": unlike Christianity and the
> Islam, Moses's religion doesn't want proselytes). So, mere
> "mechanic" building lists and strings of elements without relevant
> links and "copulas" between them is to no avail (and misleading at
> that).
> >Yes.That is a good question. I have to show that a presumptive Yiddish in the Przeworsk area was in contact with Ostmitteldeutsch (*not* Oberdeutsch) until those changes which characterize that dialect had taken place.
>
> How can you retort "yes"? How can you neglect the enormous time
> gap of transformation of Germanic languages, between 60 BCE and
> 1200-1300? How can you imagine a language with characteristics and
> features post-1300 to be derived from something at the level in
> Caesar's epoch (even Jordanes's Gothic was six hundred years
> "younger"!) and look like most of the dialects of the German
> language, as though the linguistic transformations from "your"
> unknown stage and type of Germanic in Przeworsk until Yiddish in
> Poland during Hmielnitzky's time happened decade after decade,
> century after century as a "twin"-like evolution, as thow they
> had been "clones"! And even if this fantastic tale were true: where
> is the evidence? Why didn't that "Przeworsk" Yiddish became
> something closer to Danish or to the Icelandic language or to Dutch
> in Vriesland or in Limburg or to Letzebuerger Düütsch? Why is it so
> similar to those German Mundarten spoken in the territories that are
> the next-door neighbors to the Ashkenazic area and in various state
> configurations *comprised* the Asheknazic areas? Why was (and after
> all still) are the capitals of the cultural Jiddischkeit Vienna,
> Berlin, Zürich, Strasbourg (and was the older Prague, when it was
> quite German)? Because from the position of the Yiddish subdialects
> there is the "Hochsprache" spoken, namely their "Mamme-Loschn".
> And not in Amsterdam, London, Kopenhagen, Malmö, Oslo, where the
> vernaculars are also Germanic -- but not Süddeutsch. (At least in
> Antwerpen, Amsterdam, Luxemburg, Zürich, Bern some kind of
> adaptation is indeed easier, i.e. between Yiddish and the Germanic
> idioms spoken there. But in Plattdeutsch-Germany and Scandza it is
> almost impossible. Why? Because Yiddish is a Southern Germanic
> language, that came into existence after all the relevant
> transformations in the South.)
> > The Przeworsk culture ca. 60 BCE experienced in influx of a peopleI assume that Przeworsk/Protogermanisch was the lingua franca - trade language of those who managed trade along the Dnepr
> > who took over the whole area and formed a homogenous elite over
> > the heterogenous local elements, as seen in their graves, which
> > are separated from those of the locals. There is an
> > anthropological report of one of them in the bottom of
>
> What does it (can) have in common with our topic? How can the
> Yiddish language fit to that?
> Up to the 8th century those whoExcept when they were on trade expeditions elsewhere.
> became Jews (Caraites + Talmud Jews) North-East of the Black Sea
> and around the Caspian Sea had spoken and still spoke after the
> conversion dialects of Iranian and especially some Northern
> dialect of Turkish.
> And they lived many hundreds of kilometeresDistance didn't stop the Radhanites
> to the South-East away from the Przeworsk area.
> And during thoseAfter Attila's arrival in the late fourth cent. CE, those Przeworsk/Protogermanisch (by that time actually Proto-Ostmitteldeutsch) speakers who were not traders, ie those who were a military threat, disappeared. But nomads and traders have common interests, so the Jews would have been relatively safe, and stayed).
> centuries (60 BCE - 780 CE) the Przeworsk area had been for a
> looong time "depleted" by Germanic tribes,
> who moved away to theNo, the Celtic oppida of the area, eg.
> ... "Schengen territory" of their times, namely in the Roman
> Empire, that declined and was smashed (its Western part) in the
> 3rd-4th-5th centuries (South Germany, Austria, Switzerland had,
> until the 3rd-4th-5th centuries no Germanic inhabitants; the
> colonization, the Germanization was massive in the 6th esp. the
> 7th centuries. For example, in the territory of the German Bavarian
> dialect (i.e. Bavaria, Franconia, Austria) the relevant *Deutsche*
> history, the beginning, was roughly in the 7th century.
> And theAs you can see, my theory does quite nicely without them.
> conversion to Christianity happened quite in those times (so, a bit
> later on than in the Frankish realm), Irish monks having played
> a role). Where the heck are all missing phases of transformation
> necessary in order to "achieve" a Yiddish language, as an
> alternating "cradle" for it, in Eastern Europe without the contri-
> bution of (A) Christian Germans from Germany, and (B) Jewish
> Germans from the same Germany (by Germany I also mean today's
> Austria = "Caranthania" and Bohemia)?
> > 'In general terms the individual's racial type is Caucasian andAnd?
> > belongs to the Berber sub-group of Aegean type (aB)
>
> The "Berber" features are (where there are) because of Sephardic
> ancestry, i.e. from Berber-like populations from what is called
> "Maghrib" (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and the isles). But the "bulk"
> of the east-European Jews consists of chiefly the R1a type of
> Euro-Asian white populations that spoke dialects of Iranian, and
> later on got more and more Turkicized. As is shown even in
> Wikipedia, the results up to now illustrate that genetic
> components/markers typical for people in the area around Egypt,
> Israel, Arabia (e.g. Yemen), are quite rare in the Ashkenazic
> population. Even the Y chromosome of the founders of the sacerdotal
> "caste" (cohanites and levites), namely the brethren Moyshe and
> Akharon, is much less extant in east-European Jewry yet more
> frequent in the Kurds (who speak an Iranian language) and Georgian
> and other neighboring populaces in Eastern Turkey and Caucasian
> countries.
> So, we shouldn't expect genes to always and automaticallyTrue. And?
> confirm the spreading of a language/dialect and that of a
> faith/religion.
> > (according to Michalski-Hensel's typology). The face would haveThe other George's last outstanding point with me (as I see it) was that I couldn't document the identity (and with that, the extraneousness) of that new upper sociological layer in Przeworsk). So it was nice for me to find (in a source George pointed out himself) that someone found evidence of that. I don't know if that is why he left, but it leaves his position, that the new layer in Przeworsak was native, difficult to defend.
> > been oval and rather coarse-featured with a tawny or pinkish-brown
> > complexion. The hair was dark brown, wavy and curly, pretty thick
> > (bushy), the nose small, but broad with a high bridge profile and
> > the eyes very dark with a Semitic type upper eye-lid, perceptible
> > slight alveolar prognathism with full and fairly thick lips -
> > for a Caucasian. The chin would have been slightly protruding.
>
> Why do you cite this?
> Very numerous east-Europan Jews have otherThat is true. How does that change the provenance of the this individual member of the buried-separately new upper Przeworsk layer?
> physiognomic characteristics. Many are blond, red-haired, blue-eyed;
> but also there are many with Turkish and/or "Georgian", "Armenian"
> and "Persian" looks.
> Keep in mind: the Ashkenazim branch of Jewry consistAnd?
> at least of over 10-12 million people; the Sephardim are a tiny
> group in comparison.
> > At present, as in the past, this physical type is in generalMy assumption being ...?
> > associated with Mediterranean area and in particular with its
> > southern shores.
> This is of no help for your assumption.
> Your Przeworsk hypothesis,See above for des Rätsels Lösung.
> i.e. a link to Yiddish-speaking populations of Poland, Baltic
> countries, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Romania and Hungary, would
> be worth investigating hadn't been this language: Yiddish. Which
> you acknowledge as a mittelhochdaitsche Sproch, don't you. :)
> Insisting on the Jewish adstratum of the Mediterranean kind is toErh, okay.
> no avail, of no help -- unlike the fact that so many Ashkenazim
> have "north-European" features (namely of people who should rather
> be careful to expose their skin for too long to sunrays :)).
> (Although, it's true, neither do the Berber and other bedouin-like
> people, who cover themselves and laugh when they see the European
> and American "kafirs" sunbathing.)
> > The presence of this type in the territory of present-day PolandNo, to Karol Piasecki.
> > offers proof of migration from the South.'
>
> This is "proof" to you?
> Only the fact that a "conglomerate" onceYou never heard of the Radhanites, right?
> built a culture/civilization in a territory, and in the same
> territory another "conglomerate" was present 1,000-1,800 years
> later on? While not caring what happened in the meantime, what and
> how many migrations, mixings and conversions and whatever again and
> again kept taking place? Is this what you deem a scientific
> approach?
> Don't you ask yourself: if the "Przeworsk" people were predominantlyThere isn't much evidence for anything in that given place and time.
> Germanic and if an important part of them stayed put for at least
> 1,000 years, what kind of signs, traces and written evidence is
> there for their Germanic-ness in the Slavic-Sorabic-Polish environ-
> ment
> as well as for the non-"contamination" with... German influenceAs you said yourself, Yiddish had no trace of Low German, so what are you trying to say here?
> by colonists that came (in medieval times) from Niedersachsen,
> Netherlands, Rheinland, Hessen, Franconia, Switzerland, Austria?
> But in the 12th-13th centuries especially from the vicinity of the
> Lower Rhine)?
> Even from the simple fact that the Polish and Baltic regions gotI don't know where you got that from. I never tried to 'sustain' anything using German Ostsiedlung from the Northwest as an argument.
> contingents and generations of settlers coming from the West
> (Netherlands, Vallonie and the German "lands") cannot sustain your
> hypothesis that a fictitious Germanic Przeworsk could have had the
> chance to preserve their Germanic-ness unslavicized,
> and withoutNo, of Silesia, where they until 1945 spoke Ostmitteldeutsch.
> contacts with the newcomers from the West, and being then able to
> pass on their Germanic idiom to the Eastern Jews so that Yiddish
> can utter "wus is'n dus?" and "Sei mir gesind!", as though "your"
> Przeworsk would have been a colony of the Germanized Alpine region.
> :)
> >And a reconstruction of her face:Well, I thought you might like see it ;-)
> >http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/files/reconstruction.jpg
>
> What does this have to do with discussing the linguistic typology
> of the jkiddische Sproch in the family of the dialects of the
> daitsche Sproch?!
> (BTW, this kind of Gesicht, or Ponim, as Jews would say, is typicalWhy did they bury separately in Przeworsk?
> of Armenia, Eastern Turkey, Iran. And to a high extend of... Greece.
> Such and similar kinda people are as hundreds of thousands as
> immigrants in Germany, especially from 3 main national groups
> (whatch the order): Turks, Kurds, Greek. (To a much lesser extent
> from Albania, Dalmatia and Yougoslavia. Yet to a significant extent
> from among the Roma (Gypsies) coming to central and Western Europe
> from Rumania, former Yugoslavia, Slovakia, the Czech republic,
> Hungary.) Not to mention those of Maghrib and Arab as well as
> Persian + Afghan extraction. There ain't no day that I don't see
> people of similar looks in the streets. Yet among the Ashkenazim =
> East-European Jewry, this kind of face is not the predominant, it is
> rather in the minority. My 2c. :-))
> > No, the above is a new addendum to my theory of the origin ofThe fact that they spoke one single language (I assume) Przeworsk/Protogermanisch does not mean that they were not of separate ethnic provenance. The fact that they seem to have followed the same burial rites, thus have had the same religion, is a potential problem. One drastic solution is that they were following a Judaizing religion (the successful one God - one true prophet formula, cf.
> > Germanic.
>
> Do I misunderstand this (the lastest) part? I assume that your
> hypothesis re. the origin of the Germanic languages has nothing
> to do with those "Berberic" or Mediterranean kind of physiognomies,
> or has it?!?
> > That statement is in direct contradiction to what the text says.No, that statement is in direct contradiction to what the text says.
> > Please offer evidence to back it up.
>
> No, it isn't. It's only because you can't set up some links from
> that you know, as well as because you need some additional knowledge
> of German and its dialects (+ the movements of them in the last
> 500-1,000 years).
> >That is exactly what it does.The derivation of Ashkenazi names from names of West German cities is in contradiction to:
>
> Don't you understand what it means to write only with consonants,
> and then to "re-invent" the missing vowels?
> > bordering on France are found in the Yiddish language. Not aIrrelevant, See above.
> > single word from the entire list of specifically
> > Moselle-Franconian origin* compiled by J. A. Ballas (/Beiträge
> > zur Kenntnis der trierischen Volkssprache/, 1903, 28ff.)'.
> This has no longer anything to do with the dialects kinship and
> taxonomy, this is an "extra-curricular" linguistic field: it's ...
> "scrabble", "rebus", "cross-word puzzle". The fact that such things
> as Schapir- and Halperin and Lifschitz evolved as replacements for
> Speyer [Spai&r], Heilbronn, Löbschütz (which in turn is something
> distorted in German out of something Slavic) DOES NOT show us any
> "normal" and "logical" DEVELOPMENT (a > b > c), but it shows us a...
> WHIM, a *graphical* whim, based on the ancient Near East (Middle
> East)- based custom not to write vowels. And because of this (IMHO
> stupid) idea, you get weird "solutions".
> Because of this, we neither nowI know.
> the name of God: is it Yahve? Is it Yehova?
> In order to make a statement as the one you repeated above, youYour derivation of Ashkenazi names from names of West German cities is at variance with 'No linguistic components derived from the parts of Germany bordering on France are found in the Yiddish language.'
> should have procured the list of Rhineland German words assembled
> by that Ballas 100 years ago and you should have verified to
> conclude if that guy was right, if the vocabulary list indeed
> doesn't contained or did contain "jiddische" words or features that
> are at home in, say, Luxembourg, Cologne, Bonn, Aachen & the like or
> in the cities of Speyer, Trier, Heilbronn (whose reflexes are the
> East-European second names as Schapiro, Dreyufuss, Halperin).
> >'No' does not mean 'rare'.or Silesian
>
> Over 90% (or 99% :)) of the relevant onomastics (with the exception
> of the one with Sephardic extraction!) is East-European (whenever
> based on toponyms, hydronyms, oronyms --> in this category for
> example Horowitz, Hurwitz, Gurwitz, Gurevich) or they are common
> German names (trade names, epithetons etc.) usually with linguistic
> peculiarities typical of "Ober" and "Mittel"-German dialects, as
> well as folk-etymologizing reflexes of Biblical names in a German
> way, especially in a South-German way. For example, Aberle, which
> looks like a Suebian
> name is a diminutival form for Abraham. TheI wish you could explain what you mean more clearly. If you mean that the Yiddish names are more Standard German than 'Bavarian'/Oberdeutsch it is because Standard German itself is Middle German.
> same is valid for Berlin (it has nothing to do, except for the
> thought of... Volksetymologie, with the city of Berlin, which in
> turn has nothing to do with the "bear", but is a Slavic place
> name, something with the meaning of "marshes", if I remember OK).
> -lin is another variant for the diminutival southern sufix -lein,
> and is much more spread (and typical) in Suebia (Baden-Württemberg)
> than in Brandenburg, Sachsen-Anhalt and Sachsen (cf. Suebian names
> such as Sütterlin, Ensslin; I give only 2 examples of celebrities.)
>
> Lots of Schmidt, Bauer, Metzger, Fleischmann, Fleischer, Miller,
> Milner, Berger, Bergmann, Lehrer, Schuller/Schüler, Holzmann and
> myriads of others which reflects common *modern* German language.
> A rapid scrutinizing of E-Eur Jewish names show you that their
> Germanness is more recent, i.e. showing less "distorsions" than
> those in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, which in more cases
> show older stages (of sound changes). This is another very important
> feature, which should prompt you, as a linguist, to exclaim
> "heureka".
> Besides, even such names that are very typical in Eastern EuropeIt looks to me like you're defending your view against som fictitious person who claims Yiddish is Plattdeutsch or some similar inanity. You are wasting your time.
> for Jews as Gold, Goldmann, Goldberg, Süss, Süsskind, Fleischmann,
> Morgenstern, are by no means unusual in the villages of Austria,
> Bavaria, Suebia, Switzerland, as well as the in the lands of the
> linguistic "belt" North of them where the Mitteldeutsche dialects
> are spoken (the easternmost of which are those of Thuringia, Saxony
> and Silezia -- I mean on the territory of the former empire, since
> the really easternmost Mitteldeutsche dialects are spoken in
> Rumania, by the so-called Transylvanian Saxons, that are no genuine
> Saxons, but linguistically Mosel-Franks, and their dialects are
> close to Luxemburg and Trier German despite the 800 year long
> separation; and I assure you: any Yiddish-speaking East-European
> Jew is constrained to use Hochdeutsch in order to be able to
> communicate with a Transylvanian Saxon in German, so big are the
> differences because Yiddish is closer to South-German dialects; in
> contrast with the other German group in Romania: the so-called
> Banat Suebians, a group consisting of Suebians, Bavarians,
> Austrians, Swiss, Alsatians and Franconians: these speak variants of
> South-German dialects that are closer to Yiddish; i.e. the
> communication in German needn't a complete switch to the standard
> "Hochdeutsch" for the sake of mutual understanding.).
> >>Or why StreisandI am completely unaware that
> >>and not Streusand.
> >
> >IIRC, Schiller and his contemporaries rhymed -ü- with -i- and -eu-
> >with -ei-, and they were hardly Bavarians.
>
> You're completely unaware of these things.
> Those words (and names)Your comment to the fact that
> that you see with -eu- [oj] (including deutsch, Deutschland) in
> the standard language and other dialects, are in South-German and
> especially in the Bavarian dialect always [ai]. A southerner in
> his/her dialect will never say [doitS], but always [daitS]. So,
> Streisand [Straisant, Straizant] is common pronunciation in a vast
> southern region of the "Reich", and this peculiarity is shared by
> those Yiddish-speakers in the shtetls, which is confirmed by the
> spelling of the name of the movie celebrity (who was born and raised
> in Queens, New York). Host mi? :-)
>
> (As for Schiller, as a by the way and for your Allgemeinbildung:
> it means "cross-eyed", it is a variant -a graphical whim- of ...
> Schieler or even more "correct" Schielender = derjenige, der
> schielt. A Schielender = Schiller is somebody having the
> ophtalmologic phenomenon called strabismus (convergens or
> divergens). Another variant of this name is Scheel, that got some
> popularity due to the west-german liberal politician Walter Scheel.
> Semi-dialectally and even in Hochdeutsch, the adjective and adverb
> schiel can be replaced by the variant scheel [$e:l].) (As you can
> see, this has nothing, but nothing to do with the peculiarity I
> mentioned in the contest Streu- and Häuser, written (because of the
> dialectal southern pronunciation) Strei- and Heiser.)
>Please stay on the subject.
> >>>It is a nice theory which would explain the existence of Yiddish
> >>>in the area of contact with the Germans, but not outside it.
> >>
> >>What do you mean by "outside it"?
> >
> >I mean 'outside it'
>
> OK, then... Hopfen und Malz sind bei Dir verloren, Kumpel. Nix für
> ungut. :-)
> >Because your standard theoryOkay. Good for them. Verachtet uns're deutsche Meister nicht.
>
> This is not +++mine+++ theory, it is the theory of learned, profes-
> sional fellas and it is accepted by everybody representing the
> mainstream.
> *Mine* is only the *empiric* observation, namely that by comparingAlso when they conclude that the main influence on Yiddish from German is Ostmitteldeutsch, not Bavarian?
> myself any kind of South-German and Jiddisch text excerpts I must
> conclude: "those researchers are darned right". That's all.
> >would require the Sephardimcorrection: Ashkenazi
> >to have lived concentrated in the areaI know. As a matter of fact my proposal would explain better the old affinity between German and Jewish, before they fell out after WWI, than the prevailing theory.
> >of contact with German colonists, changed language there and then
> >dispersed, and the pattern of dialect distribution of Yiddish
>
> And they had that chance. (Pls. understand that the entire
> east-European Jewish intelligentsia went to the citadels of
> Hochdeutsch, such as Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Zurich, Frankfurt
> etc. as does any provincial and peasant to the capital of his
> country? To the Yiddish-speaker people Vienna and Berlin were
> the natural capitals with their school system and culture
> institutions and newspapers. And lacking Vienna, Czernowicz did
> it too, a province capital of an Austrian province (Bucovina).
> To any Yiddish-language speaker the natural standard equivalent
> of it was Hochdeutsch. This is why such authors like Freud,
> Roth, Ausländer, Celan, Hilsenrath, but older ones such as
> Lassalle (the founder of German social-democracy) and many-many
> other Jews form the shtetls belong to the pan-German literature
> as well. So, leaving aside the religion and the national
> "founding mythology", the Ashkenazic Jews (along with those
> Sephards that were assimilated into the Yiddishkeit) also belonged
> and still belong to the linguistic-cultural German nation.
> Hadn't the Shoah happened, even today would any Eastern European
> Jew tell you s/he is concomittantly Deutsch.)
> > BTW, IIRC in a late novel by I. B. Singer he lets the Jews haveYou don't know that.
> > arrived in Poland already in antiquity.
>
> Which is a tale = crap.
> So do some say of today's Romania's territory:The problem is how we define cultural continuity and succession.
> only because according to some Roman sources some Roman legions or
> other military units were moved from some spots in Palestine to
> Dacia there must have been Jews with them; but experts who really
> dealt with the stuff scientifically say this claim has no support.
> > Yes, if you are afflicted with an irritable and suspiciousI am trying very hard to take you seriously.
> > temperament, the resulting mental agitation can put a strain on
> > your nervous system.
>
> Are you taking me seriously or you're kiddin'? :)
> >Erh, what? That must have made them very Germanic.No, it happened when Ariovistus did an ethnic cleansing of the area. That's what the flight of the Helvetii was all about.
>
> Until approx. the 2nd-3rd centuries, that what's today's Germany
> West and South of the Roman limes line (roughly from Regensburg,
> Bavaria, to the border Germany-Netherlands, where the Rhine flows
> to the "left" into the Netherlands, well, that "Germania" territory
> was rather Celtic; the gradual Germanization occurred gradually
> in the centuries after Rome lost all territories North of the
> Alps.
>Yes.
> > Are you arguing aginst the timing of the High German
> > Lautverschiebung here or something else?
>
> Yiddish is a German idiom after all soundshifts; your Przeworsk
> hypothesis would mean a Germanic idiom even 3-4 centuries older
> than Wulfila's bible translation.
> Wie passen die 2 zusammen? (Wie die Faust aufs Aug'. :))Be my guest. Knock yourself out.
> Of what "High German" can we talk in the 3rd c. CE?The one in Germany, I think.
> Or in the 1st c. BCE??The one being formed in Przeworsk as a sociolect of the new upper classes. Note that this means that the later Yiddish-speakers must have been close to the sociological top.
> Perhaps during Caesar's time the "Danish" spoken in AarhusThe Danish and North Germanic languages in general arrived in Denmark with invasions either early 1st cent. CE or sometime in the 3rd century CE, cf the Brøndsted quote above.
> was identical with the "German" spoken by the ancestors of those
> who speak the Bavarian variant in Grinzing, Vienna, Austria.
> If a simple "ben zi bena, lid zi geliden" is not intelligible toPrzeworsk Proto-Germanic
> a modern-German speker, then I expect any Germanic idiom
> other 900 years earlier than the "Frankish" ben zi bena to have
> been even "remoter" as compared with the German dialects of the
> last 5-8 hundred years (since many sentences by Walter von der
> Vogelweide and large parts of the 1200 written version of
> Nibelungenlied I can understand without the help of the dictionary
> that translates older German into newer German). But you insist on
> the idea that a 1st c. BCE unknown Germanic idiom
> gives birth toProto-Ostmitteldeutsch and Yiddish stayed together in the Przeworsk area at least until the end of the fourth century, ie 300 years later than Odin-Ariviostus-Harigasti left for Southern Germany, after Germanic names begin to appear in the NWB territory (Segimarus instead of Segestes), and centuries after someone invades Denmark and Scandinavia, spreading a Germanic dialect there.
> a South-German dialect called Jiddische Sproch or Jiddische Loschn
> without the participation of the German language - namely via
> unknown evolution in a time span from, say, 50 BCE and, say, 1250
> (i.e. 9-10 years after the Mongolian invasion of Eastern and
> central Europe)!
> >Possibly influenced by the Jewish element in the Bosporan KingdomExcept when they went on trading expeditions up the Dnepr.
>
> But that element (provided that such a thing/configuration would
> have worked) spoke any kind of language, but no Germanic, let alone
> Deutsch.
> >That was 'cupa', as you would know if you had read my last posting.No, to those mainstream linguists who wrote in Wikipedia
>
> To you a single word that doesn't fit a pattern has much more weight
> than train and shiploads weighint zillion tons?
> (I remember thatI don't know what you are talking about here, and I'm beginning to suspect you don't know it yourself.
> on this list some participants dealt, for instance, with old
> Italic/Latin words that, because of the evident fact they didn't
> fit certain patterns typical of Latin, it was assumed they could
> have been loanwords. But I never saw anybody insisting that because
> of such "inconsistencies" Latin wasn't Latin or that because of
> a strong substratum of a different kind Germanic languages are not
> Germanic.