>I don't know where you guys get it from.
>
>Paul Wexler
>Explorations in Judeo-Slavic Linguistics
>page v
>
>'"The phenomenon of Jewish language creation in various parts of
>the world is one of the most interesting topics in the study
>of Jewish and general culture. It is the task of the linguist
>and the social scientist to delineate the common features in
>the various Jewish languages."
> (U. Weinreich, College Yiddish, New York 1949, p. 144).
Yes of course. But Yiddish is ***one*** of them. And as such
it is a certain type of Deutsch from certain periods of time.
No earlier than the 13th century/14th century because of
the tremendous sound and semantic shifts that made MHG out
of OHG. And Weinreich doesn't mention Yiddish, but he says
"in the various Jewish languages".
Even the Yiddish term Yiddish (or in German spelling Jiddisch)
is a recent German word, having ü > i which is typical of
Bavarian, Suebian and some Eastern German dialects. The noun
is even more so: a Jid [yid], and diminutivally (Yiddish is
fond of diminutives) a Jidl [yidl] have typical Bavarian,
Franconian, Suebian phonetics. In contrast, where are the
finds or references that these words were the same in
earlier times, say Charlemagne's or Clovis's or Ermanarich's
or Arminius's?
Jewish is not Yiddish, but it means *any* language spoken
by Jews as native-speakers. Such a Jewish language is also
the Spanish variant/dialect called Ladino. It is Spanish,
not Yiddish.
>"... it must be borne in mind that the significance of the
>subject [history of the Jews in Eastern and Central Europe] is
>out of all proportion to the limited extent of the factual
>record... That there were Jews there in [the Dark Ages] is not >unlikely.
Of course. But small communities. Even in Spain (S'farad).
The immense majority lived in Russia and Ucraine and the
Caucasus lands, and were *late* Jews, after the conversion
under Bulan-khan, and "Yiddishized" centuries later on in
Poland while co-existing there with the German craftspeople
and tradespeople as well as with learned Jewish people from
the "Holy Empire" (chiefly coming from within the South).
Yiddish is a... simplified south-east German dialect full
of Hebraisms and Slavisms (and here and there words of
Latin extraction: benditsch'n < bene dicare, perhaps via
Ladino).
Most Jewish authors are reluctant to underline that the
vast majority of the European Jewry has always been made of
Ashkenazim, and not of Sephardim or of the "Romanyiotes"
in the Byzantine Empire. Yet the mainstream keeps the
thesis Ashkenazim were German Jews from the Rhine (only
that linguists showed in the 20th century Yiddish is no
Rhineland German).
>But in fact we know nothing whatsoever of them, other than
>a couple of later and improbable legends, a vague reference
>to Jewish slave dealers in the region (in 1085)
This doesn't matter. What matters is the Yiddish language:
"since when", "where" and why". Yiddish is not "any kind of
language in any period of time", it is only one language,
a dialect of the German language after from the 13th-14th
century until today.
>and an unsubstantiated report of the presence of Jews in
>[Gniezno]. All this illustrates the difficulty of building
>up a consistent picture of Jewish origins in medieval
>Europe,
You see? He talks of "Jewish origins", not of "origins
of the Yiddish language"!
>even in those areas where their presence was later so
>significant."
>(C. Roth, The early Jewish settlements in Central and Eastern
>Europe 1, General setting. In C. Roth and I. H. Levine, eds.,
>The world history of the Jewish people 11. The Dark Ages.
>Jews in Christian Europe 711-1096, New Brunswick 1966, p. 304).'
The probability is that early East-European Jews spoke
either Greek (and were literates in Hebrew and Aramaic)
or they spoke a Turkish dialect, of the Oghuric kind,
as did Proto-Bulgarians and Proto-Hungarians, and Huns
and Avars perhaps as well (the R-branch of Turkic languages,
in contrast with the Z-branch, e.g. Anatolia Turks and
Azeris). All of them having an Iranic substratum. Some
fragments of Jewish written relics with Hebrew alphabet
characters contain Turkic words.
>And possibly a Turkic language (Karaite).
This of course! Karaites are Jews who do not acknowledge
the Talmud. But I guess it is difficult or impossible
to delimit what is Khazar and what is Cuman/Tatar
in the Crimeean karaite Turkish language.
>Your definition is a bit fuzzy,
It is not mine: it has already been studied and fixed.
What I, as a German-speaker living in South-Germany, can
say is that those scholars are right. Of course, Yiddish
is akin to any other Germanic language (English included),
but the closest dialects are not those in Dover, Amsterdam,
Aarhus, Malmö, Maastricht, Luxemburg, Cologne, Hannover,
Hamburg, Stettin, but those in Stuttgart, Munich, Vienna,
Prague, Brünn/Brno, Breslau/Wroclaw, and until 1945 in
Lemberg/Lviv, Tschernowitz/Tchernivtsy.
I'm talking of this language all the time; not of the
origin of the *people* who've been in command of it
(they may have various origins, Slavic, Turkic, Sephardic,
Byzantine Jewish, Iranian Jewish, Alexandria-Egyptian
Jewish, it doesn't matter).
>so I'll improve it to: Yiddish is a MHG dialect
>and as such its separation from the other MHG
>dialects
It has *never* separated of them! Esp. in the case of
all Jewish shtetls who were in territories occupied by
Prussia and Hapsburgic Austria. But even all other
communities *have always deemed* Hochdeutsch spoken and
written in Austria, Germany and Switzerland as the
standard/literary counterpart of their own dialect.
No wonder that lots of literature, philosophy etc.
luminaries of Jewish faith and Ashkenazic extraction
from East-Europe became famous *within the German-
language* literature and philosophy.
On the other hand, it is not satisfactory to simply
say "MHG", because Yiddish, in all its variants, is
extremely close to today's neighboring dialects. In
fact, it can be deemed as New High German.
The difficulty in understanding its subdialects is
caused by the peculiar phonetics, which differs from
those of neighboring dialects; and because of numerous
words from Hebrew, which one has to learn (e.g. Loschn
= Sprache, Ponim = Gesicht, Haser/Hasir = Schwein);
some such words are, in addition, distorted according
to Yiddish phonetics, so they differ from the genuine
Hebrew or Aramaic pronuntiation.
Weren't these two aspects, you wouldn't doubt anything,
as you don't doubt that Schwitzer Düütsch, Letzebuerger
Düütsch, Plattdüütsch/Niderseksesch, Schlesisch, Boarisch,
Fränkisch, Ripoarisch, Schwäbisch-Alemannisch are Dialekts
of Deutsch.
>can not have happened later than at the transition from
>OHG to MHG, which is appr. 1050 CE. I therefore have to
>show that OHG might have been spoken
>
>1) in the Przworsk area, and from its demise
>2) in the same area until appr. 1050 CE.
This is something else. It doesn't matter where Ashkenazic
Jews changed their language preferring "Proto"-Yiddish.
What's important: *for which epoch* is it warranted to
speak of a Yiddish language. And knowing its typology
and approximate chronology, it is also relevant what
kind of Germans, from which regions, were relevant for
this. History knows of which groups of Germans and in
which circumstances and when migrated to Eastern Europe.
(Mostly after the 11th-12th-13th centuries.)
Keep in mind that in the relevant times prior to the
13th century, Hungary had massive German imigrations
(called by Hungarian kings). But AFAIK nobody maintains
that Jews got Germanized linguistically by those Germans
settled in various Hungarian provinces, especially in
Transylvania, Slovakia (in thise two provinces since
the 70s-80s-90s of the 13th c.), Pannonia. And in
Eastern Transylvania, in the 1st half of the 13th
century there ruled the Teutonic Knights until the
Hungarian king drove them out, because they would have
built their own state there. Massive German migrations
to the Polish-Lithuanian East were a bit later, AFAIK.
Ashkenazic Jewry of Eastern-Europe is relevant from the
point of view of the Yiddish Language only for those
western and eastern Slavic areas, but not for Hungary
(incl. Croatia) and Serbia. Let alone Bulgaria. The
Sephardic adstratum came later on, after 1492, but
for a while chiefly to Greece, i.e. the Ottoman Empire.
So whether Przeworsk or not, the German-Yiddish link
hasn't gotten too many speculation possibilities.
>Let's suppose the developments which characterize OHG against
>all the other Germanic languages (the 2LV, second
>Lautverschiebung) had taken place already in Bastarnian
>(GoÅÄ
b assumes the existence of loans between Bastarnian
When was the last mentioning of the Bastarnian population?
AFAIK during Attila's period. Afterwards it must be
assimilated into other Germanic or German populations.
But a Germanic population of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd century
to go exactly through the same linguistic transformation
as those Germanic idioms that turned German, yet in
the absence of permanent links with the future German
(diutisk) populations from the 3rd or 5th century until
the 11th century? Methinks this would have been impossible.
It would have been possible, say, in Austria, where the
Frankish Empire extended its dominance (temporary even
in Western Hungary); or in Lombardy, but where in the
relevant centuries the Germanic population (presumably
of the Suebian kind) was assimilated linguistically by
the Italians, so Germanized Jews wouldn't have the
possibility to preserve their future Yiddish in
"Welschenland", i.e., South of the Alps.
usually think of had perished at Vercellae in 101 BCE, these must be the stay-at-homes in Przeworsk (a more westerly location would have rendered them useless as allies)) and the Bastarnae.
But between the 4th and 12th centuries virtually all
Germanic populations that once populated Poland,
the Baltic areas, much of Russia and Ukraine disappeared
there, moved to South-West Europe and Northern Africa.
To a great extent because of the Turkic-Alanic migration
waves. The only exception being the Scandinavian "Rus" (Varangians)
in the 9th-10th centuries, with their "Gardarike", a
network of strongholds throughout Russia and the Ukraine,
between the Baltic and the Black seas, across the territories
of former Turkic kaganates in a time when the last significant
one, Khazaria became so weak, that the Skandinavian warriors-
traders did what they wish, exactly as did their contemporaries,
Protohungarians and Petchenegs (both groups de iure underlings
of the Khazarian king).
Note that for the relevant centuries, in the areas where
you assume an unknown Germanic (Cimbric+Bastarnic) presence,
became thoroughly Slavicized, which can be seen up to day:
the entire east-German territory shows that Slavic presence,
incl. toponyms such as Lübeck, Berlin, Dresden, Chemnitz,
Pommern as well as Markt Redwitz and Pegnitz in Northern
Bavaria. This is namely a vast territory which was
populated by Germanic tribes prior to the great "Völker-
wanderung" of the saga people such as "Dietrich von Bern",
"Hildebrandt", "Hadubrandt" etc. The Germanization of a
great deal of those territories was a re-Germanization,
later on, esp. in the 2nd millennium, those Germanic people
being this time Germans (Deutsche) and to a lesser extent
Dutch (in some areas in Mecklenburg).
In the same year in a publicly delivered speech, according to Justin, he declares that Italy at that moment is being flooded from Germany by Cimbri. A few decades later all traces of the Bastarnae in PoieneÅti-LukaÅ¡evka disappear, according to CriÅan because they are driven out by Burebista towards the north, ie.
Yes, but after Caesar and Burebista, there passed other
four centuries until Bastarnae disappeared from there.
And another long period of approx. eight centuries of
quasi no Germanic presence there until Deutsche Siedler
came along; or 5-6 centuries until the Vikings crissed-
crossed territories East of Poland.
How could have stayed there a Przeworsk Germanic-turning-
German population in complete isolation from Germany from
the 4th century until the era of the Teutonic Knights
wheeling-dealing in the East? Only if they had had
"corridors" such as that between the "Reich" and Danzig
after the WW1 or those West-Berlin had to the Federal
Republic via three autobahns. :-)
>From an unspecified time until the destruction of the Khazar >Kaganate (968-969) the
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radhanite
>ran a trade network spanning France, Germany and Khazaria,
>thus passing the old Przeworsk land, now (almost) empty of
>German-speakers.
Aha. And how could they, until the 10th c., preserve their
Germanic idiom *and* transform it into Deutsch in *the same
way* as all other Rhine-Weser-Ems-Main-Danube Germans could
do with their own idiom(s)?! Why exactly turned their
Germanic vernacular into Deutsch and not, say, into something
closer to those Varangians' Scandinavian Germanic dialects
or closer to Dutch?
Are there history sources attesting that German colonists
arriving there from medieval Germany encountered a Germanic
speaking population which then eagerly adapted their idiom
to the one imported by the Deutsche newcomers??
>Or, in my opinion, those communities had existed all the
>way back to Bastarnian times
So, the next step would be to declare Yiddish is a continuation
of the Bastarnian language. :)
George