From: Torsten
Message: 67109
Date: 2011-01-17
> For it is because of this complex of nexuses that yourListen carefully now: Before the
> Bastarnian speculation has no bases, unless you prove
> that a Bastarnian population somwhere in Poland or
> in adjacent areas (A) survived and (B) their language
> suffered exactly the same transformation as did Deutsch
> south of Frankfurt am Main and East of Ulm-Augsburg-
> Munich. (I'd be eager to learn which German immigrant
> settlers, namely from which areas of the "Holy Empire"
> managed to influence that surviving Bastarnian, that
> then became Yiddish.
> > Of course the difficulty of building up a consistent picture of32nd time. Wouldn't it be wonderful if I did, because then you could argue against that with ease, instead of following Torsten's complicated proposal?
> > Jewish origins in medieval Europe causes difficulties for building
> > up a consistent picture of the origin of Yiddish. What are you
> > talking about?
>
> No: Yiddish has a certain "fingerprint". If it hadn't, then why
> don't you assume that Yiddish is a ... Danish dialect or
> West-Vlaams or some kind of Wessex former English?
> Or at least some kind of Münster-Platt or of Lübbeck or
> Stettin-Platt?
> >Yes, that is the standard theory. I know.Because, as I said, there was no Hoch- or Mitteldeutsch speaking population in what is now seen as its homeland, southern Germany, before the Ariovistus invasion, and after that constant migrations from Przeworsk to Southern Germany would have kept stirring the pot.
>
> OK.
>
> >The problem is that these researchers were not aware of the
> >presence of a possibly Germanic Bastarnian language so didn't
> >consider that in their theories.
>
> OK. Let's assume there was a population that managed to
> speak Bastarnian the entire period of time until after
> Mittelhochdeutsch. Your task is to demonstrate how, in
> which way, managed German (die deutsche Sprache)
> influence Bastarnian to such an extent that Bastarnian
> also went through the sound shifts and lexical innovations
> as did the German language especially in the southern
> dialectal areas of the "Holy Reich". Since Yiddish shares
> zillions of such Southern features, whereas all the rest
> is shared with other Germanic languages as does any
> dialect of Deutsch, Hochdeutsch included - nothing more.
> Pipe and pepper are Fejfe & Feffer, and not *piep &
> *pepper. And this has it's significance. AFAIK, Yiddish
> has no "he, to, et/it, wat, dat".
> So, show me how could Bastarnian language becomeBy migrating from the Przeworsk culture to Southern Germany, chasing off the Helvetii and making Caesar nervous. Simple, huh?
> Oberdeutsch or at least Mitteldeutsch. Do bin i gschpannt.
> >As I understand it, Talmudic Judaism is the result of the lossWrong.
> >of the temple in 70 CE. One could argue that the Karaites were
> >those Jews in the Bosporan Kingdom who didn't want to join
> >that new development (and the Karaites in Lithuania would
> >have arrived there with the Bastarnians arriving in Przeworsk).
>
> But why do you forget the detail that Eastern Europe
> had no people of Jewish faith whatsoever priort to the
> great conversion in Khazaria during Bulan-khan's reign?
> This is attested even by the correspondence between
> Khazar king Joseph and Andalusia's prime-minister
> Hasdai ibn Shaprut, a learned guy.
> For your speculation only that caraitism is of relevance,I would reply to that if I knew what you were trying to say.
> that has stayed as such, in opposition to talmudism,
> *within the communities of east-european Ashkenazim*.
> The chronology of the spreading of Talmudism and many
> other features is to be corroborated with other elements
> that are relevant to this group of population(s). Other
> caraite populations or other populations that turned
> Christian or muslim aren't relevant to the evolving of
> the German dialect called Yiddish. So, your area of
> speculation has certain limits one can't neglect.
> >For the 28th time: I never said or believed otherwise.Right.
> >If you think I did, point it out.
>
> You don't,
> until youRemember that Bastarnian = Hoch-/Mitteldeutsch
> demonstrate the Germanic language Bastarnian
> survived there,
> and then it became as German asIt didn't become Hoch-/Mitteldeutsch, it already was.
> Bairisch, Fränkisch, Schwäbisch, Schlesisch and
> Dresden-Leipzig Sächsisch, and then (finally)
> Allgemeinjiddisch (the rest I find in the Atlas der
> deutschen Sprache printed by dtv = Deutscher
> Taschenbuch-Verlag, incl. maps with isoglosses).
> > > I'm talking of this language all the time; not of theThat latter sounds about right, except it would go back further.
> > > 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 am I.
>
> No: you've talked all the time of various populations
> you implied taking part in forming the community
> that later on spoke Yiddish, and you've insisted
> Yiddish can't have the origin both "schools" say it
> has (Rhineland German or South-Eastern German), but
> it'd be a continuation of Bastarnian - a Bastarnian
> that resisted in Poland despite all vicissitudes between,
> say, the 4th and the 14th-15th centuries. (I give you
> an alternative "inspiration": Bastarnian might have
> been a Proto-Bavarian Germanic idiom, that already
> during Charlemagne's time *anticipated* Walther von
> der Vogelweide's and Nibelungenlied's kind of German. :-))
> >Separated in the linguistic sense. If it hadn't, it would33rd time.
> >be a separate dialect.
>
> I suspect all the time that you, in spite of the fact that
> you're in command of German, are not aware how close
> Yiddish is to Bavarian, and Fränkisch and Schwäbisch,
> in contrast to the rest of deutsche Dialekte (and esp.
> to Niederdeutsch/Plattdeutsch)! Many Yiddish phonetical
> "distortions" are perfectly OK only seen through the
> prism of these Oberdeutsch dialects. You are not aware
> of what an enormous dialectal chasm there is between
> Oberdeutsch and Niederdeutsch, let alone Scandinavian
> Germanic.
> This is why I insist you show me how thatThird time: By invading Southern Germany.
> (unknown) Bastarnian managed to transform itself into
> Yiddish without any (South)German linguistic link or
> influence.
> >I know. This of course presupposes physical contact withPhysical contact through trade, from Magdeburg and Regensburg.
> >other German-speakers.
>
> That's the 1st step. Fine. Now go on, carry on: which
> Germans, from which regions, and how was the
> coexistence, where, and for how long.
> >Yes, it has separated from the other MHG dialects.Ok.
>
> In a superficial way - which you seem not to realize.
> >For the 29th time: I am not doubting that Yiddish is aNo. And I think I should know.
> >dialect separating from Central or High German in MHG
> >times.
>
> Your (Bastarnian) speculation/theory *does*,
> unlessOk. Off-topic.
> you demonstrate Bastarnian survived and turned
> Oberdeutsch. (There were at least several Germanic
> tribes that left Poland and the Elbe region and their
> idioms became Oberdeutsch: but the transformation
> occurred in their new countries, around the Alps,
> by the upper Rhine, the upper and middle Danube,
> by Main, in Switzerland, in Northern Italy, in
> Caranthania (Austria), western Hungary and Bohemia
> - during a timespam of approximately 1,000 years.
> And those tribes who became Alemanians, Suebians,
> Bavarians, Franconians, Austrians lived "unter sich",
> and not as isolated small "isles" in "seas" of Romance or
> Slavic languages. Even the "isles" of Mosel-Franks
> (and assimilated Vallons) in Eastern Hungary (Slovakia
> and Transylvania), in order to be able to survive
> linguistically and culturally, had to be in significant
> big number and had to have a significant degree of
> autonomy/independence, which was granted by the
> Hungarian kings and was maintained almost eight
> centuries (and the link to the "mainland" of Germanhood
> was reinforced around 1700 and kept until 1918, within
> the Austrian Empire.
> Methinks, similar conditions would have been a "must"As Pekkanen points out, ancient writers stress that the Bastarnae were numerous.
> for the Bastarnians as well. In the case of the Yiddish-
> speaking "archipelago", the population was (has been)
> *numerous*: millions (not only 100-200 thousand as in
> the case of Transylvanian Germans or 300-400 thousand
> as in the case of the so-called "Suebians" living in
> 4-5 areas of the same Hungary, and of which towards
> the end of the 19th c. roughly 1/2 was Magyarized for
> good).
> >You haven't been paying attention, it seems. In theThe
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przeworsk_culture
> >area is what I meant. I thought that would be clear
> >from the context.
>
> Quite the contrary: even not knowing anything of
> the Przeworsk thing, I knew that roughly this area
> is of relevance for the Ashkenasic-German encounter
> and the evolving of the Yiddish language (with all
> the influences and immigrations from the "Reich",
> among which the Jewish presence in the 14th-15th
> c. in Bohemia must've been of great importance
> due to certain history changes/occurrences).
> So, your "task" would be to show why all those elementsNot 'only'. It's just a proposal.
> taken into consideration by experts didn't count, but
> only an imaginary Bastarnian population could have
> had the Germanic language that turned Yiddish.
> And due to what quality/status of that Bastarnian populationBecause the Jews that were trapped by Burebista's offensive along with the Bastarnae came from the
> felt Jewish neighbors attracted to abandon their own
> idiom and replace it with that German dialect.
> And how come that the dialect is so... "Alpine" (YiddishBecause they arrived in their new home, Southern Germany, with the same army which brought the new Southern Germans, ie Suevi and Bajuwari, there and they spoke the same language by then.
> better preserves enk ("euch") and ets ("ihr")) pronouns
> than mountain and Bayerischer Wald peasant Bavarian
> does, and says "i bin gwen" and "aso a" (so ein/e) as does
> any peasant from the same regions.)
> >Yes, that is the standard theory. I know. The reason IIt's high time you stop believing I believe Yiddish is not MHG-descended and start arguing about what I actually said.
> >propose something else is not that I didn't understand
> >the standard theory, but that I think I have a better one.
>
> OK, but now it's high time you ... substantiated. :)
> > Erh, okay. Off-topic.Excellent George Knysh impression.
>
> Everything you deem off-topic is an obstacle in the path
> of your theory. Unfortunately, the obstacles are numerous
> and each is as high as the Everest and Nanga Parbat peaks.
> But you insist you're Heinz Rühmann in the movie "A man
> goes throw the wall".
> >I don't understand you.As I just outlined.
>
> Yes, I see. The territory fits or might fit. Not the territory
> is the problem, but how could a Bastarnian population
> (provided that it resisted there, which is to be demonstrated)
> get Yiddish, or pass on its own idiom *turned Oberdeutsch*
> on to a Ashkenazim Jewish population in the neighborhood.
> >I was being imprecise. The Bastarnians in Poieneà Ÿti-Lukaà ¡evkaThey didn't. The northern Bastarnians, the Atmoni and Sidoni, had fled to the Przeworsk area, maintaining their speech among the population there as an upper sociolect.
> >who disappear in mid-1st century BCE according to Crià Ÿan were
> >the northern tribes (Atmoni and Sidoni in Strabo)
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastarnae
> >The southern Peucini stayed on longer, as you mention.
>
> It doesn't matter: you can even have some birth and
> residence certificates for them. Of interest, in the
> context of your speculation, is how they managed to
> preserve their Germanic language there from the 1st
> century BCE until the 11th-12th-13th-14th centuries
> CE and how did they convince Ashkenazic Jews learn
> their Germanic language.
> And "die Kirsche auf derIt already was (the predecessor of) Oberdeutsch.
> Sahnetorte": how did they manage to transform their
> Germanic idiom into Oberdeutsch.
> Did they get teachersOh, you are being sarcastic. No, there were no Berlitz-Schools and Goethe-Institut in Passau, Freising, Salzburg and Prague because no one spoke any Germanic language in those towns at that time.
> sent from Berlitz-Schools and Goethe-Institut in Passau,
> Freising, Salzburg or from Prague? Details, svp. :)
> >I know. But I think the Harudes who left with Ariovistus were theYes.
> >Croatians and that they were the douloi of Ariovistus' Suevi, their
> >serfs or slaves.
> >Further I think the Przeworsk culture was mixed Germanic-Slavic,
> >Germanic ruler, Slavic farmer, exactly on the old k.u.k.
> >Donaumonarchie model. You'll have to give up the old
>
> But all these occurrences belonged to a time period
> in the 1st c. BCE, 1st-2nd-3rd c. CE.
> Of Yiddish we canBecause, as the quote from Wexler's book pointed out, we don't have much evidence from that time.
> talk in the 14th-15th-16th...19th-20th-21th centuries.
> The time span of that "in-between" is tremendous,But they were the cultured stratum. They had their poetry and all kinds of material bling. How could German survive in Austria-Hungary?
> mind-boggling. In the absence of a cultured stratum,
> with institutions (schools, written culture - as Greek
> Hebrew, Latin has had), how on earth can a population
> resist for such a long time, especially since you yourself
> say that such a population was anyway mixed with Slavs!
> >No, the Northern Bastarnae there were gone for good.No, cause there aren't any chronicles for that time.
>
> OK. Then what do Polish and German and Lithuanian
> medieval chronicles say of that area and its population.
> Do they mention "Bastarnae"? Do they mention that
> such "Bastarnae" spoke... niemetzku? Do they say that
> this population mixed with masses of immigrant Germans
> from the "Reich"?
> >How about this thenThe thought hasn't occurred to them to connect that dialect to Bastarnae.
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilamovian_language
> >a German dialect, also sprung from MHG.
>
> According to the experts, it was a language determined
> by settlers who imigrated there coming from various
> areas not earlier than the 12th century. Remember:
> Bastarnian must have had the same evolution for
> thousand years as did have German dialects (Nieder-
> deutsch included). Otherwise there is no possibility
> for Bastarnian to evolve, all of a sudden, as a MHG
> dialect.
> How can we be sure this is the result of German Ostsiedlung and notBecause of what I stated above, that is not the final answer.
> an old language island?
>
> Because of what I stated above.
> >But that's exactly what theYou can't do long-distance trade without waystations. Raststätten, you know. To use them, you need credit. To use your credit with the locals, you must speak their language.
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radhanite
> >network would have provided. A trade autobahn.
> >That would have provided the regular linguistic
> >update from the (new) motherland.
>
> OK. Then, it is to be explained how those
> regular updates functioned.
> >As I said, because the Radhanite network would haveWell, thank you. The rest of my theory is just as good, if you give it a little thought.
> >made it into one linguistic community.
>
> This is a good idea (after all, nothing new: on it is based
> the theory of the linguistic conversion to Yiddish anyway
> - "only" that as "donors" are seen *German settlers* and
> German learned Jews and not those Bastarnians. The
> other theory, the "mainstream" one, is based on something
> similar as well: the imigrations of Jews from "Reich" lands
> because of Anti-Semitic waves and pogroms esp. in the
> 14th-15th c.).
> > Not AFAIK. Good point.And it was, AFAIK.
>
> This is the most important think: without a vigurous
> "chain" of "carriers" and "multiplicators", a "regular update"
> is difficult to occur (those were not the times of printed
> and more and more circulated books, not the times of
> modern telecommunications).
> >'"Szlachta" derives from the Old German word "slahta" (now "(Adels)Yes, but you don't have to talk to those you schlacht. Which means there was no need for the Polish Szlachta to use High German terminology, so why did they?
> >Geschlecht", "(noble) family"), much as many other Polish words
> >pertaining to the nobility derive from German words ââ¬" e.g., the
> >Polish "rycerz" ("knight", cognate of the German "Ritter") and the
> >Polish "herb" ("coat of arms", from the German "Erbe", "heritage").
> >Poles of the 17th century assumed that "szlachta" was from the
> >German "schlachten" ("to slaughter" or "to butcher"); also
> >suggestive is the German "Schlacht" ("battle").
>
> But in a "Schlacht" warriors ... "schlachten" (slaughter) one
> another, be they of noble "Geschlecht", be they simple
> peasant "Gesindel". :)
> >If those words are from German, they've undergone a strangeSzlachta is the entire nobility, not a single Geschlecht.
> >semantic development. Perhaps they are from Bastarnian words?
>
> "Strange"? To me, not at all strange: "Geschlecht" and "Szlachta"
> fit perfectly.
> >And whyIs that word used in that sense in German?
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folwark ?
> >What did Germans have to do with that?
>
> You see the explanation given in the article (Vorwerk).
> And the same structure & tradition spread in HungaryYou won't get off that easy. Why is the Polish Szlachta using German(?) terminology? Because it is actually Bastarnian?
> as well (the Hungarian notion of "tanya" is a perfect
> rendering of medieval Vorwerk/folwark. Hungary was
> during the medieval centuries and later on under the
> same Slavic-German influence and customary inter-
> changes).
> > No, to declare High German, and by consequence Yiddish, to be aNot true. Danish chroniclers since Saxo hate Saxons/Germans with a passion. I know you can't explain that to Germans, but I'll try anyway. Here are some examples where Danes did not live up to the German expectation that they are a kind of Low Germans, who'd love to be real Germans
> > continuation of the Bastarnian language. :) That would mean the
> > Germans are bastards, so I expect many interesting discussions,
> > since the Germans always wondered why the other Germanic peoples
> > don't see them as their natural cousins.
> Other Germanic peoples don't see them as such only
> since Kaiser Willy the 2nd von Habsburg, when Germans
> became "Huns", and then because of a certain corporal
> from Braunau am Inn, who invented the Schutzstaffel
> and a certain socialist ideology.
> Otherwise, look at Aenglisc: it is much closer to deutscheTell it to the British.
> Dialekte than English itself! :-D (Of course, ethnically,
> many Germans are of Roman, Celtic and, in the East,
> much of ex-DDR, Silezia, Pommerania, Eastern Prussia
> and Austria, of Slavic descent. But on the other hand,
> the other Germanic cousins also moved there where
> they live coming from the neighborhood of the ...
> Caspian sea and from Turkmenistan and Khwarizm.
> In fact your Snorri is right, yet not in the way he
> tells the story. :-))
> >BTW, Tarantino won't explain the provenance of the 'e' inThe ending seems to smack of Amleth or Nibelungenlied, so I'm not so sure.
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglorious_basterds
>
> This must be a joke based on dyslexic and lazybones
> aspects typical of English spelling (along with such
> spellings as "seperate", "definately"). Another joking
> spelling is basturd.
> >which, however, occurs also inThis paragraph:
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastarnae
> >so I suspect he had been reading Wikipedia too and is considering
> >the same theory.
>
> I see there an Old-Iranic assumption: bastarna. This would
> be in German "Kinderbund". (Of course, bastards are also
> children, offspring. :))