>The beginning of your post was all about my supposed belief that >Yiddish is Platt (for the 29th, 30th and 31st time), so I deleted it.
No, you misunderstood. My idea is that Bastarnian must have
been some kind of Germanic similar to other Germanic idioms
in the sense that it must have lacked whole lotta phonetic
transformations that made Germanic idioms of the 1st
millennium evolve as Deutsche dialects of the 2nd millennium.
In this respect, Yiddish is too far away, whereas a remnant
Bastarnian group there, in the virtual vicinity of Northern
Deutsche dialects as well as of the Vikings, logically must
have had some Northern influences; yet Yiddish don't seem
to be in such a situation.
>The Germanic language Mitteldeutsch/Oberdeutsch arrived in >Swabia and Bavaria with Ariovistus and his Suevi.
OK. But read texts in the dialects spoken by generations
of the same populations many centuries later on, namely
in the time of the Carolingian emperors: Althochdeutsch.
Still an enormous difference if you compare OHG german
and Yiddish. (Low German is rather closer to it.)
>And that is not just my proposal, this is the mainstream
>position. On maps of early finds in Germania, there are
>none south of Kassel. For Roman imports, this is known
>as the 'Loch im Westen'. What you think of as the homeland
>of your beloved Ober-/Mitteldeutsch is actually (in my
>proposal) a Bastarnian diaspora (and ever since, they
>wanted to go home to Moldova - boohoo ;-)).
What are you talking about? In the 1st-2nd-3rd centuries,
of course there was almost no "Germania" south of the
Limes. The invasions beyond the Limes occurred in a
much later epoch, in the 5th-6th centuries, and the
real colonization of South Germany was in the 7th
century. Not in Ariovist's time. Common knowledge that
those who colonized South Germany, Austria, Switzerland,
Northern Italy and Northern France had lived in Northern
Germany, Scandinavia, Poland.
But it's a matter of enormous time gap and of distances
of hundreds and thousands of km between areas. Goths
who lived in Russia moved far away to Italy, France, Spain,
Vandals and their associates, Alans, moved to Algeria,
Tunisia and Libya. The same happened to Gepids, Langobards
etc. You assume some Bastarnians stayed in Poland. OK:
give us some details. And explain why all Germanic tribes
moved south-westwards, and only Bastarnae preferred to
stay there.
>32nd 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?
Torsten's proposal isn't complicated at all. His proposal is
OK, provided that he demonstrates Bastarnae's staying there,
keeping their Germanic idiom until a considerable mass of
medieval colonists imigrated there became their nextdoor
neighbors (either protected by the Teutonic Knights or by
Polish kings) and prompted those Bastarnae learn... Deutsch,
in order to become "up-to-date", and forget their own
old-fashioned gibberish that couldn't have been pleasant in
the German newcomers, Bauern, Handwerker, Kaufläute,
i.e. Bach's, Haydn's and Mozart's ancestors. So that those
Bastarnae *afterwards*, having their ancient Germanic
and slavicized idiom ... "eingedeutscht", might have been
in the position to teach their... Khazar "pupils". Even in
this case: why should have been necessary for those
Ashkenazes to be taught German by "Przeworsk Bastarnae"
when there were those numerous German newcomers,
including German Jews who could read "die heilige
Schrift"? :-)
>Because, as I said, there was no Hoch- or Mitteldeutsch
>speaking population in what is now seen as its homeland,
>southern Germany,
This is irrelevant, for God's sake! Relevant is what happened
and where in the 12th-13th-14th-15th centuries! I.e., after
Walter von der Vogelweide and after Friedrich Barbarossa!
In Ariovist's epoch, the South-Western part of today's Germany,
Switzerland, Austria, Western Hungary and entire Yugoslavia
was... "Romania"! It was the backyard of the "SPQR"! The
city of Augsburg (60 km west of Munich) was a "municipium
romanum" called Augusta Vindelicorum (and it's doubtful
that those Celtic Vindelici and Patavensi still spoke their
Celtic dialects in that epoch. Germanic tribes were con-
centrated in the North, and after 9 CE, when Varus was
defeated by the former magister equitum Arminius, the
Cherusc in Teutoburger Wald (somwhere between Osnabrück
and Xanten), Roman attempts to occupy territories to the
East (of the Limes) ceased. (Coincidentally, I saw yesterday
a beautiful German TV documentary on those events, and
the archeological sites over there, even one, discovered
quite recently beyond the limes, and showing civilian life
according to Roman standards.)
But even after the Germanization of all of what became
"Deutschland" 7-8 centuries later on, we can't talk of
MHG and Yiddish. There is another long timespan: about
six centuries. (Your judgment is similar to a Greek
acquaintance who maintains his Greek doesn't differ much
from that of ... Homer. :))
>before the Ariovistus invasion, and after that constant
>migrations from Przeworsk to Southern Germany would
>have kept stirring the pot.
Of what relevance is this to your topic?!? Do you imply that
Germanic people from Poland "exported" some Yiddish-like
Germanic dialect to the Alps in Ariovist's time or in the
3rd-4th-5th century?
>By migrating from the Przeworsk culture to Southern
>Germany, chasing off the Helvetii and making Caesar
>nervous. Simple, huh?
Then you must be convinced that Germanic idioms did
not change between AD zero and AD 1400. So, you imply
that Germanic tribes in Caesar's time spoke dialects that
barely differed from what's called Oberdeutsch and Yiddish.
It is true that the carnival season already started, on
November 11, 2010, but, come on, I hope you don't play the
Kölscher Jeck with me! :-)
>Wrong.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypsistarians
What do these ancient worshippers have to do with
people speaking German Yiddish between the 14th
century and 2011? (I mean linguistically, not genetically.)
>I would reply to that if I knew what you were trying to say.
Not all Khazars (i.e. populations of various extractions
living in the khanate/kingdom of converted Khazaria)
became Talmudist Jews. Some of them stayed *up to day*
Caraite (they have their own communities even in the
US). A hypothesis says that those three Kavarian
warrior tribes from among the Khazars who led the
Proto-Hungarian exodus from Ukraine around 896-900
to Pannonia could have been "simple" Jews who opposed
Talmudization of the mainstream (back home, around
the Khazar king); tribes that were assimilated by the
rest and christianized esp. after St. Stephen (1000) and
other Hung. kings baptized all those tribal rests that
either wished to stay "pagan" or adopted the Eastern
rite of Constantinople. (BTW, not only presumably
Jewish Khazars resettled along with the Proto-Hungarian
confederates, but also... muslim parts of population;
even after the founding of Hungary (then called "Turkey").
For example, toponyms containing the word böszörmény
is a hint to that (from < busurman = muslim).)
> but your speculation does,
> Wrong.
Of course it does: see all your parts of posting I
cited above!
>Remember that Bastarnian = Hoch-/Mitteldeutsch
Yeahs sure, and the earth is a disc. :-)
>It didn't become Hoch-/Mitteldeutsch, it already was.
Bastarnian of the 1st or 3rd century was Mitteldeutsch!
Wait for a few weeks until it's Rosenmontag, when this
statement will be adecvate. :-)
>That latter sounds about right, except it would go back further.
I see. :)
> 33rd time.
And to no avail: "gutta cavat lapidem" doesn't work;
you must be wearing a high-quality Sarmatian cataphract
armor. :-)
>Third time: By invading Southern Germany.
And "importing" thither their... Yiddish-like avant la lettre
idiom. I see.
>Physical contact through trade, from Magdeburg and Regensburg.
Yes of course. But it depends how intense the contact
was, how thorough. And, OTOH, Jews wishing to learn
and to use German as their everyday's idiom didn't
need any "Bastarnae" intermediary: Germans of all
kind, from trade, from immigrants etc. were there,
in close relationship for them, including German
Jews, i.e. Jews who moved from Germany to the East.
And that happened during a long timespan of *centuries*,
yet thousand years later than all Germanic migrations
from the North and North-East and East regions of
Europe into the territories of the imperial "SPQR".
It did not happened when Ariovist was struck by the
mood to move back and forth geographically.
>>In a superficial way - which you seem not to realize.
>
>Ok.
It is not okay: read old German texts and compare them
with MHG and late MHG and NHG (e.g. Luther's). The
differences are so big that one has to get special training
in order to understand texts of the 8th-9th c. What German
or Yiddish native-speaker understands the meaning of
"ben zi bena, lid zi geliden, sose gelimida sin" without the
help of Google, Wikipedia or a book containing the text
and its translation? Despite its being perfect German.
The time span between "ben zi bena" is shorter until
the era when it became "(Ge)bein zu (Ge)beinen" (at
least 3-4 centuries) than the time span between Caesar
and Karl IV, the German king who gave some protection
to Jews in the 14th century (and in whose time there
existed that kind of German making possible for Yiddish
to evolve).
>Ok. Off-topic.
It is 100% on-topic. Only that you don't see the relevance
of that paragraph or you are... reluctant to admit you
see it. Tertium non datur.
>As Pekkanen points out, ancient writers stress that
>the Bastarnae were numerous.
Of course. Dacians and Thracians were n times more
numerous, yet after the 6th century, nothing, nada,
zilch. All of them became something else (Bulgarians,
Yugoslavs, Greek, Romanians, Italians etc.). Or those
proud Turkic tribes called Petchenegs and Cumans
(Polovtsians), that controled vast territories, disappeared
altogether as linguistic and cultural entities. Prior to
them, their cousins or ancestors, the Avars to whom
belonged much of today's Hungary, Yugoslavia, Slovakia,
Czechia and Austria. And how many other examples.
Yet Bastarnae stayed there like rock resisting slavization
and, moreover, being the real Oberdeutsch-speaking
Germanic group at least 1,000-1,200 years before
lingua diutisca changed into Mittelhochdeutsch! And
you are not joking, are you? :)
>The
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przeworsk_culture
>ended in the 5th century CE. So it is irrelevant to the
>scenario *you* want to talk about.
I only repeated what *you*'ve been talking about post after
post: namely that the *area* of the former Przeworsk
whatchamacallit is relevant for your new-fangled
Bastarnae turning Yiddish theory. If that history map
kept at Wiki-Commons is correct, then that area is a
part of the territory where Ashkenazic Jews adopted
and developed the Yiddish Oberdeutsch dialect. But
without Bastarnae. Show me evidences for the
assertion that there Bastarnae survived as a German-
speaking (Oberdeutsch-speaking) population until the
14th and 15th century. Show me the written German,
Polish, Lithuanian sources (in Latin and in these languages).
I don't know, perhaps they exist.
>Not 'only'. It's just a proposal.
OK. But the proposal must be based on and followed by
research and finding of sources that attest some traces.
If no word about Bastarnae, then at least something
like this: "Amongst us, there is a stubborn population
speaking some kind of gibberish that sounds like lingua
diutiska, but they aren't Germans of the kind we
encounter in Quedlinburg, Magdeburg, Nürnberg,
Passau or Salzburg".
>Because 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.
But the Bajuwari and Suebi of the 7th century did not
speak the kind of German their inheritors spoke in
the relevant times (7-8 centuries later on) for the
emergence of Yiddish, then how on earth would Bastarnae
have spoken "the same language" other 7-8 centuries
earlier? In your imagination, Germanic idioms spoken
in the era of Cimbri and Teutoni were the same as
the deutsche Sprache of the "ben zi bena" and the same
as the deutsche Sprache of the Nibelungenlied and of
Martin Luther's?!?
>It's high time you stop believing I believe Yiddish is not >MHG-descended and start arguing about what I actually
>said.
You got me wrong: I don't doubt that. But I'm shocked
by your assertion, your conviction (though, aren't you
kiddin' me? :)) that Bastarnians' brethren who moved to
South Germany already spoke MHG! That means that
all phonetic transformations, all sound shifts that happened
way later on already existed in their vernacular.
>Excellent George Knysh impression.
Perhaps I'm his alter ego. :)
>They 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.
I understand what you mean. But you seem not to
understand why the heck that was impossible (without
... time traveling in a time machine such as the one
H. G. Welles wrote about).
>It already was (the predecessor of) Oberdeutsch.
Of course predecessor of Oberdeutsch. But in a completely
other way than you deem fit for your (absurd) theory:
a process of transformations in a time span of about
12 to 14 centuries until, out of Mittel- and Oberdeutsch
Mundarten, some microscopic "bud" of the future
Yiddish vernacular evolved (coz Yiddish itself changed
much until it became the one spoken by Isaac Bashevis
Singer or Elli Wiesel).
>Oh, 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.
Of course they didn't. But in the 12th, 13th, 14th century
they did. And they even did speak sorts of German that
got more and more intelligible to a German-speaker of
the year 2011, especially when, along with Hochdeutsch
knowlege, there is some dialectal knowledge of Ober-
deutsch and Mitteldeutsch as well.
>Because, as the quote from Wexler's book pointed out, we
>don't have much evidence from that time.
Carloads of evidence after the 12th century.
Wexler and all the other scholars don't doubt
the way how Yiddish evolved. The scarcity of
sources and evidences refer to other aspects of
the history of the east-European Ashkenazim.
To each school of interpretation, the language is
clear: it stems from within the German (deutsche)
population. And of course those tribes 6-7-8
centuries earlier, contemporary of "your" Bastarnae
also played a role: since they were the ancestors
of the later "diutisk/teodisk" populations. Not all
of them, but some, namely those who stayed forever
in what has stayed Germany and hasn't become
"Welsch" (French, e.g Franks and Burgundians, and
Italian, Goths, Gepids and Langobards).
>But they were the cultured stratum. They had their poetry
>and all kinds of material bling. How could German survive
>in Austria-Hungary?
Because German was the ruling class, die "Herrenmenschen"!
There is no such thing as "Austrian" from the ethnic and
linguistic point of view: they are Germans, Deutsche. Even
if you compare the dialect of Vienna and Western Hungary
with that of Munich - i.e., two extremities within the Bavarian
dialect, compared to much of the German language, these
seem to be one homogenous dialect, in spite of lexical and
phonetic differentiations.
But on the other hand, all those areas that were surrounded
by massive Hungarian-speaking populations, especially after
the establishing of the so-called "dualism" (1867), were
tremendously put under a pressure, so that most of them
were Magyarized in few decades. Hungary still has a
German minority of around a quarter of a million (in the
mean time more numerous than the German population
in Romania, of which perhaps over one half migrated to
Germany since the fifties). Yet very few are in good command
of German (unlike the Germans in Romania, who always
managed to have their compact communities and *schools*
and *religion* in German, which is of utmost importance -
in contrast with those about 3 millions of Russia Germans
whose German-language knowledge is poor to non extant;
I don't know how many of them, perhaps over 1 million
moved to Germany in the last 30 years or so).
>No, cause there aren't any chronicles for that time.
I did not ask you of Ariovist's epoch, but of the 11th,
12th, 13th, 14th, 15th centuries. I don't know them,
since I never dealt with Poland's and Lithuania's and
Silezia's and Bohemia's history in detail, but I know
there is whole lotta stuff (now and then I enjoy
reading an article or another or to watch good TV
documentaries on such subjects that are available
in Germany and Austria, since the whole medieval
stuff belongs to the history of the "Holy Empire of
German Nation", it's German history. "Digests" of
it is taught in schools here, is common knowledge.
The Czech saint Nepomuk is also venerated in
South Germany and Austria. Prague was for a long
period a... German city, incl. for a while the capital
of the empire. At the same time it was one of the
most important medieval strongholds of European
Jewry).
>The thought hasn't occurred to them to connect that
>dialect to Bastarnae.
It can't occur to them, since they are scientists, i.e.
they deal with the stuff in a no-nonsense, scientific,
rigurous way, they can't afford to mix up epochs and
events, much the less ignore linguistic evidence.
>You 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.
Of course. And this is documented for the relevant
centuries (the MHG and NHG) centuries. That's what's
relevant. What was earlier, 8+8 centuries earlier, is
of no relevance to MHG and Yiddish. You've seen various
discussions, explanations on cybalist pertaining to the
transformation and evolution of Germanic languages.
Did you encounter any judgment any nexus to prompt
you think Bastarnae's language can be put in a direct
link to Yiddish, that is without the entire history of
12-14 centuries of Germanhood in the southern half
of the German territory?
>Well, thank you. The rest of my theory is just as good,
"When wishes were horses, then beggars would ride." :)
>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?
I've got no idea who is right, but the link between Geschlecht
in the sense of *Adels*geschlecht and the Szlachta is 100% OK.
The Szlachta is the nobility, not the hoi-polloi. And
Adelsgeschlecht does not mean... sex, nor slaughter, but
"noble lineage, noble clan".
>Szlachta is the entire nobility, not a single Geschlecht.
ADELSgeschlecht! The semantic stress falls upon Adel =
nobility, aristocracy. So, not any kind of Geschlecht
(there is also Bauerngeschlecht, Patriziergeschlecht in
the free cities with privileges from the Kaiser etc.).
>Is that word used in that sense in German?
Today it's not in everyday's German usage. But it has
a normal entry (without the abbreviation for "old,
old-fashioned, ancient") e.g. in Wahrig (a bit dictionary
similar to OED and Webster):
"Vorwerk (n.) zu einem größeren Gut gehörendes
Landgut;" (this is lat. latifundia) (and the secondary
meaning) "Teil einer Burg".
>You won't get off that easy. Why is the Polish Szlachta
>using German(?) terminology? Because it is actually
>Bastarnian?
No, because of the tremendous medieval influence
exerted by Germany (i.e. "the Holy Empire"). AFAIK,
Polish also has the medieval term szoltys from the
German Schultheiss, that is more known under the
shortened forms: Schulze, Scholz (this one is South
German) and Schulte (this one is North-German, Low
German). And the Poles passed it on to Romanians
(esp. in the principality of Moldavia) sholtuz. In
similar ways, due to similar medieval circumstances,
certain German notions were borrowed by Hungarian,
Croatian-Serbian, Romanian etc. E.g. the Hungarian
word for "citizen" is polgár from Bürger, although
Hungarian has its own word for Burg: vár (which is
Indoeuropean, akin to *uer and to German Wehr-,
wehren).
Ask linguists specialized in Germanic and German
languages if they deem a word Schlacht-, Schlecht-
as possible at the Bastarnian level of linguistic
chronology. I myself doubt that. I assume that
the transformation of a *slacht- into Polish Szlacht-
would be no problem, but what about the ...
semantic of it? The semantic link is the idea of
"nobility, aristocracy". It is this element that fits
Szlachta into... Geschlecht (Adelsgeschlecht) and
not into "slaughter". (But I don't know: perhaps
Polish lords linked the idea nobility to that of
warriors whose chief dealing was dealing blows
with the sword, spears etc. to the enemy who
was thus ... slaughtered. On top of that, Schlacht
means "battle". But this is again Deutsch: AFAIK
earlier Germanic words for "battle" looked
different. :))
>Not 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.
Yes, but methinks the Wehrmachts and Waffen-SS
invasion of Denmark in the '40s must have played
a stronger role in the collective memory and
resentments. And a bit earlier, Denmark lost
some areas to Germany (perhaps it resented
losing Hannover as well).
>Tell it to the British.
I did. Or do you mean there ain't no Britisher over
here? :)
>'TrubaÄev[3] proposes a derivation from Old Persian,
>Avestan bast- "bound, tied; slave" (cf. Ossetic bættÉn
>"bind", bast "bound") and Iranian *arna- "offspring", equating
>it with the δοÏ
λÏÏÏοÏοι "slave Sporoi" mentioned by
>Nonnus and Cosmas, where Sporoi is the people Procopius
>mentions as the ancestors of the Slavs.[4] English bastard
>and French bâtard "illegitimate son" would then be derived
>from the name of the Bastarnae.'?
Anyway, it wouldn't be the first case of an ethnonym
erroneously perceived as being another word, meaning
something different; e.g. Slavs, lat. sclavinus, although
it didn't mean "slave". Or Langobards: "long beards" seems
to be a legend only.
Or, take the ethnonym of the Yiddish-speakers: Ashkenaz.
It is supposed to mean "German (Deutsch)". Yet this
ethnonym is very old, and in ancient, pre-Christian
times it was used for... Scythians. It contains the Iranic
name of them, Saka. In neighboring Semitic languages,
e.g. Babilonian or akkadian (I don't remember well) they
had a similar term, Ihskuza. Anyway, the Bible contains
it. And Ashkenaz was an inheritor of Yaphet and was
a kinship of Togarma, the ancestor of the Turks. All these
fit with the true ancestry of the Khazar population. An
interesting coincidence.
George