Re: Riddle: who spoke first Greek, and then a German dialect?

For those who think it unlikely that Jews in Eastern Europe would hold on to an obsolescent Bastarnian/Proto-Hochdeutsch language after it ceased to the language of the land, as my proposal envisages it:

Paul Wexler
Explorations in Judeo-Slavic Linguistics
pp. 6-8

'Research in comparative Jewish interlinguistics has revealed four distinctive types of language developed by Jews:

Type 1: Most Jewish languages are created on the basis of a Jewish linguistic substratum, leading back in an unbroken chain to spoken Hebrew. I give these languages the epithet "Judeo-", e.g. Judeo-Latin, unless a native epithet is available, e.g. Yiddish, Judezmo. A characteristic feature of such languages is the fusion of components taken from a coterritorial non-Jewish language and heterogeneous non-native components, among which Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic are the only components common to all Jewish languages. In the case of Yiddish and Judezmo, the chains of language shift can be conceived, in part as follows: Hebrew > (Judeo-Aramaic c. 6th c BC >) Judeo-Greek (c. 4th c BC) > Judeo-Latin (c. 1st c AD)/Judezmo; Judeo-French and Judeo-Italian > Yiddish (9-10th cc). A small Greek substratal element can still be identified in both contemporary Yiddish and Judezmo; in addition, Yiddish has acquired Grecisms through its Judeo-Slavic substratum and through direct contact with Judeo-Greek (see sections 3.13-3.163 below), just as Western Judeo-Greek was supplanted by Judeo-Latin (and Judeo-Berber in North Africa?), I suppose that Eastern Judeo-Greek was supplanted by Judeo-Slavic (see also section 3 below).

Type 2: Languages may also acquire a Jewish identity because of linguistic shifts affecting either the Jews or the non-Jews, but not both groups, and/or displacement of the Jewish speakers from their original habitat without subsequent acquisition of the newly coterritorial language.3 Languages which become Judaicized "by default" may lack a significant Jewish linguistic substratum. I propose to give these languages the prefix "Judaicized", e.g. Judaicized Iraqi Arabic, Algerian Arabic.

Type 3: There are Jewish languages which are created solely for the purpose of translating a Hebrew or Judeo-Aramaic text. Such languages lend to follow the syntax and word-formation of the original language rather faithfully and rarely have a spoken function in the community. I will call such languages "Judeo-X calque" languages, e.g. Judeo-East Slavic calque language (see sections 4.4-4.4125 below).

Type 4: Finally, there are languages used by Jews which hardly differ from the language of the coterritorial non-Jewish population in their native corpus, but may occasionally employ Hebrew or Judeo-Aramaic elements, as well as elements from an obsolescent Jewish language. Such languages are either obsolescent Jewish languages or non-Jewish languages in the early stages of Judaicization. These languages will be given the prefix "Jewish-" to distinguish them from types 1 and 2, e.g. Jewish-Russian, Jewish-Polish.4 A distinguishing feature of these languages is the tendency to avoid Hebrew morphological machinery when borrowing Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic components, e.g. Jewish-Czech bochr 'Jewish seminary student' takes the Czech plural marker, e.g. bochři pl vs. W, NY boxer 'young man': boxerim pl (< He bāhūr:bāhūrīm pl).5

In all likelihood, the Slavic Jews developed at different periods all four types of Jewish linguistic expression, in addition to speaking the majority variants of Slavic. In the early Middle Ages the Slavic dialects of the Jews were probably of type 1 - i.e. distinct from the coterritorial non-Jewish Slavic speech by virtue of a Judeo-Greek (and possibly other) substratum, a Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic sub- and adstratum, and a unique selection of Slavic linguistic material - not all of which was necessarily of coterritorial Slavic origin. At the same time, other forms of Slavic could have become Judaicized in the manner of type 2. In practice, however, it is not always possible to distinguish between type 1 and type 2 due to the fragmentary nature of the data and our ignorance of the sociolinguistic factors. A Judeo-Slavic calque language - an example of type 3 - existed in the East Slavic lands in the 15th-16th centuries and possibly in the West Slavic lands several centuries earlier. Finally, distinctive forms of transitional Jewish-Slavic speech came into existence among speakers of Yiddish and Judezmo shifting to Slavic; these languages would constitute examples of type 4. It is interesting that the de-Judaicization of Judeo-Slavic speech took place under rather unique conditions. Linguists are accustomed to finding indigenous Jewish languages replaced at some point in time by the coterritorial non-Jewish language, e.g. German Yiddish by High German. But in the Slavic lands, some (most?) of the indigenous Judeo-Slavic dialects were directly superseded by one of two imported Jewish languages - Yiddish or Judezmo; the latter ultimately became superseded in turn in the 19th and 20th centuries by standard variants of Slavic - though for some speakers not without passing through a transitional stage of Jewish-Slavic. I do not rule out the possibility that Yiddish and Judezmo were also directly adopted by Jewish speakers of standard Slavic. In recent times, even after acquiring a standard Slavic language, Jews may continue to differ in their speech habits from the coterritorial non-Jewish population. For example, many Jews in interbellum Slovakia preferred Hungarian to Slovak (the indigenous Jews in the Subcarpathian Ukraine still do), while the majority of the Jews in the non-Russian-speaking Soviet Republics today speak Russian rather than the coterritorial languages (but see also section 1, fn. 3 above). The present study will consider examples of types 1, 2 and 3 only.


3 For example, Jews characteristically lag behind non-Jews in carrying out a language shift. On the prolonged use of Arabic by Jews in Toledo, see Wexler 1981b: 114; in late l5th century Palermo, see Bresc and Goitein 1970:905-6. See also the longer retention of Greek by Roman Jews discussed in section 3 and of Altaic toponyms by Ukrainian Karaites in section 6.7, fn. 244 below. Also relevant is Kessler's discussion of the Judaicization of German names among German Jews (1935:24) and Mieses' discussion of Germanic elements that are preserved only in Yiddish and hence become re-defined as uniquely Jewish (1924:261). See also the existence of Slavic folksongs and proverbs preserved now only among Jews (Brutzkus 1945; Goldberg 1928 and section 6.6 below).

4 Wexler 1981b: 105-7.

5 Ibid, 107, fn. 13.'


For Yiddish, instead of Wexler's
Hebrew >
(c. 6th c BC >
Judeo-Aramaic)
c. 4th c BC >
Judeo-Greek
c. 1st c AD >
Judeo-Latin /Judezmo; Judeo-French and Judeo-Italian
9-10th cc AD >
Yiddish

I'd propose for Yiddish instead:
Hebrew
(c. 6th c BC (type1)>
Judeo-Aramaic)
c. 4th c BC (type 1)>)
Judeo-Greek
c. 2nd c BC (type 1)>
Judeo-Bastarnian
(c. 5th c AD) (type 2)>
Proto-Yiddish

and I don't think his Judeo-Slavic is a necessary link in the sequence, whether it existed or not (Slavic might just have been an adstrate).


Torsten