>This
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journeyman_years
>is where I would start looking for a transmitting layer
>in Northern Europe of those expressions. Their lingua
>franca was German.
This sentence:
''The tradition of the journeyman years
(German: _auf der Walz sein_) persisted
well into the 1920s in German-speaking
countries"
[and _auf die Walz gehen_ - my note; < die Walze, colloq.
die Walz]
actually should stand "corrected": this tradition is still
alive and kicking - esp. for carpenters. You can see such
young carpenters in such (18th-19th c.) black clothes
anywhere in Germany.
What's interesting: the kind of clothes (kind of "uniforms")
are highly similar to those social groups speaking sociolect
kinds of dialects, called Yenishes. These, along with various
other social and trade groups, were also conveyors of
jargons and slangs, in which Hebrew, Yiddish, Slavic, Gypsy,
Turkish loanwords etc. have been abundant.
Many of the well-known Yiddishisms and Hebrewisms in today's
standard German entered the language via such intermediaries
esp. via those kinds of slang/sociolects called "Rotwelsch"
e.g. Kluft "clothing, garment"; Maloche "heavy work, toil";
Pleitegeier "bankruptcy vulture" < Yidd. Playte gayen "to run
away, flee, escape" < pleta "flight, escape"; Reibach
"profit"; Austrian German Rewag "advantage, use" < hebr.
revakh "win"; "einen guten Rutsch ins Neue Jahr!": Rutsch
actually doesn't mean "slide, slidding", it is based on folk
etymology: it is an "adaption" of the hebr. rosh "year";
Tinnef "worthless wares/goods, tripes" < Yidd. tinnef
< hebr. tinnuf "feces, dirt"...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeniche_%28people%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeniche_language
the Rotwelsch slang a.k.a. "Gaunersprache"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotwelsch
NB: Gauner: initially, it meant Ionian (Greek).
Earlier Rotwelsh forms: Jauner, Juon(n)er (i.e.
Yauner, Yuon(n)er); a cheater in playing cards,
and in doing so he behaved, in their terms,
"like a Greek". (Seemingly, Yiddish and Rotwelsh
got the modified "Ionian" from Turkish.)