[gothic-l] Re: Are EE Jews half-Goths?

[jdm314 at AOL.COM]

I'm not sure I can follow the logic of "I'm different, therefore I'm a Jew",
but there's a more important point I need to make here:


In a message dated 5/3/01 5:04:32 PM, you wrote:

<<> Hi, Dirk! I'm sure that the Middle High German had umlauts like UE
and OE but Yiddish has no umlauts. According to the Encyclopedia
Britannica Ostrogoths spoke German without umlauts also>>

We need to distinguish between the phenomenon of umlaut, and the accent of
the same name. Umlaut, the process, is when an i or j somehow mutates a
preceding vowel, at least in Germanic languages. In High German the umlaut
creates front rounded vowels on u and o, and the ash sound on a, which are
marked with a u, o, and a with the umlaut accent. Throughout this post I will
use ue, oe, and ae, because while I can make umlautted vowels on my email
client, not everyone can receive them.
    Now Yiddish does not have any of these vowel sounds, but this is not to
say that they never existed. It's just that ue, oe, and ae have turned into
i, and e(y). Compare the following-

N.H. German     Yiddish     Gothic
Hand                hant          handus
Haende             hent         handjus
Gott                 got            guth
Goetter            geter         guda
Bruder              bruder       brothar
Brueder            brider        brothrjus

    Yiddish may have changed the sounds, but it's clear that some sort of
umlaut is going on. Gothic, on the other hand, does not show vowel changes in
any of these words. So when a linguist says "Yiddish has no umlauts" and
"Gothic has no umlaut", he or she is really saying two very different things.


-IUSTEINUS
(oder Moyshe Dovid)

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