[gothic-l] Re: EE Jews descend from Goths

[jdm314 at AOL.COM]

In a message dated Wed, 9 May 2001  7:33:29 PM Eastern Daylight Time, keth at online.no writes:

<< 
I will try to explain the example.
Here it might be helpful to use the idea someone proposed, that Yiddish
has been through a phase of being written with Hebrew letters. (Is this true?) >>

Of course it is true. It still is normally written with hebrew letters.


<< Anyway, it isn't a very important hypothesis, but, if true, it might
help to explain some of the oddities in spelling. Hebrew, having only
22 letters, and not very many wovels, and especially not umlauts,
would then imply a kind of "collapse" of the phonetic system; i.e.
that it is sometimes necessary to map different phonemes onto the
same graphic sign or letter. >> 

Possibly, but I don't think so. At least not as far as umlauts go. Apparently in earlier stages of the written language there were umlaut vowels, though I have not seen this myself.


<< Take for example the tree German letters
v, w and f. How do you represent them by Hebrew letters? My guess
is that both v and f gets to be represented by the same Hebrew letter. >>

Yes, both are represented by <f>, and why not? German <v> and <f> are both pronounced [f] anyway. German <w> ends up being represented by the hebrew letter vov written twice, <ww>, rather like how w is itself shaped like a pair of v's.


<< That would explain why a German word like "von" comes back
to the Latin system of writing as "fun", after having been through
the mill of a phonetic system that has too few letters to faithfully
represent all sound on a one-to-one basis. >>

I don't understand what you mean. If you spelled German phonetically, would v and f come out differently? It has nothing to do with the number of letters, really, it's just a question of using one letter for one sound. 
    As I explained earlier, in reference to the YIVO orthography, pretty much any method you see for writing Yiddish words will be based on the phonemic principle, rather than on German spelling. Don't get distracted by the orthography when it's the sounds you should be paying attention to (as you say below)


<< >> Here another example:
>>
>>   Schpaj nischt in brunem - efscher wesstu darfn fun im trinken
>wasser.

The basic meaning is that you should not spit into the well (brunnen),
because it might happen that you yourself might some time return to
drink from the well. >>

This is correct. See my post at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gothic-l/message/3753 for a more complete analysis.



<< Spei nicht in (den) Brunnen - vielleicht wirst du [dürfen](?) von ihm
[trinken] Wasser. >>

nope, nischt was correct. The Yiddish word for "not" is pronounced either NISHT or NIT, never *NIKHT. In all other cases (or perhaps there was one other exception) the ich-laut always comes out as KH.


<< 
I hope people don't mind if I now add a specimen of "Bairisch"
(also from Stedje's book): >>

Myself I like it a lot. Thanks for posting it. It is indeed quite similar to Yiddish.
    On the other hand... um... shouldn't we be discussing Gothic? We're probably about this close from being admonished by Matthaius!


<< Onerkennung

In da Schul om erstn Tog
Is no net gor gross de Plog
DLehrerin dazöhlt a Gsicht.
Und in Kinern zrinnt is Gsicht.
Wia de Schul is nocha aus
Und si führt de Kloan vors Haus,
Blaibt a Bua stehn bai da Tür.
Er sogt voller Liab zu ihr: >>

I note that you rhyme ue with i. Are they pronounced the same, or is this just an imperfect rhyme?


<< Grüss Gott!
Keth >>

A gezunt inem heym!
IUSTEINUS

(AHAH! There IS a Gothic word in this post!)

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