[gothic-l] Jiddish

Tue Feb 17 11:56:07 UTC 2015

I asked you if you can cite from those books why Yiddish has Turkic
elements. If you can't do that, I don't really know if I want to borrow a
book whuch claims things without even giving proof for it.

Op dinsdag 17 februari 2015 heeft Tore Gannholm tore at gannholm.org
[gothic-l] <gothic-l at yahoogroups.com> het volgende geschreven:
>
>
> I gave you 3 books,
>
> Have you read them?
>
> On 16 Feb 2015, at 18:40, Dicentis a roellingua at gmail.com [gothic-l] <
gothic-l at yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks David, now Tore has a good book to read about the subject.
>
> Op maandag 16 februari 2015 heeft David Connolly dec.phd at sbcglobal.net [gothic-l]
<gothic-l at yahoogroups.com> het volgende geschreven:
>>
>>
>> Dear Gothic-l group,
>> Didn't we go through all of this "Yiddish / Turkish" business last
June?  I thought it was worked out.  I dredged up, and I repost below, my
comments on Yiddish from June 2014;  I recall that Dirk was on the right
track, and I also remember a posting from Edmund with his typically high
level of erudition.  Anyone serious about the history of Yiddish should
read Max Weinreich's 'History of the Yiddish language' (English translation
published in 1980;  this is an "abridged" version that is still nearly 1000
pages long;  the "full" work was printed ca. 2008[??] by YIVO in 2 heavy
volumes). The history and development of Yiddish are known and documented
in great depth and detail.
>> David
>>
>>
>>>Dirk,
>> You are pretty much right regarding the history of the Yiddish (Note:
"Jiddisch" in modern German;  no one spells it "Jiddish" to my knowledge).
I had a few graduate courses on Yiddish by an eminent professor of Yiddish
linguistics, so let me convey a few basic facts that I remember.
>>
>> The origins of Yiddish are traced to central Germany (think Speyer,
Worms, Mainz) in the 12th century (give or take), so Jews speaking a
dialect of Middle High German.  Yiddish as it developed incorporated (1)
small amounts of French/Romance vocabulary ("lomir bentshn"), (2) words of
Hebrew/Aramaic origin ("khaver, khaverim" - friend(s)), and (3) Slavic
words as the Jewish center of gravity moved towards the east.
Grammatically/structurally German(ic), with strong components of borrowing.
>>
>> There are several centuries and a lot of miles separating Yiddish from
Gothic.  And I do not know of a single word in Yiddish coming from Turkish.

>>
>> There is much more to be said about Yiddish, but probably not on a
Gothic listserv...  An authoritative, quick account of Yiddish linguistic
history can be found in 'The Germanic Languages.'  ISBN 0-415-28079-6.
Chapter 14, "Yiddish" contributed by Neil G. Jacobs, Ellen F. Prince and
Johan van der Auwera.  (This book also contains a wonderful chapter on
Gothic by the late (and great) Winfred Lehmann.)
>> From: "d.faltin at hispeed.ch [gothic-l]" <gothic-l at yahoogroups.com>
>> To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
>> Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2014 4:23 AM
>> Subject: [gothic-l] Jiddish related to Gothic?
>>
>>
>> Over at the Germanic-L somebody advocated the theory that Jiddish
emerged as the result of an amalgamation of Gothic, Slavic and Turkish.
Personally, I don't think that this is true. Instead, I think Jiddish is
derived from south Middle High German with later additions of Slavic (and
perhaps other) elements. Can any of the linguistically trained members of
this list settle this argument? In particular, is there a viable case for
hypothesizing that Gothic played a role in the development of Jiddish?
>>
>> Thanks a lot
>> Dirk<
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: "write2andy at yahoo.com [gothic-l]" <gothic-l at yahoogroups.com>
>> To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
>> Sent: Sunday, February 15, 2015 12:27 PM
>> Subject: [gothic-l] Re: Jiddish
>>
>>
>> Most of the available literature trying to explain this usually relies
on the following facts: the Khazars converted to Judaism, there are lots of
East European Jews, etc. They never offer a way how they are linked, just
"Isn't it uncanny that there are lots of Jews in Eastern Europe?" It's
fruitless. Any other things you can find on the Internet don't even bother
to explain it. I saw one video that said the Ashkenazi Jews are actually
Khazars because the Jews committed the attacks on the Twin Towers. Yes,
this video unfortunately exists; it does nothing to prove its claim that
the Jews are Khazars, it only goes off in another tangent. Another webpage
I saw claimed this, and then proved it by saying the Holocaust is a lie.
Please.
>> I can assure you, "kop" and "kafa" are a coincidence. The Yiddish comes
from German "Kopf", the Turkish word comes from Arabic.
>> And the second source, saying the Germans had not come across the
Yiddish language until they reached Poland, is wrong. The Jews in Poland
did speak another, unfamiliar language to the German Jews at that time, but
it was a Judeo-Slavic language called "Knaanic". Neither Yiddish nor
Knaanic has any tie to Turkic, as far as I know.
>> Yiddish grammar shares nothing with Turkic. Turkic is agglutinative,
Yiddish is not. Turkic uses vowel harmony, Yiddish does not. I could go on.
>>
>>
>>
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