[NDNAIM] Activists . . . Endangered Languages

["Alfred W. Tüting"]

Willem,

yes, from this perspective, e.g. modern American LOOKS as if being a  
relexified Chinese dialect ;-)

BTW, did you ever stumble upon this nice page?

http://home.ccil.org/~cowan/essential.html

It's been created by John Woldemar Cowen, one of the fathers of the  
conlang Lojban.

Enjoy!

Alfred

Am 07.07.2008 um 18:37 schrieb rwd0002 at unt.edu:

> Quoting "Alfred W. Tüting" <ti at fa-kuan.muc.de>:
>
>> "Even Yiddish, certainly more clearly a Slavic language relexified
>> with Germanic..."
>>
>> Whereas I agree with that statement ref. to Hebrew, below, I'd rather
>> claim that Yiddish is a mediaeval German relexified with Biblical
>> Hebrew and - of course - Slavic words of different derivations! (Just
>> one side note: both Yiddish and Transylvanian Saxon, a mediaeval
>> German dialect, i.e. Mosel-Frankish, use the same everyday-word
>> "keyn/ kein" for German "nach/gegen" - to/toward.)
>> Of course, characterizations of this kind seem to be quite futile,
>> and  depending on where one puts the point of reference in time
>> (modern  Hebrew is a relexified English... ;-) ).
>>
> Alfred, thanks for the correction. Historically it is certainly true
> that Yiddish started as German, and in Germany, and not as Slavic;
> however it is a German that has lived for so long on Slavic territory,
> that it now LOOKS more like a Slavic with Germanic and some Hebrew
> plugged in!
>
> Willem

_______________

Alfred W. Tüting
ti at fa-kuan.muc.de