"Gunsel" thread: loose end

[Peter A. McGraw]

--On Thursday, January 31, 2002 9:16 AM -0500 "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET> wrote:


> That's about what I would have thought, although I wouldn't have known
> north/south from east/west. BTW "Mädel" (i.e., "Maedel" I guess) seems
> natural enough to me from my slight acquaintance with standard German.

"Maedel" [here and elsewhere in this message, e substitutes for the two-dot
diacritic] certainly exists.  It has a rather interesting but strange history: you'll look for it in vain on the "Maedchen" map of the Deutscher Sprachatlas, which shows only madl with the -l suffix (there's maedle, but no *maedl).  However, it makes its way in the standard language through various specialized meanings alongside the generic Maedchen.  It acquired fatal political baggage during the Nazi era.  The Nazis named their own politicized equivalent of the Girl Scouts the Bund deutscher Maedel" (BDM),
League of German Girls.  You've probably seen Nazi propaganda posters featuring a "Maedel": rosy cheeks, hair in braids, radiant smile.  I say "fatal" because to my knowledge the word remains tainted to this day.


My
> ignorance of Yiddish (also Swiss, Austrian, etc.) is somewhat more
> profound. Let me ask another two questions. (1) In this case [and in other
> similar ones] where a Yiddish origin is cited, is it known that the origin
> is Yiddish as opposed to general [or (say) southern] German, or is it just
> a guess? (2) Do northern and southern Yiddish varieties have the same
> variations/relations as do northern and southern German varieties in
> general, or does the designation "Yiddish" narrow things down in this
> respect?
>
I don't know the answer to Question 1.  As for Question 2, the principal division in Yiddish is between eastern and western varieties, and this division is not based on differences in the realization of the High German consonant shift, which serves as the principal classifier of German dialects.
According to Franz J. Beranek, "Jiddisch" (in Deutsche Philologie im
Aufriss, 10. Lieferung--no date, believe it or not) Yiddish as a whole shares the largest number of its features with the Middle German dialects (just like the standard), with a strong admixture of Austrian/Bavarian elements.  (Beranek's article appeared sometime in the 60s, I think.  I'm not familiar with recent scholarship on Yiddish, so don't know whether anyone has challenged his assessment.)

Peter Mc.



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                               Peter A. McGraw
                   Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
                            pmcgraw at linfield.edu