[gothic-l] EE Jews descend from Goths

[keth at ONLINE.NO]

I am sorry, Labovsky, but I feel these ideas are based upon
a lack of familiarity with Yiddish and German, and it would surprise
me if such an idea was actually found in Koestler's book.

The reason for my scepticism is that to me Yiddish appears
as much too closely related to normal German, for it to be
possible that it be in any way closer to Gothic than normal German
is. I also believe Yiddish is a language that only arose in
the late Middle Ages. That is, it descends from Middle High German,
and not from Old High German.

These ideas I find confirmed in the little handy reference book,
that I can recommend to those interested in a brief survey of the Germanic
languages, written by Astrid Stedje and published by the Wilhelm Fink
Verlag in Munich (Uni - Taschenbücher 1499). (it is in the "Taschenbuch"
series and is hence not very expensive, but gives a handy overview of
the different Germanic languages and their interrelationship).

Here is a sample of Yiddish taken from Astrid Stedjes book (page 106):

             YIDISHER VISNSHAFTLEKHER INSTITUT

              Max Weinreich, Geschikhte fun der

                     yidisher sprakh.

                      (New York 1973)

Here another example:

  Schpaj nischt in brunem - efscher wesstu darfn fun im trinken wasser.

For me, who merely knows normal German, that is not difficult at
all. It is definitely not Gothic.

The only difficulty is "efscer", which is a Hebrew word that means "maybe".
Also note the verb is not at the end of the sentence, the way it is in
normal German. Astrid Stedje says its origin is in 14th century colloqial
German, as it was spoken in South- and Middle Geman villages, which
opinion is made entirely credible by the above examples.

Keth



> Some Ostrogoths who lived in what is now Ukraine in the 3rd and 4th
>centuries intermixed with Sarmats who were Iranians and the offspring
>became what is now East European Jews. These offspring spoke the
>dominant German(Yiddish) language and looked like the East European
>Jews of today. In the Middle Ages these "Mulatoes" were convinced by
>the visiting Jewish rabbis that they(Mulatoes) were really Jews from
>Germany. The itinerant rabbis did the same trick with Khazars by
>convincing Khazars to convert to Judaism. These "Mulatoes" were quite
>unsophisticated and they believed the rabbis and became ardent Jews.
>So there you go.
>



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