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

[keth at ONLINE.NO]

Hi IUSTEINUS,
You wrote:

>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.

Thanks. The examples I have seen were however in Latin 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.

Do you know if it was written with Hebrew characters already from the beginning?


><< 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.

I was thinking of Dutch, where there is a big difference:
  « In het Nederlands is de "v" een labiodentale stemhebbende fricatief.
    De "f" is een stemloze labiodentale spirant of fricatief. »
I suppose the point is that although German v and f are the same now,
they used to be different when one began to write German with
Latin letters ca. a thousand years ago. But I don't know if the Dutch
differentiation between e.g. faan & van, spills over the border to some
degree. Anyhow, I pronounce e.g. Hannover with a Dutch v; but that may
be wrong. Also, I don't know if German "Vers" and "Ferze" is
pronounced similarly or not; I have never worried about it before.
But in these soundless internet days, phonetics seems to have become
a topic that is regularly taken up.

>
><< 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.

Maybe I picked the wrong example. But you will no doubt agree that a one-to-one
mapping is difficult between two sets that do not contain the same number
of elements, and that the reason why some languages add graphemes is to
have one for
each phoneme.


>    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)

What is YIVO?

>
><< >> 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.

I posted before I'd read your translation.
My goal was however not to translate, but to recognize the German words.



><< 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.

Here I don't understand you. I claim that "nischt" is the same word as "nicht".
It is only a dialectal variance. (maybe because the Hebrew used "shin" to
represent
the "ch" sound)

>Myself I like it a lot. Thanks for posting it. It is indeed quite similar
>to Yiddish.

Yes, that was the whole point; to show how simlar Yiddish appears to some
German dialects. Later I read that Yiddisch is supposed to have arisen
in Southern Germany, in and near the alpine regions. That might explain why
it is somewhat similar to Bairisch.

>    On the other hand... um... shouldn't we be discussing Gothic? We're
>probably about this close from being admonished by Matthaius!

I agree! Here the point was to show that Yiddish is NOT Gothic.
And that too seems like a valid topic.

>
><< 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?

I don't know, I can't speak it. I only recognize part of it when I hear it.

>A gezunt inem heym!
>
>
>(AHAH! There IS a Gothic word in this post!)
I know too little Gothic to be able to set up comparisons like you do.
Sorry!

Keth



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