[gothic-l] Re: Gothic, Yiddish and High German

[Francisc Czobor]

Godana maurgin allaim !

I speak German and have seen Yiddish dictionaries and texts. Whitout
taking into account convetional or unconventional theories, my personal
impression is that Yidish is basicly a High-German-type dialect with
many Hebrew and Slavic words. The traits that differentiate it from
literary German are found also in other High German dialects. So, as
Llama Nom pointed out, if there's a connection between Yiddish and
Gothic, it isn't evident at all.
The connection of Yiddish with the Goths "of Khazaria" appears also
in "The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and its Heritage", the
controversial book of Arthur Koestler, who tries to demonstrate that
the European Jews are mostly descendants of the Khazars. Regarding the
origins of Yiddish, he quotes A.N. Poliak who believes that "the form
of early Yiddish emerged in the zones possessed by the Goths of the
Khazarian Crimea." Poliak considers that the Crimean Gothic vocabulary
collected by Busbecq is related to the Middle-High-German element found
in Yiddish, and this is due, in his oppinion, to the fact that the
Crimean Goths keeped their contacts with ohter Germanic tribes which
influenced their language.
Indeed, the Crimean Gothic list collected by Busbecq, beside words that
are clearly East Germanic, contains also words that look rather High
German than Gothic (East Germanic). This fact was interpreted in
different ways (influence of German-speaking communities settled in
Eastern Europe, like the Transylvanian "Saxons", or distorted recording
of East-Germanic words due to the influence of High German or Flemish,
both spoken by Busbecq, or distorsion due to the publishers of Busbecq,
etc.).

Francisc





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