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

[macmaster at RISEUP.NET]

Is there any possibility - from a linguistic perspective - that the
Crimean Goths might not be the descendants of Greutungian Goths but might,
instead, be later Germanic immigrants to the region who adopted the name
of the people who had preceded them in the same region?

Tom MacMaster


Francisc Czobor said:
>     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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