Jiddish related to Gothic?

[David Connolly dec.phd@sbcglobal.net [gothic-l]]

Dirk, 

You are pretty much right regarding the history of the Yiddish (Note: "Jiddisch" in modern German;  no one spells it "Jiddish" to my knowledge).  I had a few graduate courses on Yiddish by an eminent professor of Yiddish linguistics, so let me convey a few basic facts that I remember.  


The origins of Yiddish are traced to central Germany (think Speyer, Worms, Mainz) in the 12th century (give or take), so Jews speaking a dialect of Middle High German.  Yiddish as it developed incorporated (1) small amounts of French/Romance vocabulary ("lomir bentshn"), (2) words of Hebrew/Aramaic origin ("khaver, khaverim" - friend(s)), and (3) Slavic words as the Jewish center of gravity moved towards the east. Grammatically/structurally German(ic), with strong components of borrowing.


There are several centuries and a lot of miles separating Yiddish from Gothic.  And I do not know of a single word in Yiddish coming from Turkish.   


There is much more to be said about Yiddish, but probably not on a Gothic listserv...  An authoritative, quick account of Yiddish linguistic history can be found in 'The Germanic Languages.'  ISBN 0-415-28079-6.  Chapter 14, "Yiddish" contributed by Neil G. Jacobs, Ellen F. Prince and Johan van der Auwera.  (This book also contains a wonderful chapter on Gothic by the late (and great) Winfred Lehmann.)

David fromOhio





________________________________
 From: "d.faltin at hispeed.ch [gothic-l]" <gothic-l at yahoogroups.com>
To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2014 4:23 AM
Subject: [gothic-l] Jiddish related to Gothic?
 


  
Over at the Germanic-L somebody advocated the theory that Jiddish emerged as the result of an amalgamation of Gothic, Slavic and Turkish. Personally, I don't think that this is true. Instead, I think Jiddish is derived from south Middle High German with later additions of Slavic (and perhaps other) elements. Can any of the linguistically trained members of this list settle this argument? In particular, is there a viable case for hypothesizing that Gothic played a role in the development of Jiddish?
 
Thanks a lot
Dirk
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