[gothic-l] Jiddish

Mon Feb 16 17:40:03 UTC 2015

Thanks David, now Tore has a good book to read about the subject.

Op maandag 16 februari 2015 heeft David Connolly dec.phd at sbcglobal.net
[gothic-l] <gothic-l at yahoogroups.com> het volgende geschreven:
>
>
> Dear Gothic-l group,
> Didn't we go through all of this "Yiddish / Turkish" business last June?
I thought it was worked out.  I dredged up, and I repost below, my comments
on Yiddish from June 2014;  I recall that Dirk was on the right track, and
I also remember a posting from Edmund with his typically high level of
erudition.  Anyone serious about the history of Yiddish should read Max
Weinreich's 'History of the Yiddish language' (English translation
published in 1980;  this is an "abridged" version that is still nearly 1000
pages long;  the "full" work was printed ca. 2008[??] by YIVO in 2 heavy
volumes). The history and development of Yiddish are known and documented
in great depth and detail.
> David
>
>
>>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.)
> 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<
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: "write2andy at yahoo.com [gothic-l]" <gothic-l at yahoogroups.com>
> To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Sunday, February 15, 2015 12:27 PM
> Subject: [gothic-l] Re: Jiddish
>
>
> Most of the available literature trying to explain this usually relies on
the following facts: the Khazars converted to Judaism, there are lots of
East European Jews, etc. They never offer a way how they are linked, just
"Isn't it uncanny that there are lots of Jews in Eastern Europe?" It's
fruitless. Any other things you can find on the Internet don't even bother
to explain it. I saw one video that said the Ashkenazi Jews are actually
Khazars because the Jews committed the attacks on the Twin Towers. Yes,
this video unfortunately exists; it does nothing to prove its claim that
the Jews are Khazars, it only goes off in another tangent. Another webpage
I saw claimed this, and then proved it by saying the Holocaust is a lie.
Please.
> I can assure you, "kop" and "kafa" are a coincidence. The Yiddish comes
from German "Kopf", the Turkish word comes from Arabic.
> And the second source, saying the Germans had not come across the Yiddish
language until they reached Poland, is wrong. The Jews in Poland did speak
another, unfamiliar language to the German Jews at that time, but it was a
Judeo-Slavic language called "Knaanic". Neither Yiddish nor Knaanic has any
tie to Turkic, as far as I know.
> Yiddish grammar shares nothing with Turkic. Turkic is agglutinative,
Yiddish is not. Turkic uses vowel harmony, Yiddish does not. I could go on.
>
>
> 
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