LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.10.03 (08) [E]

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From: Tom Carty <cartyweb at hotmail.com>
Subject: Yiddish Langauge

I recently came on a CD  of 31 languages, and it had Yiddish on it. I always
thought of Yiddish as being a form of Hebrew, like Araic, but this looks
like a dialect of German, similar to the Lallans / Ullans - English
relationship.

Whats the story?

Tom

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties

Hi, Tom!

Yiddish is indeed a Germanic language, belonging to the High & Central 
German branch.

There are numerous "Jewish languages" (i.e., languages specific to Jewish 
communities) in the world.  While Hebrew and Aramaic, both of them Semitic, 
are assumed to be their ancestors' earliest languages, Semitic languages are 
not all that numerous among today's Jewish languages (Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, 
Judeo-Berber, Beta Israel Amharic, Beta Israel Tigrinya).  During their 
long-standing Diaspora migration throughout the world, Jewish communities 
have been adopting host languages (in Eurasia as far east as Eastern China), 
and then they tended to develop their own versions of these, especially 
where there was or is much separation between them and the gentiles of their 
areas.  There is a pretty good list of such languages here: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_languages.  It gives you an idea of the 
diversity.  As you may be able to imagine, this is a fascinating field 
within the discipline of language contact study.

If you visit our anniversary site (http://www.lowlands-l.net/anniversary/) 
you will find a Yiddish translation of the story also 
(http://www.lowlands-l.net/anniversary/index.php?page=yiddish).  (Click on 
one of the Romanization choices if you can't read Hebrew script.)  You can 
even listen to it (narrated by yours truly), and you may notice that it 
sounds a bit like "weird" German with a heavy East European accent.  There 
is a brief language introduction as well
(http://www.lowlands-l.net/anniversary/index.php?page=yiddish-info):

<quote>
The native name _yidish_ ("Yiddish") literally means "Jewish", a shorter 
form of _yidish daytsh_ "Jewish German." Prior to World War II, it was more 
often referred to as _daytsh_ "German" in Eastern Europe. The language 
developed from medieval Rhenish German peppered with Jewish jargon. As a 
result of isolation due to increasing antisemitism, ghettoization and 
massive emigration to Eastern Europe, Yiddish quickly developed into a very 
distinct group of language varieties. Eastern Yiddish has departed 
particularly far from German, due to massive East European influences, 
especially Slavic influences, in addition to Romance, Hebrew, Aramaic and 
other influences that are common to all Yiddish varieties. Yiddish dialects 
of the Americas have added to this English, Spanish and Portuguese 
influences. Due to the Nazi Holocaust, Yiddish lost millions of European 
speakers within a few years. Western Yiddish is now nearly extinct, while 
Eastern Yiddish is still used all over the world but also has a fast 
dwindling number of speakers. The Yiddish dialects of Belgium and the 
Netherlands are often referred to as "Western Yiddish," but they are really 
Eastern Yiddish dialects with Dutch and French influences. Yiddish is 
written with modified Hebrew script and is the vehicle of a glorious 
literary and theatrical tradition.
This translation is in Eastern Yiddish.

Genealogy: Indo-European > Germanic > West > High & Middle German > 
Judeo-German
</quote>

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

----------

From: Isaac M. Davis <isaacmacdonalddavis at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.10.02 (09) [E]


Ron wrote:

> And then there is the phenomenon of language isolates, assumedly orphans 
> of
> extinct language groups.  In Europe the only surviving one is Basque, and 
> a
> now extinct one of which texts are extant is Etruscan.  Basque influences,
> especially phonological influences, on Northern Spain's Romance language
> Clearly, Etruscans, generally considered speaking an isolate rumored to 
> have
> arrived from Anatolia, eventually came to adopt Latin, but their language 
> also
> influenced Latin, not only varieties of Tuscany (Etruria) and the Po 
> region, but
> also of Latin as a whole, apparently also of Greek (then used in Southern 
> Italy),
> if not also indirectly other languages, such as Celtic ones (Gaulish 
> having been
> used not far north of there).  Take Etruscan words like these: _alumnathe_ 
> sacred
> society (L alumnus), _abcar_ abacus, _athre_ building (L atrium?), _cape_
> container (L capio?), _cela_ room (L cella), _clan_ son (Celt clánn?), 
> _cletram_
> basin, basket (Umbrian kletra), _creice_ Greek (L Graecus), _cupe_ cup, 
> _favi_
> grave, vault, temple (L favissa?), _herma_ statue (L Greek Έρμης Hermēs?),
> _ister_ actor (L histrio?), _lauchum_ king, prince (L lucumō), _leu-_ lion 
> (L leo),
> _man(i)_ 'the dead (L Manes), _math_ honeyed wine (Ger *met?), _mi_ I, me,
> _nef(t)š_ ~ _nefiš_ grandson, nephew (L nepos), _neri_ water (Gk νερό 
> neró),
> _pachathur_ maenad, Bacchante, _put(h)-_ cup, vase, well (L puteus, 
> puteal),
> _cutun_ ~ _cutum_ vase (Gk κόθων kóthon), _ratum_ according to law (L 
> rite),
> _sac-_ perform a sacred act (L sacrus?), _suplu_ flautist (L subulo), 
> _tut(h)i_
> community, nation (L totus? Umbrian tota? Ger thiud?), _thina_ vase, jar 
> (L tina,
> Gk δίνως dīnos), _ulpaia_ jug (Gk ολπή olpē), _vinum_ wine (L vīnum). Note 
> also
> suffixes like _-um_ and _-r_ found also in Latin.

I don't know about the majority of the ones with question marks, but Irish 
(and Scottish Gaelic) clann, at least, isn't from Etruscan. It's a Latin 
loan, from a period when Goidelic didn't have a P, so all Ps in loanwords 
became Qs. The original Latin is planta, which I guess comes from the verb 
plantare, which is from the PIE *plat- (aha, there's the platt connection!). 
In Old Irish it was cland.

Beannachtaí,

Íosac Mac Dáibhidh
(Isaac M. Davis wearing his Irish/Goidelic hat)

**
Westron wynd, when wilt thou blow
The smalle rain down can rain
Christ yf my love were in my arms
And I yn my bed again

----------

From: Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.10.02 (09) [E]

Dear Ron:

Subject: Language use

>Yes, thanks, Gary.

> Yes, I assume that there were people already (going back a long time) and
> that they merged with immigrating Indo-Europeans whose language varieties
> prevailed, developing on native substrates, thus increasing Indo-European
> language diversity even more.

I'll bet that Hom. Sap. Sap. (as opposed to Neanderthalis) followed the Wurm
Glaciation in its retreat, and that there was never an uninhibited
post-Glacial Europe. Also, at that time, the Sahara was a foison plentious
savanna, & an ancient home of man. I think that the southernmost limit of
the 'European' gene-pool was the Berber peoples, whom the Classical peoples
also called Numidians. I raise this point to mention the Irish record that
ther second 'wave' of settlers to their island were Numidians - People of
Nemed. The Berber strain, so the anthropoligists report, has a higher
percentage of Arian recessives, & closer to the Nordic, than the intervening
Mediterranean peoples. Blond, red hair, blue, green eyes.This point
reportedly impressed the Ancient Egyptians enough that they depicted Libyans
so.

> I assume that there was not a single, homogenous Indo-European language by
> the time of migration into Northern Europe, namely that migration was slow
> and tribal diversity had already led to linguistic diversity, in part by
> way of absorbing linguistic influences (including substrates) along the
> way.

I am more inclined to accept that there was, at least prior to the initial
migration of IE peoples. The strong similarities that exist from & in the
remote past, even to this day, argue strongly for pre-expansion genesis in a
single common 'lect' (& gene pool). It was such strong similarities, after
all, that so impressed the first students of IE, between for example Latin &
Sanskrit. The fact that we can trace common factors in Tokarian on the one
hand, & Baltic languages on the other put IE languages on a very different
footing than for instance the Finno-Ugaritic. By the way, what about
Berlitz' averral that a scholar of Sanskrit can make himself understood to a
Latvian? The surviving indicators of common terms, ie. beech, salmon,
turtle, eel etc is supposed to narrow down possible point of origin of IE
peoples to the Baltic area, isn't it?

> Take in much, much later times the migration of the Roma (_Rroma_,
> "Gypsies") from Northwestern India to Northwestern Europe.  It is
> estimated to have begun in the 12th century C.E., and it went on well into
> the 15th century.  (I believe the earliest recorded presence in the
> northwest was in Hildesheim, Northern Germany.)

This would be a strong arguement but for the comparatively few generations
between the beginning of that great trek to the present day. The divergence
is significant, I am told (of course, Ron, all this scholarship is at
second-hand). Now extrapolate such gradual change over a hundred IE
generations to every one of the Roma.

> The Indo-Europeans may have had horses, but I doubt everyone rode on
> horseback.  Migrating must have been something like "we" observed among
> indigenous Native Americans after they adopted the horse.  Some rode and
> some walked.  Traveling those distances must have taken a long, long time,
> interrupted by countless settlements (perhaps for generations) and rounds
> of absorption along the way.

What impresses me is that it was the horse, & not the ass, or the camel, or
the rheindeer. Also cattle share a common ancestry with an Indian strain
(Bos Indicus) & an European (Bos Primogenesis). As for riding, if a colly
can ride a flock of sheep home, then it is surely no great conceptual leap
for a man to ride a horse.

> Though the Roma's language varieties are still basically Indo-Aryan, they
> appear to be a far cry from what they were back in India, having absorbed
> all sorts of influences along the way.  This is what I imagine to have
> happened much, much earlier in Indo-European migration.  When I said,
> "Germanic settlements" on the way north I actually meant a particular
> Indo-European-speaking branch, some of the ancestors whose language
> varieties came to be adopted and later developed into "Germanic,"
> assumedly on indigenous substrates.

Ja, I seem to remember reading that the words 'meadow' & 'marshal' & 'car'
(using the English) are survivals of this, or one of these, aboriginal
Europeans.

> So, yes, those of us who are Northwest Europeans are no doubt descendants
> of people who had been there already (whose ancient stone monuments we can
> still see) with admixtures of immigrating Indo-European speakers (who may
> have made up only a small percentage for all we know, if they were
> powerful enough to make the "natives" adopt their language).

Yes, & they (the natives) were not primitive hunter-gatherers either, but
builders with an agrarian economy, & domesticated livestock. The
archaeologists have excavated peat deposits to the bottom, & exposed
post-holes & cultivated fields, indicating the use of ards, large & small
livestock, & wheat or spelt & barley. Peat cannot of course exist in a
glacier, but will begin accumulating immediately seasonal fluctuations of
growth & die-back permit, & it can be quite accurately dated.

> Although we'll probably never now what sort of languages those natives
> spoke, it is kind of fascinating to "fantasize" about it (going along with
> our Luc's sentiment there).  Theoretically, though, there could be a way
> of reconstructing special "native" features by comparing all the most
> ancient known Northern European languages with each other and "shaving
> off" the common parts of their Indo-European crust.  Branch-specific
> features (Germanic, Celtic, Romance, Slavonic, Baltic, Grecian) might
> offer some clues as to linguistic features of pre-Indo-European times.

I wonder if they were an eastern-Semetic people, like the ancestral Maltese,
& there were Basques around, who though not having a gene-pool in common, is
it not true that their language has very traceable connections to a
cave-dwelling, flint-knapping hunter-gathering technology? If they were
Berber, like the aboriginal Guanches of the Canary islands, don't some
linguists insist that Amazig is actually closest to the Hamatic languages?
Touching on the observations below, I'd bet the Etruscans spoke a
Berber-like tongue. The African shore is too close to Italy to ignore that
possibility, as Cato was wont to point out.

> And then there is the phenomenon of language isolates, assumedly orphans
> of extinct language groups.  In Europe the only surviving one is Basque,
> and a now extinct one of which texts are extant is Etruscan.  Basque
> influences, especially phonological influences, on Northern Spain's
> Romance language varieties have been accepted to be evident.  Clearly,
> Etruscans, generally considered speaking an isolate rumored to have
> arrived from Anatolia, eventually came to adopt Latin, but their language
> also influenced Latin, not only varieties of Tuscany (Etruria) and the Po
> region, but also of Latin as a whole, apparently also of Greek (then used
> in Southern Italy), if not also indirectly other languages, such as Celtic
> ones (Gaulish having been used not far north of there).  Take Etruscan
> words like these: _alumnathe_ sacred society (L alumnus), _abcar_ abacus,
> _athre_ building (L atrium?),

One point about 'abacus', my teachers (of Hebrew) say it goes back to the
Hebrew or Punic 'avac' = dust, recalling how arithmetic was taught using
pebbles laid in lines drawn in the dust, one for each place-value, units,
tens, hundreds &c, exactly like the beads & wires in an abacus.

Another thing that spooks me is how very runic their script looks, conceding
that that may have been dictated by a common medium, of wood, & knife, to
'write' with.

Regards,
Mark

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties

Hi, Isaac and Mark!

Isaac, thanks for the thing about _clan_ and for wearing that hat. 
Fascinating!

Mark:

> Another thing that spooks me is how very runic their script looks, 
> conceding
> that that may have been dictated by a common medium, of wood, & knife, to
> 'write' with.

You can find several eerily similar runic scripts throughout Eurasia, not 
least the Old Hungarian ones (_Székely rovásírás_ ~ _rovás_), also the Old 
(Orkhon) Turkic ones found in what is now Mongolia and parts of Siberia.

Old Hungarian:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Hungarian_script
Old Turkic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkhon_script

It has been alleged that, despite the stunningly similar look, these two 
scipts are *not* related to West European runic scripts, but that they are 
related to each other.  They are believed to have been inspired by 
non-cursiv Soghdian script, which is derived from Syriac, which goes back to 
Old Aramaic.  However, the West European runic scripts, too, also seem to go 
back to Semitic scripts, at least in part, since similarities between them 
and the Phoenician script are striking.

Time and again we are reminded that in the end everything is related to 
everything else, and the same can be said about people.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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