[NDNAIM] Activists . . . Endangered Languages

[rwd0002 at unt.edu]

Quoting "Alfred W. Tüting" <ti at fa-kuan.muc.de>:

> "Even Yiddish, certainly more clearly a Slavic language relexified  
> with Germanic..."
>
> Whereas I agree with that statement ref. to Hebrew, below, I'd rather 
>  claim that Yiddish is a mediaeval German relexified with Biblical  
> Hebrew and - of course - Slavic words of different derivations! (Just 
>  one side note: both Yiddish and Transylvanian Saxon, a mediaeval  
> German dialect, i.e. Mosel-Frankish, use the same everyday-word 
> "keyn/ kein" for German "nach/gegen" - to/toward.)
> Of course, characterizations of this kind seem to be quite futile, 
> and  depending on where one puts the point of reference in time 
> (modern  Hebrew is a relexified English... ;-) ).
>
Alfred, thanks for the correction. Historically it is certainly true 
that Yiddish started as German, and in Germany, and not as Slavic; 
however it is a German that has lived for so long on Slavic territory, 
that it now LOOKS more like a Slavic with Germanic and some Hebrew 
plugged in!

Willem