tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51427355897768439912024-03-12T17:39:46.784-07:00Gothic YiddishCharles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5142735589776843991.post-12651795817027148832019-04-22T09:14:00.002-07:002019-04-22T09:15:36.654-07:00 Why some people say <u>git</u> and some say <u>gut</u>: The mechanism of Yiddish dialect differentiation<br />
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The sounds of a language can change in different ways. The most commonly described change is a sound shift. A classic example from the history of English is that a long <u>U</u> sound inherited from ancient Germanic became a diphthong the we find in words like 'cow.' Another way that sounds can change is when the words they are found in are borrowed from one language to another. The speakers of the new language adapt the pronunciation of the word to fit in with their own habits of speaking. This second process is what underlies most of the differences that we find in pronunciation between Yiddish dialects.<br />
To illustrate this we can take an example from the Yiddish dialects historically spoken in Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus and the Baltic countries. The word for 'good' is pronounced either as <u>git</u> or <u>gut</u>. To explain this fact we have to explain two things. One is how the difference came about and the other is why which pronunciation is historically preferred in which areas. In what follows, I will set questions of geographical distribution aside and deal with the origin of the difference. I will also not delve into variations in the pronunciation of <u>I</u> vowel among people who say <u>git</u> as these are not relevant to this particular problem.<br />
To begin with we are looking at a very big pattern. The alternation of <u>u</u> and <u>i</u> is found in words of Germanic origin like <u>git</u> and <u>gut</u> as well as words of Slavic origin like the word for 'beetle' that can be <u>zhik</u> or <u>zhuk</u> and words of Semitic origin like the word for 'crazy' that can <u>meshige</u> or <u>meshuge</u>. In all cases a speaker who uses a <u>u</u> or <u>i</u> in one of these words uses the same vowel consistently in the other, When linguists encounter a pattern like this, the first explanation they think of is that there was a sound shift. These words originally had one of these sounds, perhaps an <u>I</u> sound, perhaps an <u>U</u> and then some speakers regularly changed their pronunciation from one form to another. At first historical facts seem to support this. All these words once had an <u>U</u> in some forms of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic.<br />
A closer look at the facts allows us to regard such a sound shift unlikely. A sound shift has a limited duration. During the time it is happening all the words with appropriate sound undergo the shift. Then the shift comes to an end. After the shift has run its course new words borrowed into the language no longer undergo the shift. If they have the sound affected by the shift, say <u>I</u> or <u>U</u>, they keep it. Since Germanic, Slavic and Semitic words were borrowed into Yiddish over a long period extending into recent times we would expect, if there were a shift from <u>U</u> to <u>I</u>, that the shift would have come to an end at some time and words borrowed later that had <u>U</u> would keep it even among speakers who say <u>git</u>.<br />
We do not find this. People who say <u>git</u> use an <u>I</u> sound consistently in words where other people say <u>gut</u> even in words that came into the Yiddish language in historically recent times. Another explanation is required. This would be that the changes in pronunciation are the result of borrowing. It was borrowing of a specific kind and to see how this happened we have to take a closer look at the structure of Yiddish.<br />
Max Weinreich described Yiddish as a fusion language. A fusion language consists of components of different etymological origins. Each component borrows material from a specific class of languages called its determinant. Yiddish has a Germanic component with a Germanic determinant, as well as a Slavic and a Semitic component.<br />
While all elements of Yiddish share common linguistic structures, each component also has its own structural features. Plurals, for example, are generally constructed differently in nouns of the Germanic, Slavic and Semitic components.<br />
Each component also has its own ways of adapting words from its determinant into the Yiddish language. Typically, for example, borrowed nouns are assigned new plurals. The plural of noun borrowed from Germanic often has a different ending than it had in its Germanic determinant. This is often true in the case of nouns from the Slavic component and, occasionally, in nouns from the Semitic component as well. This fitting words from determinants into components is the characteristically Yiddish form of linguistic borrowing.<br />
Ways of adapting words from the determinants to the components can vary somewhat within Yiddish. For example, words from the Germanic components can be assigned different plurals in Lithuania and Belarus than they might be assigned in Poland or Ukraine.<br />
The same principles apply to pronunciation. The Germanic, Slavic and Semitic components have characteristic ways of adjusting the pronunciations of words from their determinants to fit in with Yiddish patterns. As with the case of plurals these ways of adapting pronunciation can vary somewhat within the language.<br />
Now we can see how the <u>git</u> and <u>gut</u> pronunciations could have emerged. Languages vary in the kinds of <u>U</u> sounds they can have. Some like French and German have two kinds. One kind is usually spelled 'ou' in French and 'u' in German. In phonetic notation it is written /u/. The other kind is usually 'u' in French 'u' with an umlaut in German. It is written /y/. English has only one kind of <u>u</u>. In standard English it is /u/ but in dialects like the one spoken in Philadelphia it is /y/.<br />
It is possible to infer from old manuscripts that Yiddish in medieval Germany was one of the languages that distinguish /u/ and /y/. Bu those Yiddish speakers who migrated into eastern Europe lost this distinction. Linguistic distinctions are often lost in migrations.<br />
Once the distinction was lost, Yiddish speakers had to opt either for /u/ or /y/ as their one preferred pronunciation. Some communities opted for /u/ and others for /y/This had an effect on the way words from the Germanic, Slavic and Semitic determinants were incorporated into the components. Communities that used /u/ assigned /u/ to words with<u> U</u> sounds in the determinants while those with /y/ assigned /y/ to the same words.<br />
In eastern Europe Jews found themselves in different linguistic environments. Hungarian had both /u/ and /y/ sounds while Polish, Ukrainian and Belarusian had only /u/. Yiddish speakers in the territory of modern Hungary and adjacent Burgenland, Austria and western Slovakia arrived with the /y/ variant and kept it. In the Slavic lands some settlers founded communities with the /u/ variant. They maintained it in their new homes. Others founded communities with the /y/ variant but these lost it under the influence of surrounding languages. They shifted from /y/ to the sounds closest to it which were <u>I</u> sounds.<br />
The shift from /y/ to <u>I</u> sounds changed the way words from the determinants were incorporated into the components. While previously these communities had incorporated words with <u>U</u> sounds from the determinants as having /y/ they now incorporated them with <u>I</u> sounds. As a result Yiddish speakers in the Slavic lands either said <u>git</u> or <u>gut</u>. (An exception was the town of Bransk, Poland which still has /y/.)<br />
This is an illustration of the power of the patterns that govern the way words from the determinants are incorporated into the components. As long as Yiddish remained a fusion language these patterns were strong enough so that words with <u>U</u> were taken into the components as having <u>I</u> vowels. The principle mechanisms by which Yiddish dialects arose were not sound shifts but rather variations in way elements from determinants were adapted to fit into components.Charles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5142735589776843991.post-14216726478641112692017-07-31T11:48:00.001-07:002018-03-28T10:15:40.215-07:00Spectacular Genomic Confirmation of Max Weinreich's Babylonian RenaissanceIn his "History of the Yiddish Language" (1973) Max Weinreich regarded the 13th century as a turning point in the history of the Yiddish language. He identifies it as the boundary between the Early Yiddish and Old Yiddish periods. More specifically he writes about a 13th century Babylonian Renaissance characterized by a change in the Ashkenazic norms of Hebrew pronunciation. He says that the change was centered around Rothenburg and involved scholars who bore names that were previously rare or unknown among German Jews but were used by Jews in the Middle East. The name Bablyonian Renaissance comes from Weinreich's beliefs that the pronunciation norms came from Mesopotamia and that the scholars who brought them migrated from there.<br />
A look at studies of the history of Jewish settlement in Germany shows that the 13th century was a period when settlements increased rapidly in number and geographical extant. Judging from the maps the center of this spread was the Main Valley. Rothenburg is in this area.(Maps in Michael Toch's "Jews and Peasants in Medieval Germany" 2003 and Alfred Haverkamp, ed., "Geschichte der Juden in Mittelalter" 2002).<br />
Genomic studies have looked a uniparental markers among the Ashkenazim, These are genetic features that are inherited exclusively from one parent. Mitochondrial genes are transmitted only from mothers and genes on the Y chromosome come only from fathers. According to one study Ashkenazic Jews predominantly show mitochondrial genes that are characteristic of European populations (about 40%) and Y chromosomes genes that are characteristic of Middle Eastern ones. ("A prehistoric European ancestry amongst Ashkenazi lineages" Martin Richards et. al, in "Nature Communications" 4, article number 2543 (2013) )<br />
Another study looked at the whole Ashkenazic genome.("Sequencing an Ashkenazi reference panel supports population targeted personal genomics and illuminates Jewish and European origins" Itsik Pe'er et al. "Nature Communications" 5, article number 4835 (2014) ). This makes it possible to infer some aspects of the history of the population. One thing that stands out is that the population looks like the result of an even admixture of a European and a Middle Eastern population (European ancestry estimated at 46-50%). The date of this admixture was between between 600 and 800 years ago.<br />
The same study inferred a population bottleneck in the history of Ashkenaz. That is a period when the population dropped before expanding. As a result of this bottleneck modern Ashkenazim are descended from only between 250 and 420 ancestors.They lived between 25 and 32 generations ago. This would put the bottleneck at about the same time as the admixture.<br />
If I am interpreting these data and inferences correctly, the majority of German Jews alive before 800 years ago did not contribute ancestors to the modern Ashkeanzi population. The exception was a subset comprised mostly of women who married Middle Eastern immigrants. The descendants of this admixed population expanded rapidly.<br />
One explanation of this rapid expansion relative to the unadmixed population may be that the admixed population was disproportionately involved in the expansion of settlements. Some support for this idea comes from a study of the European settlement of Quebec. Settlers who founded new settlements had larger families with more married children and their descendants were also more apt to found new settlements, ("Deep human genealogies reveal a slective advantage to be on an expanding wave front" Claudia Moreau, et, al."Science" 25 November 2011 v.334 pp.1148-1150)<br />
Another possible factor was suggested to me by Lou Cleveland. The Black Plague greatly reduced the German population in 1349. People of Middle Eastern origin may have had a degree of genetic resistance to this disease.<br />
Update<br />
A recent <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1006644">article</a> estimates that the admixture event involving a population with Middle Eastern genetic affinities was actually earlier than the 13th century, I'll write more about this in a new post.Charles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5142735589776843991.post-26536769114488233222014-12-02T13:27:00.000-08:002014-12-02T13:30:06.071-08:00The Role of Crimean Gothic in the Formation of the Eastern Yiddish Dialects<br />
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As readers of this blog know, my research has led me to some unusual conclusions about the history of Yiddish. Yiddish is most commonly believed to have originated in Germany about 1000 years ago and to have been carried from there to eastern Europe where the majority of its speakers lived. Two things that have that generally been considered relevant to the history of Yiddish are Crimea and the Gothic language. Crimea is a peninsula of Eurasia which is not known to have had a Yiddish-speaking population before the 19th century when Jews began to settle there from other parts of the Russian Empire. Gothic is a Germanic language spoken by a people who migrated from northern Europe to the shores of the Black Sea around 250 CE. It gradually stopped being spoken on the European mainland after about 600 but continued to be used in Crimea at least through the 1500's.<br />
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In previous posts I have stated my general conclusions that there was once a Gothic speaking Jewish community in Crimea which played a role in the history of Yiddish. Recently, I have been able to come up with a more detailed historical narrative. In future posts I plan to supply the reasoning behind this reconstruction but here I just want to present it in broad outlines.<br />
Around the 850's there was an active trade route between Austria and east Germany in the west and the Black Sea coast. Crimean Jews played a role in this trade. The Jews involved in this trade spoke a form of Gothic. By making inferences from later Yiddish it is possible to reconstruct some aspects of this language. It incorporated words borrowed from Hebrew and Aramaic. Often these were incorporated into Gothic by attaching Gothic elements to the Hebrew roots. <br />
After about 900, this trade route declined. The Gothic speaking Jewish community now split into two groups which had, for a long time, relatively little communication.<br />
One group continued to live in the Austrian and East German area. They were surrounded by speakers of German, a language that was fairly closely related to Gothic and they gradually shifted from speaking Gothic to speaking a language that was largely German but with an underlying structure that was retained from Gothic. This was an early form of Yiddish. The modern Yiddish dialect which resembles it most closely is the one that Uriel Weinreich named West Transcarpathian Yiddish.<br />
Back in Crimea, the Jewish Gothic spoken there eventually took a new approach to Hebrew loans. Gothic morphemes were no longer attached to Hebrew roots. Hebrew nouns were given Hebrew plural endings and the roots of Hebrew verbs were used along with separate Gothic auxiliary verbs.<br />
Around 1300, trade between the German lands and Crimea revived. Jews from the eastern parts of Germany and Austria re-established communication and some migrated to Crimea. They brought their language, the ancestral form of West Transcarpathian Yiddish along with a new approach to Jewish culture that had evolved in central Europe. Some Gothic speaking Crimean Jews adopted these cultural features and also learned Yiddish from these immigrants.<br />
In this new environment Yiddish was no longer surrounded by German speakers but by speakers of Gothic. A new dialect, Crimean Yiddish developed under this renewed Gothic influence.<br />
By the mid 1300's, major trade routes from Crimea led north into the developing Duchy of Lithuania and Polish Kingdom. Yiddish speaking Crimean Jews moved north along these routes, settling along them and bringing their Crimean Yiddish. In the Duchy of Lithuania it developed into the Northeastern Yiddish dialect.<br />
In the Polish Kingdom the development was more complicated. There settlers from Crimea encountered Jewish settlers from eastern Germany and Austria who spoke the ancestral form of West Transcarpathian Yiddish.. Contact between this dialect and Crimean Yiddish led to the development of the Central and Southeastern Yiddish dialects.<br />
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In summary the eastern dialects of Yiddish formed as the result of three language contact events. The first involving a form of Jewish Crimean and German occurred along the the trade routes between the German speaking lands and the Black Sea around 850. This produced a dialect ancestral to modern West Transcarpathian Yiddish. Subsequently, the central European and Crimean branches of this trading community were separated The second event was renewed contact between speakers of this Yiddish dialect and speakers of Jewish Crimean Gothic which occurred around 1300. It produced the ancestor of modern Northeastern Yiddish. The third event occurred in the 1300's in the lands that became the Kingdom of Poland. There the contact was between the Crimean Yiddish ancestral to Northeastern Yiddish and the dialect ancestral to West Transcarpathian Yiddish. The products of this was the ancestor of the modern Central and Southeastern Yiddish dialects. Charles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5142735589776843991.post-48187246960137223272013-05-24T12:14:00.000-07:002013-05-24T12:14:09.105-07:00A sketch of the history of the Yiddish dialectsI want to give a quick overview of how I see the Yiddish dialects emerging from a Gothic system. Early Yiddish developed out of Gothic in parts of Ukraine. Until about 1200, Early Yiddish remained in eastern Europe. The spread of Yiddish into Central Europe began in the 1200's reaching Austria first. There speakers of Bavarian German learned Yiddish. The Yiddish they learned was essentially a Gothic system but in the course of acquiring it they incorporated many Bavarian features. For example, the vowels in the words inherited from Gothic were redistributed to approximate the Bavarian vowel distribution. The resulting Bavarianized Yiddish constituted the ancestral form of modern West Transcarpathian Yiddish.<br />
This Bavarianized Yiddish spread into Germany where it was learned by speakers of Central German dialects who modified it by incorporating material from Central German. The German Jews of the Rhineland also incorporated their unique and very old Hebrew vocabulary. This was the origin of the family of West Yiddish dialects that came to be spoken in Germany, Alsace-Lorraine, Luxemburg, Holland and Switzerland.<br />
In all these dialects the incorporated German material was modified owing to its integration into the basically Gothic system of Early Yiddish. The nature of these transformations is a rich source of information about the structure of Early Yiddish. This particularly valuable as we have no texts in Early Yiddish.<br />
A migration of West Yiddish speakers into eastern Europe began in about 1400. There these West Yiddish speakers came into contact with resident speakers of Early Yiddish. The newcomers acquired the Early Yiddish system while adding West Yiddish elements. The new forms of Yiddish that developed out of this process were the ancestral East Yiddish dialects.<br />
This process had interesting parallels to the earlier development of West Yiddish. In that case a vowel distribution approximating that of a German dialect replaced the Gothic vowel distribution of Early Yiddish. In this case, the Gothic vowel distribution was replaced by one from West Yiddish.<br />
Just as the transformations undergone by German elements integrated into West Yiddish testify to the structure of Early Yiddish, the incorporation of West Yiddish elements into East Yiddish gives<br />
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<br />Charles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5142735589776843991.post-40393845343899572902012-04-20T09:18:00.000-07:002012-04-20T09:20:43.323-07:00<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IHkBP-4rgqQ/T5GMnwnCsWI/AAAAAAAAACA/RgazpcVYIY8/s1600/IMG_0997.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IHkBP-4rgqQ/T5GMnwnCsWI/AAAAAAAAACA/RgazpcVYIY8/s320/IMG_0997.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5733518415310795106" /></a>Charles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5142735589776843991.post-87838337100850189262012-02-22T05:43:00.000-08:002012-02-23T05:43:49.145-08:00Yiddish from 400 to 1400 C EYiddish is well represented by written texts starting at about 1400. There are some earlier traces of written Yiddish that go back about 1000. It would seem that the trail goes cold at that time. However, if we accept the evidence presented on this blog that Yiddish is descended from Gothic we can venture further into the past, as far back as somewhat before 400 when Gothic is documented by Wulfila's translation.<br />Around 400 Yiddish would not have been very different from Gothic as represented by Wulfila. By 1400, Yiddish shows very strong influences of German. What can be said about the intervening period?<br />Let's look first at geography. Around 400 Yiddish speaking territory would have coincided with at least a part of Gothic territory. This territory embraced the northern shore of the Black Sea, including Crimea, and extended into the Balkans. By the 800's Ashkenazic Jews, presumably Yiddish speakers were living in the Carolingian Empire, in Austrian and Bavarian territory, notably in Regensburg. If this community was an extension of the Gothic Jewish community it mostly likely spread there from the Balkans.<br />In the course of the following two centuries, Jewish communities spread into East Central German towns like Magdeburg, Halle, and Erfurt and in the central Rhineland around Speyer, Worms and Mainz.<br />Next let's look at social conditions. During the late Roman and early Medieval period up to about 800, Jews were generally well integrated into European society and Judaism even attracted many converts. Later conditions deteriorated, particularly after the late 11th century.<br />These changes very likely had linguistic consequences. During the early period up to 800, Yiddish may have served the role of a missionary language designed to recruit converts. Traces of this early function still survive in Yiddish as I plsn to demonstrate in a later post. When Jews came in contact with German-speakers, chiefly after 800, Yiddish which was then based on Gothic would have been close enough to early German for Jews to be able to communicate with their neighbors by making small modifications in their speech. This would have chiefly meant that Geman sounds would be substituted for Gothic based sounds. Among themselves. Jews would have continued to use the Gothic based pronunciation.<br />This state of affairs where a community uses one system internally and communicates with neighboring communities through sound substitutions is called a diasystem. It is likely that this diasystem persisted until about 1100. Around this time the social status of Jews began to fall and the German sounds came to be used all the time, even in inter-Jewish communication. This collapse of the old diasystem left a very strong mark on later Yiddish, something that I plan to make the subject of future posts.Charles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5142735589776843991.post-44681922509714598242011-09-18T14:57:00.000-07:002011-09-19T12:12:49.518-07:00New DirectionsI last posted on this blog in October, 2009. Since then a number of irresistable new opportunities have appeared which have competed for my time. For one thing, thanks to the initiative of Bob Scott at the Digital Humanities Center of the Columbia University Libraries there is a real possibility that a critical component of the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry data base will be published online. I have been part of the effort to accomplish this.<br />A new research opportunity has also appeared with the development of inexpensive and widely available genomic testing since 2008. The potential for using genomic information as a source for Ashkenazic history has long been recognized but pioneers have had, until recently, to base their research on the limited data provided first by classical markers and later by mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome haplogroups. Extensive newly available autosomal data is now being added to provide a much richer and firmer basis for historical inferences.<br />My research on the history of Yiddish has also taken on some new directions thanks to hints provided by teachers, Marvin Herzog and Mordtkhe Schaechter.<br />Herzog called attention to the fact that when groups migrate they tend to lose cultural and linguistic traits. This observation which goes back his mentor Uriel Weinreich is now becoming more widely appreciated as can be seen from a recent article by Quentin D. Atkinson in 'Science' which uses lose of phonetic features to trace the spread of human languages back to Africa.<br />Uriel discussed the loss of features in small settlements in his article on 'Western Traits of Transcarpathian Yiddish.' The specific example he gave was the development of Northeastern YIddish but in other parts of the same article he describes a much wider pattern of progressive trait loss. He describes a number o features unique to Transcarpathian Yiddish. A smaller set of these can be found in Central Yiddish. A still smaller set are shared by Central and Southeastern Yiddish but not found in the remaining the East Yiddish dialect, Northeastern Yiddish.<br />The global pattern is then one of maximum richness of traits in Transcarpathian Yiddish with a gradual falling off of traits towards the northeastern part of East Yiddish territory. Uriel does not specifically say as much but this pattern implies that the settlement of East Yiddish territory spread out from the broader Transcarpathian area (this area would include Austria and the Czech lands which are to the west of the Carpathians) to the northeast. We can infer from this that the common root of Transcarpathian and East Yiddish originated in the Transcarpathian area. This is consistent with other evidence that the ancestor of these dialects coalesced in Austria around the the 11th century.<br />The spread of East and Transcarpathian Yiddish from a focal area in early medieval Austria is also implied by a line of research that was suggested by the work of another of my teachers, Mordtkhe Schaechter. Schaechter identified a specific kind of linguistic borrowing in which a language borrows standards of correctness rather than specific items from another language. The borrowed standard is used to select preferred variants within the internal repertoire of the borrowing language.<br />As I have argued elsewhere in this blog, early Yiddish was an East Germanic language derived from Gothic. Modern Yiddish is, in comparison, much more similar to German. Yiddish has come to resemble German partly through the mechanism of ordinary linguistic borrowing but the mechanism described by Schaechter has actually played a greater role. Specifically, early Yiddish borrowed standards from a form of literary German. This form was the Middle High German used in Austria.<br />As to the question of how the original Gothic-derived Yiddish got to Austria, I currently favor the hypothesis that from at least 500 CE on, Gothic was spoken by the Jews of northwestern Balkan Jewry. Medieval Austria was settled by Jews from the Rhineland and East Franconia as well as other areas but I think that early Yiddish was brought there by settlers from the area of the Save River valley.Charles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5142735589776843991.post-8168781874613208072009-07-05T12:02:00.000-07:002009-07-05T12:41:17.625-07:00The development of Germanic short 'o'Proto-Germanic is commonly reconstructed as lacking a short 'o' phoneme. The subsequent development of short 'o' can be looked at by tracing developments in Gothic, German and Yiddish.<br />Biblical Gothic, attested from the 5th century, is close to the Proto-Germanic state. There is no 'o' phoneme in the native Germanic word stock although 'o' is found in loanwords.<br />Within the Germanic component, 'o' occurs as an allophone of short 'u' before the consonants 'r', 'kh' and 'khw'. This is part of a more general short vowel lowering rule that also lowers short 'i' to short 'e'.<br />German by comparison has a short 'o' phoneme which mostly developed from PG short 'u' and which is found in many contexts. Notable are occurences of 'o' derived from 'u' before nasal vowels, e. g. fromm, Sommer, Sonne, kommen, besonderer, gesponnen, geschwommen, genommen. (examples from Bin-Nun). This shift began in Old High German and continued through Middle High German and Early New High German.<br />The short vowel lowering rule survives in the German dialects but it is quite restricted geographically.<br />Yiddish occupies an intermediate position between Gothic and German. The short vowel lowering rule survives except in the Northeastern dialect (Litvish) which has lost the distinction between short and long vowels.<br />Words like vortsl, dorsht, shtorem, vorem, gorgl, vokher, etc. are universal in Yiddish and show that this rule operated at the earliest period in the history of the language.<br />On the other hand, there is well-established short 'o' phoneme in found in many word from the Germanic component such as groshn, holts, honik, shlos. gebot. etc. But 'u' before nasals was rarely lowered so that the listed German words above are represented in by Yiddish words that, historically, have short 'u' e. g. zumer, zun, kumen, etc.<br />I say 'historically' because in almost all the Yiddish dialects, the short 'u' has been transformed into another vowel. The excpeion is Alsation Yiddish. Alsation Yiddish is also exceptional in that while it has zumer, zun, kumen, etc. these are in free variation with forms that have 'o'<br />The picture that one gets is of an early Yiddish that had the short vowel lowering rule and lacked an 'o' phoneme but subsequently acquired it through contact with German, Hebrew and other languages that have it.<br />A particularly interesting set of words are fun, duner, and ful. The German cognates of these words have had 'o' since Old High Germanic times. It is possible that Yiddish preserves Old High German forms that are not attested in the literature. Alternately these forms may go back to an earlier Gemanic language such as Gothic or an earlier stage of the West Germanic language that developed into Old High German. Either way we are looking at a date for the origin of Yiddish that is earlier than 800 C E.Charles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5142735589776843991.post-60746631428470817642009-07-04T13:13:00.000-07:002009-07-04T14:04:39.751-07:00Yiddish gayes Gothic gaujaThe Yiddish word 'gayes' was used in western Germany and Poland to mean 'people of the countryside, particularly non-Jewish'. It is commonly spelled as if it were of Semitic origin 'gimel-yod-vov-sof' but it is not a Semitic world. Meyer Wolf and Alexis Manaster Ramer have suggested that it is of ancient Germanic origin.<br />The word frequently appears in the form 's'gayes' where the 's' is a contraction of the neutral definite article 'dos' the word can also be masculine or feminine.<br />Related forms in Gothic and Old High German refer to a district or region but the closest form is Gothic 'gauja' (masculine) defined in Lehmann's Gothic dictionary as 'people of a land'.Charles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5142735589776843991.post-70228178962947182932009-07-04T12:51:00.000-07:002009-07-04T13:09:43.842-07:00Yiddish oyganes Old High German ougun Gothic augonaIn Yiddish 'oy'ganes' means large protruding eyes as if in surprise. A form 'oy'genes' with stress on the first syllable exists and also a form 'oyga'nim'.<br /> The Old High German word for 'eye' is 'ou'ga' in the nominative singular and 'ou'gun' or 'ougun' in the nominative plural. The Biblical Gothic (4th century) word is 'au'go' in the nominative singular and 'au'go:na' in the nominative plural. In Crimean Gothic from the 1500's the plural is 'oeghene.'<br /> The Yiddish form resembles the Gothic form in having three syllables. However, the 'a' in the second syllable resembles the Old High German form. Both the Gothic and Old High German forms may have influenced Yiddish.Charles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5142735589776843991.post-236501993286424932009-07-04T11:18:00.000-07:002009-07-04T11:30:05.411-07:00Yiddish klezmer Gothic klismo Hebrew kley-zemerYiddish 'klezmer' 'musician' is commonly derived from Hebrew 'kley-zemer'. Biblical Gothic has a word 'klismo' of unknown etymology meaning 'cymbal' used in the phrase 'klismo klismjandei' 'cymbal tinkling',<br /> The two words are actually phonetically quite close in that Gothic lacked a short 'e'. Gothic 'i' would have been the closest approximation to this sound. Semantically, however the two words are pretty far apart. However, the literal meaning of 'kley-zemer' is 'musical instrument.' This word could have existed in Wulfila's time and been the basis both of Gothic 'klismo' and Yiddish 'klezmer.'Charles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5142735589776843991.post-27745379765019801312009-07-04T11:00:00.001-07:002009-07-04T11:14:11.711-07:00Yiddish 'skotsl' Gothic 'skohsl'The Yiddish expression 'skotsl kumt' is uttered on the occassion of someone's unexpected arrival. Its etymology is unknown. The Biblical Gothic word for 'demon' is 'skohsl'. It is phonetically easy to go from 'skohsl' to 'skotsl'. The Gothic 'h' here designates a preconsonantal 'kh' sound. Such a sound was often lost in the history of Yiddish, compare 'shukh' with derived 'shuster.' The 'sl' cluster can, sometimes become a 'tsl' cluster as in 'pitsl' derived from 'bisl.'<br /> Semantically, the Yiddish and Gothic words are also a good match in that the Yiddish expression can be compared to English 'speak of the Devil and he appears' also said of an unexpected arrival. It can be concluded that Yiddish 'skotsl' is likely descended from Gothic 'skohsl'.Charles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5142735589776843991.post-48366198036540202472009-02-03T08:10:00.001-08:002009-02-03T12:54:23.685-08:00Yiddish /r/Yiddish /r/<br /> In their <u>Etymologische Studien zum Jiddischen</u> (Helmut Buske, Hamburg, 2006) Erika Timm and Gustav Adolf Beckmann discuss the theory of Paul Wexler that Yiddish is a relexified Slavic language. By this, Wexler means that Yiddish started out life as a member of the Slavic family and borrowed so many words from German that it has taken on a Germanic appearance. Timm and Beckmann reject this theory and they begin their concluding remarks by asking how it is that Yiddish has a very un-Slavic (and they add, un-Turkic) uvular [R]?<br /><br /> That the predominant form of the Yiddish /r/ is uvular can be seen from Map 8 in the first volume of the <u>Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry</u> (<u>LCAAJ</u>) (Tũbingen, Max Niemeyer, New York, the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, 1992). Yiddish has two kinds of /r/ which are distinguished by the position of tongue contact. In the apical [r] the tongue contact is further forward in the mouth while in uvular [R] it is further back. The bulk of Yiddish speaking territory has [R] with [r] found only at the edges on the northwest, the northeast, the southwest and, a bit, in the southeast.The pattern with [R] firmly established in the middle while on the edges of the territory Yiddish agrees with co-territorial languages in having [r] stongly implies that [R] is the oldest form in Yiddish and that [r] is a new form borrowed from its neighbors.<br /><br /> But if [R] is the original Yiddish /r/, we have to ask where it comes from? Slavic languages can be ruled out as overwhelmingly preferring [r]. The possibility that it comes from Hebrew must be considered but there is no evidence that ancient Hebrew had an [R] and Yiddish pronunciations of Hebrew sounds often differ from the ancient Middle Eastern ones.<br /><br /> The obvious candidate is the Germanic languages and, at first this looks, quite obvious. Modern Germanic languages have both kinds of /r/. In Standard German the [R] is currently preferred as it is in Standard Danish and Dutch. In other Germanic languages, [r] is the standard but [R] occurs as a dialect pronunciation. In fact, Robert D. King and Stephanie Beach derive the Yiddish [R] from German in their article, "On the origins of Germanic uvular [R]: the Yiddishe evidence" in the <u>American Journal of Germanic Linguistics and Literatures</u> September 1998 pp. 279-290.<br /><br /> However, if one goes back to the handbooks from the late 19th and early 20th century one gets a different impression. The original Proto-Germanic /r/ is reconstructed as [r]. The original Old High German and Middle High German quality is also given as [r]. An apical [r] is also reconstructed for Gothic.<br /><br /> The evidence that [r] was once univeral in Germanic is, however, not strong. A more recent discussion in the book <u>Proto-Germanic /r/</u> (Alfred Kummich, Gőppingen, 1974) by Richard M. Runge cites a considerable body of evidence and later studies that indicate that Proto-Germanic /r/ was [R] and that this value was found in at least some Old High German as well as in Gothic.<br /><br /> If Yiddish [R] is Germanic, than this feature takes its place along with the Yiddish tendency to stress initial syllables and to put the verb in second position as a testimony to the deep rootedness of Yiddish within the Germanic family of languages.Charles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5142735589776843991.post-61729075913815096372009-01-22T05:49:00.001-08:002009-01-22T05:49:31.370-08:00Erika Timm on the historical semantics of Yiddish<DIV> Erika Timm's monumental <U>Historische Jiddische Semantik: The language of bible translation as a factor in the progressive divergence between Yiddish and German vocabulary</U> (Max Niemeyer, Tűbingen, 2005) deals with the vocabulary of Yiddish Tanakh translations written between about 1400 and 1750. The bulk of the book contains detailed histories of many Yiddish words that appear in these translations. There are also special studies of words used to translate the names of gems, musical instruments, plants and animals mentioned in Tanakh. There are also valuable discussions of morphology and word formation.</DIV><br /><DIV> The author began the work many years ago by compiling a vocabulary from an edition of <U>Mirkeves haMishne</U>. Eventually working with a team of scholars and employing computers the list was extended to include words from many other texts. The massive compilation of detailed word histories makes this book an indispensable reference work for anyone interested in the history of Yiddish or simply interested in reading pre-19th century Yiddish literature. It is also endless fascinating for the browser.</DIV><br /><DIV> The book begins with some essays that provide a fresh prospective on the field. Dr. Timm considers Yiddish to be one language, old and new, east and west, written and spoken. This perspective is refreshing because it is actually quite unusual. A surprising number of scholars think of the eastern and western dialects of Yiddish as having independent origins. Many do not use written sources in their reconstruction of the history of the language because, for a variety of reasons, they overestimate the difference between written and spoken forms the language. The neglect of written forms is expecially serious when it comes to medieval writings which some scholars dismiss as being not Yiddish at all but German in Hebrew characters. Erika Timm will have none of this. In particular, she rebuts the common opinion that the language of Bible translation special dialect far from ordinary spoken Yiddish.</DIV><br /><DIV> The year 1349, plays an especially important part in the author's thinking. In that year, Jewish communities from northern Spain to northern Germany were the victims of numerous state-sponsored massacres. Erika Timm believes that these pogroms had extensive effects on the history of Yiddish.</DIV><br /><DIV> For one thing, by about 1400, Jewish education in Germany was reformed so that Tanakh was taught through Yiddish translations. Previously, the language of translation in Yiddish speaking communities had been Loez (Judeo-French). One consequence of the persecutions of 1349, the author believes was to throw the community back on its own resources and this included developing teaching aides in the communities' own mother language. The old Loez translations did not, however, disappear without trace. Dr. Timm demonstrates that they influenced the newer Yiddish translations.</DIV><br /><DIV> The new isolation of the community also affected the nature of the German component of written Yiddish. Up to the 1300's, Dr. Timm, along with Manfred Gernot Heide, find that the few scraps of Yiddish texts that survive tend to have German components that mirror the specific regional varieties of German used in the places they were composed. By 1400, the German component in Yiddish sources from all different places tends to rather uniform. Yiddish writers, regardless of where they live, use a standard mixture of forms borrowed from a number of regional varieties of German.</DIV><br /><DIV> A related development is that until the 1300's changes in German are reflected in changes in the German component of Yiddish. After 1400, this is no longer case. Yiddish follows its own course of internal development changing some features that remain the same in German while preserving other features that are lost in German. German and the German component of Yiddish exhibit increasing divergence over time.</DIV><br /><DIV> A word about the origins of the German words used in Yiddish Tanakh translations is apropos. Max Weinreich wished to refute the very common idea that Yiddish is descended from Middle High German. In doing this, he was correct but he overstated his case in one way. He noted that the Middle High German as we know it from the texts that have come down to us is a literary language used in learned circles. This, Max Weinreich maintained made it different from the kind of German that was borrowed into Yiddish. Yiddish speakers he thought had little contact with learned non-Jewish circles. They obtained their Yiddish words from peasants, workers and merchants of little education.</DIV><br /><DIV> A glance at the Tanakh translations shows that this cannot be true. The original Tanakh is the product of a highly sophisticated urban civilization. To translate it requires specialized vocabulary having to do with such things as nature, government administration, architecture, religious rites, and other civilized arts and sciences. In order to translate Tanakh, Yiddish speakers had to draw on the highly developed vocabulary of medieval literary German.</DIV><br /><DIV> The fact that before the 1300's Yiddish borrowed from regional varieties of German may be partly responsible for the appearance of different German dialect forms in the modern Yiddish dialects. A special study of this is the Ph. D. dissertation of Ulrike Kiefer at Columbia University which is slated to be published in book form.</DIV><br /><DIV> If we accept as a fact, the related observation that most of the divergence between German and the German component of Yiddish dates from after 1349, this has special consequences for the way the history of Yiddish is reconstructed. If the view is taken, that the German component of Yiddish is the essential core of the language then it would have to be conceded that Yiddish did not have an existence independent of German before 1349.</DIV><br /><DIV> Nevertheless, the identification of Yiddish, with its German component has to be rejected because of many phonological, morphological, lexical, and phraseological features that are found in all Yiddish dialects or widely distributed among dialects spoken from the west to the east. Some of these forms and features are from Semitic, Romance or Slavic languages. Others are Germanic but may come from a Germanic language other than German. Such Germanic features include the position of the verb in second syntactica position in the Yiddish sentence and the tendency to stress words, regardless of origin, on the first syllable. The fact that this common Yiddish heritage is spread among all the dialects indicates that it is of great age, certainly dating back before 1349.</DIV><br /><DIV> These two sets of facts; the tendency of Yiddish to avoid diverging from German before about 1349 with the much older existence of common Yiddish forms and features, often Germanic, can be reconciled if we reconstruct early Yiddish as being having been a Germanic language that was not originally derived from German but which subsequently borrowed heavily from it. This is consistent with the derivation of the earliest Yiddish from an East Germanic system akin to or identical with Gothic.</DIV><br /><DIV> As has been the case with her earlier work on the spelling system and pronunciation of older Yiddish, <U>Graphische un phonemische Struktur des Westjiddischen unter besonderer Berűcksichtung des Zeit um 1600</U> (Max Niemeyer, Tűbingen, 1987), <U>Historische jiddische Semantik</U> will shape the field of Yiddish studies for many years to come.</DIV><br /><DIV> </DIV><br /><DIV> </DIV><br /><DIV> </DIV><br /><DIV> </DIV><br /><DIV> </DIV><br /><DIV> </DIV><br /><DIV> </DIV><br /><DIV> </DIV><br /><DIV><BR> <BR></DIV><BR>Charles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5142735589776843991.post-51989161697363018252009-01-20T05:40:00.001-08:002009-01-20T05:40:58.337-08:00The four great vowel systems of Yiddish<DIV> Readers who have encountered other treatments of the Yiddish vowels and their historical pattern of spatial variation will notice some unusual features in this essay. In particular, i have chosen a rather unconventional way of referring to the Yiddish vowels. The more familiar approaches to this are based on the observation that there are regular correspondences between Yiddish vowels and German vowels and also between Yiddish vowels in different dialects. The correspondences, in question, hold between vowels that occur in the stressed syllables of words. These make it possible, in many cases to predict, from what vowel is found in a German word, the vowel that will be found in a Yiddish word or to predict from the vowel in a word in a particular Yiddish dialect what vowel the same word would have in another dialect. Thus the from the fact that the German word 'Nadel' has a long <U>a</U> as its stressed vowel is possible to predict that the vowel in Standard Yiddish would be <U>o</U> as in 'nodl' or from the fact the vowel in the northeastern dialect of Yiddish pronunciation of 'gut' is an <U>u</U> that the same vowel will be <U>i</U> as in 'git' in the Polish and Galician dialect.</DIV><br /><DIV> The first scholars to note these regular correspondences thought they could be explained by assuming that vowels whose pronunciation varied regularly shared a common ancestor from which they diverged. The earlier scholars were especially struck by the regular correspondences between German, especially Middle High German, vowels and Yiddish vowels. They regarded the Middle High German vowels as ancestral to the Yiddish vowels so they used the values of vowels in Middle High German to designate their, supposed, descendants. Thus the vowel in 'nodel' was thought of as a descendant of Middle High German long <U>a</U>.</DIV><br /><DIV> A later set of scholars, most notably, Max Weinreich and Solomon Birnbaum were more struck by the regular correspondences among the vowels of the Yiddish dialects. They also assumed that such a correspondence was the result of a descent from a common vowel but they identified this set of ancestral vowels not with the vowels of Middle High German but with later set of vowels that emerged from a mixture of medieval German dialects at a time in history when Yiddish had already branched off from German but before Yiddish had diverged into different dialects.</DIV><br /><DIV> This difference can be illustrated by way the earlier and later scholars would have treated the vowel in Yiddish 'gut'. The first group would have assumed that Yiddish 'gut' was descended from Middle High German 'gut'. Since Middle High German 'gut' had a long <U>u:</U> the vowel in Yiddish 'gut' would be classed with descendants of Middle High German <U>u:</U>. The later scholar would observe that based on the variations of the vowel 'gut' in various Yiddish dialects it was possible to trace it back to a particular vowel in early Yiddish. This vowel most like had an <U>u</U> quality but unlike the Middle High German vowel it most likely was not long since no modern Yiddish dialect has a long vowel in this word. To designate these ancestral vowels Max Weinreich invented a numbered system of proto-vowels. Within it the vowel of 'gut' would be designated 51 with the 5 indicating that the vowel originally had an <U>u</U> quality and the 1 indicating that it was originally short.</DIV><br /><DIV> I have broken with this approach because my observations of vowel variation in the data of the Language and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry and other sources has led me to have a different idea about the mechanism by which the variation among vowels in the Yiddish dialects and, ultimately, the variation between Yidddish and German vowels emerged. The two groups of scholars mentioned above started from the idea that a set of vowels that are in regular correspondence diverged from a common ancestral vowel. The mechanism by which this occurred was believed to be a gradual process of change in pronunciation called 'sound shift'.</DIV><br /><DIV> But sound shift is not the only way that vowels can change. Sometimes they change by a process called sound substitution where one sound in a word is replaced by another. People typically do this when they wish to communicate with speakers of another language or dialect which is historically related to their own and whose sounds, while they may differ from the sounds in their own language, tend to differ in predictable ways. Thus Swedish and Danish are historically related; an <U>ei</U> sound in Swedish tends to correspond to an <U>ai</U> sound in Danish. A Swede who wished to communicate with a Dane but who has not really mastered Danish will approximate Danish by substituting <U>ai</U> for <U>ei</U> in Swedish words.</DIV><br /><DIV> Sets of closely related languages or dialects with regular sound correspondences in which people communicate to speakers of other languages or dialects in the set by sound substitution are called diasystems. Uriel Weinreich observed that the Yiddish dialects constitute a diasystem. Speakers of one Yiddish dialect can be observed trying to communicate with speakers of another dialect by substituting sounds from the other dialect in words of their own dialect. This is particularly noticeable in cases where the sound correspondances between two dialects are not perfectly regular and the sound substitutions result in mistakes. For example, a speaker of the dialect of Yiddish spoken historically in Poland will observe tha when he says 'git' a speaker of the northeastern dialect says 'gut'. This and many other examples may cause our speaker to generalize that any time his own dialect has <U>i</U> sound the northeastern dialect will have an <U>u</U> sound. But this generalization will occassionally break down. For example, our speaker from Poland speaker the word 'litvak' for a speaker of the northeastern dialect. In trying to speak the northeastern dialect he may substitute an <U>u</U> yielding 'lutvak'. But, in fact, the form used by the northeastern dialect is actually 'litvak'. The use of the incorrect form shows that the speaker from Poland is practicing sound subsitution.</DIV><br /><DIV> I think that at an early stage in the history of Yiddish, sound substitution played a role in the formation of the Yiddish dialects. This process began at a time when Yiddish had a sound system that was based on a Germanic language which was NOT German. The language, call it X, from which Yiddish derived its sound system was, however, closely related to German and it was possible for speakers with the X sound system to communicate with German speakers by sound substitution. In other words, German and languages with the X souind system formed a diasystem.</DIV><br /><DIV> At this stage Yiddish speakers normally used the X sound system when communicating among themselves while using substitute sounds when communicating with German speakers. There were actually several, perhaps three or four different systems of substitution that were used by speakers with the X system to approximate German pronunciations. Each of these sound substitution systems was popular in a different area of Yiddish-speaking territory.</DIV><br /><DIV> At a later time, the language X ceased to be spoken. At the same time, interactions between Yiddish and German speakers were quite important. Yiddsh speakers stopped using the original sounds of the X system and began using the substitued sounds all the time. Because different areas had different substitution sytems, the speakers in these areas ended up with different pronunciation systems of Yiddish which evolved into the modern Yiddish dialects.</DIV><br /><DIV> If it is assumed, as it is here, that all Yiddish dialects are descended from a common ancestor, it would be expected that the similarities and differences between the dialects looked at in conjunction with the relative positions of the dialects in space should provide evidence as to how the dialects developed and came to occupy their geographical territories. The best way to do this is to look at the maps of the <U>Language and culture atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry</U> which represent the pattern of spatial variation in Yiddish as it was in 1939. </DIV><br /><DIV> Of particular interest are the set of maps presented in Volume I of the Atlas which show variation in the Yiddish sound system. The Yiddish dialects show roughly four vowel systems. These systems are called within the Atlas project Alsatian, West Transcarpathian, Central and Southern and Northeastern. The names are not alwats descriptive and can in fact be somewhat misleading. Alternatives will be suggested below. </DIV><br /><DIV> Geographically the vowel systems can be characterized as ranging from the southwest to the northeast of 1939 Yiddish-speaking territory. The most southwestern dialect is that spoken by informants from Alsace-Lorraine. Based on historical data it is typical of the Yiddish once spoken also in southern Germany west of the Elbe and as far north as Hesse as well as in adjacent corner of Switzerland. Since it is spoken near the Rhine we will call it Raynish. </DIV><br /><DIV> To the northeast of this Alsatian dialect is one spoken in western Slovakia, western Hungary and Burgenland. Within the Atlas it is characterized as West Trancarpathian. The traditional Yiddish term for this territory is the Oyberland and we will call this vowel system Oyberlandish. </DIV><br /><DIV> Further to the northeast are two variants of Yiddish , one spoken in most of Poland as well as in Galicia and the other in adjacent parts of the weatern Ukraine. The former dialect is called Central Yiddish within the Atlas and the latter Southeastern Yiddish. Popularly, speakers of both dialects are called Galitsyaners and we will group these two similar dialects and speak of the Galitsyanish system. </DIV><br /><DIV> Still further to the northeast is the dialect spoken in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Belarussia as well as adjacent sections of Poland and Ukraine. The speakers are popularly called Litvakes and the system can be called Litvish.<BR></DIV><br /><DIV> These systems are distinguished by different patterns of splits and mergers among their stressed vowels. Many other features; lexical, morphological, grammatical and cultural are distributed in patterns that closely match the distribution of the vowel systems. </DIV><br /><DIV> It is interesting to review some of the features of each of these four vowel system. For Raynish, data can be found in Richard Zuckerman's article "Alsace: an outpost of Western Yiddish" printed in <U>The field of Yiddish III</U> edited by Marvin I. Herzog, Wita Ravid and Uriel Weinreich (Mouton, the Hague, 1969). The most striking features of this system have to do with classes of words that have a stressed vowel which is spelled with a kamets alef in Standard Yiddish and with an <U>o</U> the YIVO transcription system. </DIV><br /><DIV> One such class of words includes words such as 'grobn', 'gor', 'tog', etc. In Raynish, these words have a long vowel <U>a:</U>. This results in a merger with two other classes of words that also have <U>a:</U>. These are a class of the words spelled with tsvey-yudn in Standard Yiddish and 'ey' in YIVO transcription including 'zeyf', 'heym' and 'veykh'. as well as a class of the words spelled with vov-yud and transcribed as 'oy' including 'roykh', 'oyg' and 'loyfn'.<BR> Another class of words spelled with kamets alef in Standard Yiddish and 'o' in YIVO transcription includes 'nodl', 'shlofn', 'blozn', etc. These words have <U>ou</U> in the Raynish system, As result they are merged with another class of words written with vov-yud and transcribed as 'oy' including 'voynen', 'groys', 'royt', etc </DIV><br /><DIV> Moving northeastward, Oyberlandish is like Raynish in that the vowels in the class of words spelled with tsvey-yudn in Standard Yiddish and with <U>ey </U>in YIVO transcription exemplified by 'zeyf', 'heym', and 'veykh' have <U>a:</U> as does the class words that includes 'roykh', 'oyg' and 'loyfn.' </DIV><br /><DIV> Oyberlandish, however, differs in that the class that includes 'grobn', 'gor' and 'tog' has the vowel <U>o:</U> as do many of the vowels in the class that includes 'nodl', 'shlofn' and 'blozn'. Further to the northeast we will find this pattern of merger strengthened with virtually all of the words in both classes having the same vowel.<BR> Moving still further east we find Galitsyanish which merges the stressed vowel in the class of words that include 'roykh', 'oyg' and 'loyfn' with the vowel in the class of words including 'voynen', 'groys' and 'royt'. In Galitsyanish all these words have <U>oi</U>. Another merger brings the vowel in the class of words that includes 'zeyf', 'heym', and 'veykh' with a class of words that are also spelled with pasekh tsvey yudn and with ey; 'shney', 'tseyn', 'breyt', etc. In the variant of Galitsyanish spoken in Poland and Galicia all these words have <U>ai</U>. In the Ukrainian variant they all have <U>ei</U>. </DIV><br /><DIV> Galitsyanish also has a important pair of mergers affecting the vowels spelled with vov and yud in Standard Yiddish and 'u' and 'i' respectively in YIVO transcription. The vov vowels can actually be divided into two classes which are pronounced differently in the dialects spoken southwest of Galitsyanish. One class includes words like 'un', 'nus' and 'zumer' while the other has words like 'du', 'shul' and 'shtub'. The vowels in words of the first class are short and those in the second class are long in Raynish and Oyberlandish. The yud words are also divided into two classes: 'ikh, iz, kind' etc. with a short vowel in Raynish and Oyberlandish and 'dinen', 'brider', 'tif', etc. with a long vowel. In Galitsyanish the short classes of the yud and vov vowels are merged into one vowel and the long classes into another. The nature of the difference between these vowels differs in the two divisions of Galitsyanish. In Poland and Galicia, the long vowels merged into a long <U>i;</U> while the short vowels merged into a short version of the same vowel. In Ukraine the long vowels merge in an <U>i</U> of indeterminate length while the short one merge into a more central vowel <U>I</U>.</DIV><br /><DIV> In addition to processes that affect the whole Galitsyanish territory there are two features that characterize subparts of the Ukrainian sector. One process, in southern Ukraine, effects the vowels spelled with pasakh alef in Standard Yiddish and 'a' in the YIVO transcription: 'mame', 'hant'. 'zalts',etc. and a class of the vowels spelled with kamets alef in Standard Yiddish and 'o' in YIVO transcription: 'ofn', 'lokh', 'tokhter', etc. These merge in an <U>o</U> vowel. The other, in northeastern Ukraine, effects a class of the words spelled with 'ayin' in Standard Yiddish and 'e' in YIVO transcription: 'mel', 'lebn', 'shver', etc these merge with the class of short vowels spelled with yud (see above) and are pronounced with the centralized <U>I</U> vowel.<BR> In one way, the Polish and Galician variant of Galitsyanish groups with Raynish and Oyberlandish. All these dialects group vowels into long and short classes. The Ukrainian variant does not have this distinction.</DIV><br /><DIV> Furthest to the northeast is the Litvish system which is very distinct. It merges all three classes of vowels spelled with kamets alef in one mid-tense <U>O</U> vowel, both classes of vowels spelled with ayin in one mid-tense <U>e</U> vowel, both classes vowels spelled with yud in one mid-tense <U>i</U> vowel and both classes of vowels spelled with a mid-tense <U>u</U> vowel.</DIV><br /><DIV> Litvish shares with Galitsyanish the merger of the two class of words spelled with tsvey-yudn as well as the merger of two classes of the words with vov-yud: the class that includes 'voynen', 'groys', 'royt', etc. and the one that includes 'roykh', 'oyg' and 'loyfn'. In addition, the vowel in the two latter classes is realized as <U>ei</U>. This results in a merger of all four classes. The merger is not found in the northwestern corner of Litvish territory where the vowel in the latter two classes is a front rounded diphthong <U>umlaut-o umlaut-u</U>.</DIV><br /><DIV> A striking series of mergers in Litvish effects all vowels that are distinguished by length in Raynish, Oyberlandish and western Galitsyanish. All the word classes with vowels spelled with kamets alef and transcribed as 'o' are merged together. Similar mergers affect all the word classes with ayin, transcribed as 'e'. all those with yud, transcribed as 'i' and all those with vov, transcribed a 'u;.</DIV><br /><DIV> Higher level groupings are often used. Galitsyanish and Litvish are commonly grouped as East Yiddish. Raynish and Oyberlandish are traditionally grouped as West Yiddish but this grouping has been justifiably challenged because in comparison to Raynish, which is very distinct, all three of the other systems can be grouped together. (see the essay on Manastar-Ramer).<BR></DIV><BR>Charles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5142735589776843991.post-54756382933601160142009-01-12T13:40:00.001-08:002009-03-16T12:58:50.810-07:00Manaster Ramer on the polygenesis of Western Yiddish and the mono<DIV> Manaster Ramer on the polygenesis of Western Yiddish and the monogenesis of Yiddish<BR></DIV><br /><DIV> An article, "The Polygenesis of Western Yiddish--and the Monogenesis of Yiddish" is to be found in <U>Indo-European, Nostratic and beyond: festschrift for Vitalij V. Shevoroshkin</U> edited by Iren Hegedus, Peter A. Michalove and Alexis Manaster Ramer (Washington DC, The Institute for the Study of Man, 1997). The article written by Manaster Ramer with the help of Meyer Wolf discusses two important and rather neglected aspects of the history of Yiddish. One is the fact that the customary primary division of Yiddish into an East and a West Yiddish dialects has no real justification. The other is that all the dialects of Yiddish are descended from a common ancestor.</DIV><br /><DIV> The first topic, the fact that the dialects that have been traditionally lumped together as West Yiddish have less in common with each other than some of them have with the East Yiddish dialects is not new. In his essay, "Western traits in Transcarpathian YIddish" published in <U>For Max Weinreich</U> (The Hague, Mouton, 1964) Uriel Weinreich already pointed out that chronologically deepest gulf in the Yiddish landscape ran through West Yiddish territory separating the Yiddish of Alsace-Lorraine and Switzerland on the one hand, from the West Transcarpathian dialects of western Slovakia, Burgenland and western Hungary. Uriel Weinreich's observation inspired me to reconstruct the history of vowel splits and mergers in the West Yiddish dialects. The results reinforced the evidence for a very old divergence between the Alsactian and Swiss dialects on the one hand and the rest of Yiddish on the other. Manaster Ramer musters a number of fresh arguments based on lexical features and on the historical development of the Yiddish vowels.</DIV><br /><DIV> The second topic is, rather surprisingly quite neglected. The use of a single term, Yiddish, for all Yiddish dialects is now virtually universal. This was not always the case as the West Yiddish dialects were often referrred to as "Judeo-German". The current use of one term for all Yiddish dialects, however, does not imply that that all these dialects are seen as springing from a common ancestor. A good many authors, explicitly postulate separate origins for East and West Yiddish. Others do so implicitly by maintaining that the two branches of Yiddish are descended from different German dialects or different mixtures of German dialects.</DIV><br /><DIV> Manaster Ramer addresses this problem by mustering a large set of lexical items, phonological and morphological developments and phrases that are unique to Yiddish and are Pan-Yiddish in that they are either found in all the Yiddish dialects from West to East or in a representative sample of western and eastern locations. These he presents as evidence for a common early stage of Yiddish. His examples are drawn from the linguistic literature but many more could be adduced from the records of the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Yiddish as well as from the examination of samples of written Yiddish.</DIV><br /><DIV> Manaster Ramer's conclusion written at the end of the 20th century is that "In spite of all the work that has been done, we still have more gaps than filled-in areas in our knowledge of Proto-Yiddish and early history of the dialects descended from it. The results reported here, coming roughly a century after the birth of comparative Yiddish linguistics, are only scratching the surface of what promises to be a major research topic in the next century. As in every area of comparative linguistics, whether on the large scale asi in the case of such hypotheses as Nostratic, Altaic, Na-Dene, tec., or on the smaller scale as in the case before us, more work is called for."</DIV><BR>Charles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5142735589776843991.post-74484420060979671502009-01-12T05:47:00.001-08:002009-01-12T13:35:45.475-08:00Daniel Leibel on Ashkenazic StressAs a member of the Germanic family of languages, Yiddish would be expected to exhibit a fundamentally Germanic sound structure. The most salient characteristic of German phonology may be the strong tendency to place the accent of a word on the root syllable which is often the first syllable of the word. A related Germanic characteristic is the tendency for vowel length distinctions to be expressed on the stressed syllable.<br /><br /> The sound structure of a language is the way in which the speakers of the language analyze speech sounds. An indirect way to observe this is through the way the speakers interpret words from other languages. This can be seen in the way loanwords are modified when they are assimilated into the language.<br /><br /> These principles underlie Daniel Leibel's study "On Ashkenazic Stress" whic appeared in 1965 in the Second Collection of "Field of Yiddish" edited by Uriel Weinreich (Mouton, the Hague). Leibel begins by noting that, in Yiddish, it is rare to stress Hebrew words on the final syllable although final syllable stress in the usual pattern in Classical Hebrew. He goes on by saying that a majority of authors have claimed that the general pattern in Yiddish is to stress Hebrew words on the next to last syllable, the penultimate.<br /><br /> Given the generalization that Hebrew words in Yiddish are stressed on the penultimate, various theories have been put forward to explain why this should be so; that it represents an influence of Polish on Yiddish, that it is an inheritance from a pre-Yiddish form of Hebrew that was already stressed on the penultimate or that it represents a conequence of the supposed loss of distinctive length in Yiddish.<br /><br /> All of these theories, Leibel shows, are defective. Their most serious problem is that Hebrew words in Yiddish are not essentially stressed on the penultimate. They are stressed on the first syllable. This is not immediately clear for the largest number of words which have two syllables since the first syllable in these words is also the penultimate syllable. But the situation can be clarified by looking at words of three syllables. In these words stress also occurs on on the first syllable except in cases where the first syllable has a short vowel and a following syllable has a long vowel. In the latter case the stress is does fall on the penultimate.<br /><br /> Leibel explains these facts by noting that German places the stress on the root syllable of a word which is generally the first syllable. When German borrows words it treats the first syllable of the loanword as a root and stresses it. The exception is when a borrowed word has a long vowel in a later syllable. German does not have long vowels in unstressed syllables. In some cases German deals with this by shortening the long vowel but in other cases it preserves the long vowel and moves the stress to that syllable.<br /><br /> Leibel assumes that Yiddish is a close relative of German and behaves in the same way. In the case of Hebrew loanwords it generally treats the first syllable as if it were a root and stresses. Where a Hebrew word has a long vowel in a later syllable that sylable, which may be the penult, gets the stress.<br /><br /> Leibel's analysis stands out from that of other linguists in several ways. One is that he saw the Hebrew words that were borrowed into Yiddish as coming into Yiddish with distinctive long and short vowels. Most of the linguists who had looked at the Hebrew material in Yiddish, notably, Solomon Birnbaun, Jechiel Bin-Nun, and Max Weinreich had accepted the opinion of specialists in Hebrew linguistics that the Hebrew which was the source of Yiddish borrowings did not have distinctive vowel length. Later, however, Dovid Katz was to support Leibel in this. Another difference, is that other linguists have generally seen the pattern of vowel length in the Hebrew words and the stress pattern as having related causes. Birnbaum, Bin-Nun, and Weinreich attributed all these features to the influence of the Germanic system while Dovid Katz saw them all as being inherited from an earlier form of Hebrew. Leibel, as we have seen, attributed distinctive vowel length to the Hebrew source and the change in stress to Germanic influence.<br /><br /> In Leibel's time, the descent of Yiddish from German was virtually unquestioned. This is no longer true as Paul Wexler has presented the theory that Yiddish is a relexified Slavic language. Leibel's argument is strong support for the originally Germanic character of Yiddish. However. the tendencies toward initial stress and toward expressing length distinctions on a stressed syllable are not just features of German but are shared by all the Germanic languages. Leibel's argument can also be used to support the descent of Yiddish from another Germanic language.Charles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5142735589776843991.post-85499062533019082832008-10-12T14:17:00.000-07:002008-10-12T14:26:28.969-07:00<DIV><BR> The Purpose of the Gothic Yiddish Blog<BR> </DIV><br /><DIV> The purpose of this blog is to pursue a research program that has engaged me since the mid-1960's when I discovered the writings of Claude Levi-Strauss. This anthropologist concerned himself primarily with kinship systems and myths among small societies in areas that had no great urban concentrations of people. One feature that he noted was that while each society develops its own culture, it does not do so in isolation. What develops in one place is, to some extent, a systemized reaction to the cultures being developed around it. Within areas as large as the Australian or the American continents cultures have developed that can be viewed as variations on common themes built out of elements drawn from a shared inventory.</DIV><br /><DIV> These developments depended on networks of short-range communication that wove pre-colonial societies spread over wide areas into structural units. Cultural traits could diffuse efficiently through these networks because the high level of interconnectedness allowed them to bypass any obstacles. Within these vast networks the efficiency of communication precluded the existence of any truly primitive societies. Some societies did however react to cultural developments around them by developing what Levi-Strauss called a style of pseudo-archaicism. <BR> A long-time later, in the 1980's, I went to study Yiddish linguistics at Columbia University under Marvin Herzog who was the director of the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry (LCAAJ), a survey of linguistic variation over the large territory in Europe and Israel where Yiddish was traditionally spoken. The pattern of linguistic variation in Yiddish territory was described by Herzog's mentor Uriel Weinreich as a diasystem, a set of dialects that drew their elements from a common inventory and varied in a highly systematic way among themselves. The interactions within the network of moderate-sized Jewish communities within this territory bore a very close structural resemblance to the dynamic of the networks of small neolithic societies studied by Levi-Strauss. I realized that the vast amount of detailed information found in the archive of the LCAAJ provided an excellent laboratory in which to study this dynamic.</DIV><br /><DIV> By my second summer at Columbia, I was working with these materials under the tutelage of Herzog's assistant Vera Baviskar. The first materials I encountered differed from the bulk of those in the Atlas in that they were not collected from speakers who had lived in areas where Yiddish was spoken in 1939. They came from interviews with people who had grown up in mostly German-speaking communities in Germany and surrounding areas where Yiddish had gone out of use by the beginning of the twentieth century. A lot of Yiddish words and expressions survived in these territories along with many traditional Ashkenazic folkways and a special questionnnaire called the Western Questionnaire had been designed by the project's founder, Uriel Weinreich to elicit them, <BR> Responses to many parts of this questionnaire had been mapped by Vera Baviskar and Herzog's preceding assistant, Dr. Steven Loewenstein. Vera gave me these maps and asked if I could categorize them in terms of geographic and structural patterns. The prevailing view among Yiddish linguists was that Yiddish originated in Germany. If so, these maps should reveal traces of the original form of Yiddish which subsequently spread into Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and surrounding territories. I was surprised that I could not find any of these. In fact, I saw the remains of a pattern of phonology that had a pattern of sound splits and mergers which would have made it virtually impossible for it to have been the ancestor of the eastern Yiddish sound pattern. Richard Zuckerman who had done fieldwork on the living West Yiddish dialects of Alsace confirmed these facts. I read a paper on this at the 3rd Internal YIVO Conference on Jewish Studies in 1987. As it happened these observations dovetailed with some earlier research by Vera Baviskar that indicated that characteristic features of the eastern Yiddish sound system had effected words borrowed from East Slavic indicating that the system had developed, not in Germany, but much further to the east. </DIV><br /><DIV> Further indications that Yiddish did not develop on German soil came from my studies of German phonology. I was guided to the literature of this field by Vera Baviskar and a fellow graduate student, Ulrike Kiefer. It was well known that Yiddish the vowel phonology of Yiddish dialects was quite different from that of Standard German. The Yiddish vowel system is much smaller and Yiddish lacks many prosodically conditioned phonological processes that are found in German.Their are a number of German features and phonological processes to be found in the more western Yiddish dialects but their distribution and mode of incorporation in to Yiddish phonological structure marks them as recent borrowings rather than survivals from the earliest stage of Yiddish. Furthermore, the Yiddish system does not have close parallels in any of the German dialects. It is often suggested that Yiddish represents a mixture of features drawn from several German dialects but the mechanisms that would produce such a mixture occur are not clear. Real examples of such mixtures of German dialects do exist in Standard German and in the colonial German dialects of eastern Europe but each of these mixtures is based on one dominant German dialects. No such dominant German dialect can be found at the base of Yiddish structure.</DIV><br /><DIV> The vast amount of new data on Yiddish amassed by the Atlas requires a great deal of interpretative analysis. I had planned to write a doctoral dissertation on this material but practical problems prevented me from doing this. So I went on to research other subjects beyond the scope of the LCAAJ. </DIV><br /><DIV> For a time, I turned my attention from the geographical distribution of linguistic features in Yiddish to the distribution of linguistic features around the whole world. The field of areal typology studies the distribution of complexes of linguistic features. It began to seem to me that the distributions of these complexes over the whole earh mimic the patterns of feature distribution within a single language such as Yiddish so that one could speak of a world diasystem.</DIV><br /><DIV> I also began to work on the relationships between the referential and indexical functions of language particularly in phonology where distinctive features play a referential role while prosodic signals play an indexical one. Looking at German and various Yiddish dialects I found that, within a diasystem, distinctive features and prosodic signals tend to be chosen from a common inventory but that properties which serve as distinctive features in one dialect can serve as prosodic signals in another.</DIV><br /><DIV> Another aspect of my reseach has touched on the social aspects of language. I have found a relationship between patterns of dialect variation and which partner tends to move upon marriage. In the majority of world societies, it is the woman who is most likely to move in with her husbands family (patrilocality). There are, however, a number of matrilocal societies in which it is the man who moves. Typically, in these societies men work as nomadic warriors, mercenaries or merchants. Traditional Jewish diaspora societies are matrilocal. Based on the few examples I have been able to look at, it appears that diasystems tend to develop in these matrilocal societies. I am also looking at the development of literary standards in conjunction with the development of new cultural elites. In another domain, I am looking at how the concept of cultural style can be applied to linguistic structures with an eye to finding correlations between preferrred forms of linguistic structure in a culture and formal style in other branches of culture such as artistic decoration and kinship organization. <BR> A little more than a year ago, a friend Leyzer Burko, proposed organizing a weekly group to read older Yiddish literature. Our group has been reading the "Bovo-Bukh" of Elye Bokher. In the last months we have been using Skype to allow the group to include readers based in Europe and Israel.</DIV><br /><DIV> Contact with an older form of Yiddish, got me back to thinking about the origins of the language and its relations to other members of the Germanic family. I remembered an observation of Professor Robert Austerlitz that although Yiddish was quite different from German, it was typologically very much a Germanic language. Perhaps, I thought, its origin lay not in a German dialect but in another Germanic language. I starting looking at other Germanic languages with which the early Ashkenazim could have come into contact in Europe. The first possibility I looked at was Old Scandinavian which was spoken by Varangian settlers in Ukraine between about 800 and 1000. The match was not particularly good and I turned to the East Germanic languages, known through Gothic, that were spoken in eastern Europe between about 1 CE and 700. Gothic proved to be a surprisingly good typological match with Yiddish and I eventually concluded that the earliest Yiddish took a Gothic form. My first essay on this blog is a brief introduction to this hypothesis. </DIV><br /><DIV><BR> Charles Nydorf</DIV><br /><DIV> October 12, 2008</DIV><BR>Charles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5142735589776843991.post-84757549224017579612008-10-12T14:16:00.000-07:002009-01-12T13:37:40.633-08:00The Gothic Background of Yiddish<br /><br /><br /><br /> The earliest Germanic elements in Yiddish came, not from High German, but from Gothic or a closely related member of the East Germanic branches. Yiddish in its earliest stage which was probably before the seventh century of the Common Era, must have been very close to Gothic in its form. This very early Yiddish was spoken in southeastern Europe.<br /><br /> All Germanic languages that survive from this early period have undergone great structural transformations and Yiddish would not be expected to be an exception. So little of the original Gothic structure can be expected to be found in modern Yiddish. In its subsequent history, probably from the ninth century on, Yiddish has been heavily influenced by High German. Non-Germanic languages have also played a role in the formation of Yiddish.<br /><br /> These influences have also helped to efface the original Gothic character of Yiddish but substantial traces of Gothic remain.These are largely to be found in the Yiddish sound system. The Yiddish vowel system, particular in East Yiddish, is characterized by mergers that are typically Gothic: the vowels in the modern classes of words typified by 'shney' and 'heym' and 'zeyen' are one example of such a merger. Yiddish also has carried over a number of Gothic phonological process: r-umlaut, kh-umlaut and glide insertion. The Yiddish vowel system is much smaller than the High German one and many phonological processes found in High German are lacking in Yiddish.<br /><br /> Traces of Gothic morphology are also present in Yiddish but are probably less prominent. Perhaps the most striking is the "n" infix in words like 'leyenen.' and the formation of plurals with 's'. Lexical traces of Gothic are harder to identify: Yiddish has borrowed very heavily from High German and the Gothic vocabulary is not very well knowm. One of the clearest lexical examples may be the word 'oyganes.'<br /> Some non-verbal cultural features have probably been inherited by modern Yiddish-speaking communities from the early Gothic world. Notable among these are animal style features of ornamentation in wood, stone and metal work as well as motifs that reproduce runic patterns.<br /><br /> The later history of Yiddish is largely one of High German influence on the original Gothic foundation. The nature of this influence is of great interest for general linguistics. Its specific mechanism of this influence was the development of a network of small Jewish communities between Ukraine and Germany. These communities traded, intermarried and exchanged linguistic materials in a characteriistc pattern where men typically moved when they got married. The result was the development of a diasystem: a series of dialects that are related to each other by sound substitutions made from a common inventory of sounds.<br /><br /> <br /><br /> Charles Nydorf<br /><br /> October 12, 2008Charles Nydorfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291667302870991631noreply@blogger.com4