Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 5.059
July 19, 1995

1) Origins of Yiddish (Dovid Braun)
2) Origins of Yiddish (Alice Faber)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 1995 00:00:02 EDT
From: dovid@mit.edu
Subject: Origins of Yiddish

It seems to me that, Max Weinreich's chef d'oeuvres notwithstanding,
we're still quite far away from understanding where/when/how Yiddish
originated. Yiddish should provide a tremendous source of indirect
evidence for the history of Ashkenazic Jews over the past millenium.  It
seems almost trivial to state, but the fact is that hardly anyone has
taken up the call.

This is my brief overview, to be taken with a grain of salt since I
haven't spent much time researching the issues (although thinking about
them - yes):

1. Weinreich's hypothesis places a lot of weight on a mere handful of old
(apparent) Romanisms.  Therefore the "Romance component" is highly
controversial.  (The -s plural in certain morphophonological environments
in Yiddish is nearly identical to that of Dutch -- and I'm not familiar
with a claim that Dutch got *its* -s [in those specific environments]
from Romance -- although that might just be my ignorance.) The -es plural
marker is more complicated, and it is most common on nouns of Slavic
origin.  Its appearance is thus an even later development which under
nobody's theory could be a direct borrowing from the Old French of
centuries before.

2. King's and King/Faber's proposals have interesting and strong
supporting evidence (regional _ets_, for instance, which is probably
related to Bavarian _o"s_), but there too there are only a handful of
facts (albeit strong ones) pointing to Bavaria.  When the depth and the
breadth of the _Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry_ become
available to us, for instance, we will be no doubt see other traits of
Eastern Yiddish which are strikingly similar to other regional,
non-Bavarian, German traits.  (Of course, these things may be found in
the already existing literature to a certain extent, but the Atlas has
them arranged systematically and was a systematic investigation of
these questions, not an anecdotal one as was the bulk of the
investigations preceding it.)

3. Katz's Aramaic-speaking people are not documented.  They may have
existed "logically," but we need more evidence.  And since we have no
direct evidence of their existence, we are even farther away from knowing
what their Aramaic was like -- which makes any assertion about the effect
of *that* language on Yiddish highly problematic.

4. Wexler's theory.  I'm only familiar with it second- or third-hand so I
have nothing to say about it.

Back to my first paragraph:  these questions are glaring.  As I was
saying to a friend -- a Jewish historian -- a few days ago:  the fact
that much Eastern Yiddish kinship terminology for the nuclear family is
of Slavic origin *logically* has tremendous meaning.  (I'm talking about
_tate/pape, mame, bobe, zeyde_.)  By "logically" I mean that it provides
indirect evidence for overwhelming contact between Slavs and Jews, or at
least contact between Jews from Germanic lands and speaking a Germanic
language with Jews from Slavic lands speaking a Slavic language.
(Imagine:  Jews from Germanic countries move eastward, marry into and
politically/culturally overtake the "Knaanic" families already on Slavic
territory and speaking a Slavic language.)  Historians may be wary of the
value of this type of indirect evidence but, as Mikhl Herzog said,
"bemokem sheeyn ish iz hering oykh a fish." On second thought, let me
delete the apologetics:  indirect evidence can be *very* strong,
sometimes even stronger than a contextless and/or questionably reliable
document.  It takes a considerable disruption of the status quo for
kinship terminology of a language to undergo change.

Dovid Braun

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 1995 23:59:57 -0400
From: faber@haskins.yale.edu
Subject: Origins of Yiddish

Ellen Prince makes some important points with regard to how we should
approach investigating Yiddish origins. I don't have anything to say
about syntactic and semantic (structural) influences, though I agree that
this would be an interesting and worthwhile avenue to pursue. With regard
to history, however, I'd like to second Ellen's suggestions about the
intersection of Germany, Austria, and Italy as a possible "homeland". I
think that this makes a whole lot of sense. However, I think it's very
hard to find evidence that would convince a skeptic. The reason for this
is simple: some of the earliest evidence we have for Jewish settlement
patterns in Europe comes from charters granted Jewish communities by the
Roman Catholic Church (like that for Cologne). Other varieties of early
Christianity (e.g., Arian) were much more tolerant of diversity, and
perhaps wouldn't have bothered to grant a formal (potentially
preservable) charter. Live and let live. Now the important thing to note
is that many of the Germanic tribes converted first to Arian rather than
Roman Christianity. It was only when the Arian "heresy" was (officially)
suppressed that these areas fell under the Roman Church. So there
probably wouldn't be early documentation of Jewish communities in Greater
Bavaria. There's some evidence internal to the history of Yiddish and
Yiddishkeit for population concentrations in Bohemia (rabbis that Rashi
corresponded with/cited). I heard once that the "New Synagogue" in Prague
dates from the 16th century, and if you take the name seriously, that
assumes that there was at least one older synagogue. Etc.

This is getting too stream of consciousness, but, one more and then I'll
stop. I once outlined this whole problem to a colleague of mine who
specializing in Medieval Europe. He looked at me like I was nuts for
thinking this was a problem; "Obviously," he said, "a lot of people
converted."

Alice Faber

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End of Mendele Vol. 5.059