Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve met many, many Jews. To me visually, many (especially the stein, berg, etc) looked exactly like Germans.
It looks like there's a mixed consensus on ancestry, but a fair bit of evidence they at least intermixed with European locals since prehistoric times [0] [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3806353/ No idea where the other guy got their %age numbers from, unless you only count specific parts of the family tree.
The Origins of Yiddish (2014)
51–60 of 109 posts
Re: The Origins of Yiddish (2014)
#52I speak native English, fluent German and beginning Dutch. A few years ago I picked up a Yiddish primer. In my layman's eyes, Yiddish is indisputably a Germanic language. Learning it was like learning to read German backwards in Hebrew letters. I understand why Yiddish speakers would not want to believe Yiddish is Germanic. And yet...
Close your eyes, hear an Israeli speak English and then a German and the only difference you will notice is the same intonational difference between standard German and Yiddish. Other than that, they basically will have the same accent.
Re: The Origins of Yiddish (2014)
#53I speak native English, fluent German and beginning Dutch. A few years ago I picked up a Yiddish primer. In my layman's eyes, Yiddish is indisputably a Germanic language. Learning it was like learning to read German backwards in Hebrew letters. I understand why Yiddish speakers would not want to believe Yiddish is Germanic. And yet...
There is also Ladino, which is very close to Spanish and if you know Spanish you can understand it.
Re: The Origins of Yiddish (2014)
#54The Jerusalem Post on Yiddish.[1] Yiddish speakers today are mostly ultra-orthodox Jews. The language binds them together across country boundaries, and cuts them off from the surrounding society. Even in Israel, which runs on Hebrew. This is recently relevant as the Israeli Supreme Court recently ruled that the draft exemption for the ultra-orthodox must end.[2] Many will speak only Yiddish. The IDF has a crash one…
Hebrew became a language with virtually no speakers by late antiquity and was resurrected later.
Re: The Origins of Yiddish (2014)
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ashkenazi Jews are not ethnically German. Genetic studies estimate them to be roughly 45% Levantine, 45% Southern European, and 10% Slavic. Germans are 100% North-Western European.
Genetics are a poor proxy for ethnicity. There are many who would even refer to the use of blood quantum (e.g. 23-and-me) to determine ethnicity as a form of race (pseudo)science.
I’m curious how they assign percentage to geographic location. For me it fails the sniff tests. Like how far back do you pick your line of ancestry (which has migrated all over the world) when you say stop and determine, this is the place 20% of my bloodline is from?
I imagine they do some sort of cluster analysis to find correlation along with self-identification. If so, then this is undeniably junk science based on junk-in junk-out statistical models (which is often the case with cluster-analysis).
I’m simply curious here, cluster analysis is the only method I can think of (other than guessing/categorizing arbitrarily).
Re: The Origins of Yiddish (2014)
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having grown up as an American Jew, it has been a recurring revelation of how much of what I think if as "Jewish" culture is actually German.
Was in Poland over the summer and, as a Jew of Ashkenazi heritage, I felt right at home culinarily (except for the pork).
> Was in Poland ... as a Jew ... I felt right at home
That settles it, then ;)
Re: The Origins of Yiddish (2014)
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Compare hindi/urdu... Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH1fERC_504
Aren't they essentially the same language (unlike Yiddish vs. German)?
Re: The Origins of Yiddish (2014)
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a speaker of Viennese German and English, I have no problem understanding spoken Yiddish.
I‘m a run-of-the-mill West German dude with no particular talent for languages, and second this. It’s somewhere between “normal” German and Dutch in terms of understandibility for me.
Run of the mill, he says, he says, in his second tongue, using correct grammar, idiomatic phrases, and perfect spelling.
This n=1 sample shows even run of the mill can be good at languages.
Oy veh!
Re: The Origins of Yiddish (2014)
#59I speak native English, fluent German and beginning Dutch. A few years ago I picked up a Yiddish primer. In my layman's eyes, Yiddish is indisputably a Germanic language. Learning it was like learning to read German backwards in Hebrew letters. I understand why Yiddish speakers would not want to believe Yiddish is Germanic. And yet...
Close your eyes, hear an Israeli speak English and then a German and the only difference you will notice is the same intonational difference between standard German and Yiddish. Other than that, they basically will have the same accent.
That couldn't be further from the truth. They're so different one would never confuse the two, or believe them related.
Re: The Origins of Yiddish (2014)
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Compare hindi/urdu... Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH1fERC_504
Aren't they essentially the same language (unlike Yiddish vs. German)?
Not really. They're close, but definitely not the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urdu
(Edit: pasted wikipedia link)