Perfectly true about the *richness* of Yiddish, I couldn't have put it better myself.
The only point that I'd question is the 'Old French' element in Yiddish: all those words are Romance (neo-Latin), like French showing a change (from the original Latin and in contradistinction from standard Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, etc.) of 'ca-' to 'tcha-', e.g. 'calente-' becomes 'tchoolent' . However, this is true also of the Raeto-Romance languages - Romansch in eastern Switzerland, Dolomitic Ladin and Friulian in north-east Italy - and of Italian dialects such as Ferrarese geographically close to the Raeto-Romance area. There's every reason to think that the Germanic dialectal base of Yiddish has nothing at all to do with the Rhineland, but instead with north Bavaria: Regensburg and Rothenburg, which had very old and distinguished Jewish communities; and that those Jews came from the Byzantine Empire via Byzantine north-east Italy.
Charles Polák
-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-121130211-3499287_at_list.cornell.edu [mailto:bounce-121130211-3499287_at_list.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Ruth Levin
Sent: 7 January 2017 19:06
To: hardy
Cc: czernowitz-l_at_cornell.edu
Subject: Re: [Cz-L] Steinberg
--f403045d8fb837a55e054585d7c4
Dear Hardy,
Yiddish is one of the richest languages I know. It has at least three words
for "butterfly": flaterl, bobele and zumerfoygl. It uses Hebrew, Germanic,
Slavic and old French words, sometime for the same concept, and often
every one of them has a slightly different meaning.
Ruth
On 7 January 2017 at 18:53, hardy <hardy3_at_bezeqint.net> wrote:
> Yiddish is a very poor language.
> Words are missing and Steinberg
> Used unusual substitutes.
> When writing about a butterfly
> For which our Yddish had no word
> He used Kleinfeigale or similar.
> We were katchen sich far gelechter,
> Yessir !
> Hardy
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Received on 2017-01-08 00:23:45