HHW Could you please explain to the group...

[drahcir]

HHW has been screeching his lungs out about one Dr. Elhaik who has
manufactured a between two, supposedly equally established theories
about the origin of Easter European Jews, which he names the
"Rhineland Hypothesis" and the "Khazarian Hypothesis". There is no
such terminology in use anywhere except his paper, and certainly there
is not established "Khazarian Hypothesis". Now, there is one simple,
glaring problem that towers over all others in theh assumption that
Eastern European Jews originated with the Khazars. That problem is
Yiddish. Poor Elhaik sidesteps this issue nearly completely, resorting
to a frlagrant lie: "Yiddish, the language
of Central and Eastern European Jews, began as a Slavic lan-guage that
was relexified to High German at an early date
(Wexler 1993)." Believe it or not, for a factor so crucial to the
issue of the origin of Ashkenazim as language, that's it - one stupid
mention. Let's see what the internet has to say about the origin of
Yiddish:

First, we'll see what dictionary.com has to say:

"a High German language with an admixture of vocabulary from hebrew
and the Slavic languages, written in Hebrew letters, and spoken mainly
by Jews in eastern and central Europe and by Jewish emigrants from
these regions and their descendants."

Now let's visit your favorite (sometimes) internet source, Wikipedia:

"It is not known when the Yiddish writing system first developed but
the oldest surviving literary document using it is a blessing in the
Worms mahzor,[6] a Hebrew prayer book from 1272 (with a scalable image
online at the indicated reference; described extensively in Frakes,
2004 and Baumgarten/Frakes, 2005):

Yiddish ???? ??? ???? ????????? ?? ???? ????? ???????? ???? ??????
??????????? ????????
Transliterated gut tak im betage se vaer dis makhazor in beis
hakneses trage
Translated May a good day come to him who carries this prayer
book into the synagogue.
This brief rhyme is decoratively embedded in a purely Hebrew text.[7]
Nonetheless, it indicates that the Yiddish of that day was a more or
less regular Middle High German written in the Hebrew alphabet into
which Hebrew words � ????????, makhazor (prayer book for the High Holy
Days) and ?????? ???????????, beis hakneses (synagogue) � had been
included. The pointing appears as though it might have been added by a
second scribe, in which case it may need to be dated separately and
may not be indicative of the pronunciation of the rhyme at the time of
its initial annotation."

Tell me something, H. Do you know what German sounds like? Do you
think "gut tak im betage se vaer dis makhazor in beis hakneses trage"
sounds like German, or, say, Polish? That is THE EARLIEST WRITTEN
EXAMPLE OF YIDDISH. It is NOT slavic, it is nearly pure German.

Here's a concise history of Yiddish:

Linguists have divided the evolution of Yiddish into four amorphous
periods. Over the course of the greater part of a millennium, Yiddish
went from a Germanic dialect to a full-fledged language that
incorporated elements of Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages, and
Romance languages. Because no decisive dates are known that
contributed to modifications in the languages, the history can be
charted using general dates as turning points: 1250, 1500, and 1750.

Early History

Beginning in the tenth century, Jews from France and Northern Italy
began to establish large communities in Germany for the first time.
Small communities had existed, and spoken German, for some time, but
the new residents along the Rhine river arrived speaking a
Jewish-French dialect known as Laaz. The new arrivals punctuated their
German speech with expressions and words from Laaz; additionally, they
probably reached into Scriptural and Rabbinic literature and
incorporated idioms into their daily speech. Thus, a modified version
of medieval German that included elements of Laaz, biblical and
Mishnaic Hebrew, and Aramaic came to be the primary language of
western European Jews. The collective isolation that came to
characterize Jewish communities in the aftermath of the Crusades
probably contributed to the shift from regular German to a modified,
more Jewish form.

Old Yiddish

In the thirteenth century, the Jews tended to migrate eastward to
escape persecution. Thus, Yiddish arrived in eastern Germany, Poland,
and other eastern European territories for the first time. The
exposure of Yiddish to the Slavic languages prevalent in the east
changed it from a Germanic dialect to a language in its own right.
Consequently, a division began to develop between the eastern Yiddish
of the Jews living in Slavic lands, and the western Yiddish of the
Jews who had remained in France and Germany.


Middle Yiddish

By the sixteenth century, eastern Europe, particularly Poland, had
become the center of world Jewry. Thus, the language of the Jews
increasingly incorporated elements of Slavic, and the divide between
the two main dialects of Yiddish grew. It was also in this period that
Yiddish became a written language in addition to a spoken one. Yiddish
was, and is, written using Hebrew characters.

Modern Yiddish

After about 1700, western Yiddish began a slow and inevitable decline,
and the eastern dialect became the more important and widely spoken
one. The ebbing of the former was due in large part to the Haskalah
and emancipations sweeping through western Europe, while the latter
was aided by the Yiddish culture that flourished primarily in eastern
Europe. By the mid-twentieth century, however, the Holocaust and the
repression of Soviet Jews under Stalin resulted in the dramatic
decline in the usage of either strain of Yiddish.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/yiddish.html

Starts as GERMAN, then acquires SOME slavic and other stuff. Today
yiddish STILL sounds like German.

Let's revisit that single reference to Yiddish in the ELhaik paper"

"Yiddish, the language
of Central and Eastern European Jews, began as a Slavic lan-guage that
was relexified to High German at an early date
(Wexler 1993)."

You know, I have a pretty good vocabulary, but I didn't know the word,
"relexify", so I looked it up. Nada. Looked up "lexify". NIcht gut. I
think "doctor" Elhaik should inform the Oxford English dictionary that
it has omittied a word. "Lexicon"

Then I got curious. Just who is "Wexler" and what book did Elhaik cite
for his one mention of Yiddish? Well, it's a lovely book called, The
Ashkenazic Jews: a Slavo-Turkic people in search of a
Jewish identity. It's published by somebody named "Slavica". So, with
all of the mounds of histories of Yiddish available, "doctor" Elhaik
has managed to find the one book that starts, exactly like his paper,
with the one conclusion that his paper sets out to establish. He thus
dispenses with, at least for a certain tiny segment of the population,
the huge problem of why Yiddish is German with a few slavic and other
words thrown into the mix, and not Khazarian.

SO, H, please do enlighten the group on this seemingly obvious problem
with your new BFF Elhaik. Looking forward to your "clippage" and
reply.

Here's some help for you re the history of Yiddish:

http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Language/Yiddish

I say the reason Elhaik barely mentions Yiddish is because it clearly
destroys his "Khazarian Hypothesis". Why don't you show the group how
wrong I am?

[NEMO]

drahcir, assclown/bumhat HHW can't even explain why he wears his
underwear on his head!

Oops,. that's his turban!