An article on Wikipedia akin to my previous discusion on Yiddish:
Yiddish and other languages
"Curiously, Yiddish uses Latin derivatives for many of its words relating to religious rituals, apparently borrowing the terminology from Old French as spoken in Alsace. The presumed path of entry into Yiddish is that the famous rabbi Rashi (1040-1105), and his descendants and disciples the Tosafists, used hundreds of Old French words in their rabbinical writings. Study of Rashi's commentary on the Pentateuch and the Talmud was widespread among medieval Jews; Rashi has also been used by modern scholars as a reliable source for thousands of Old French words. As an example, 'say grace after meals' is, in Yiddish, bentshn (בענטשן), which is cognate with the same term that gave English the word benediction; and Western-Europe dialects of Yiddish use the word orn, derived from Latin orare, to mean 'pray'; and some scholars believe that davnen (דאַװנען), the Eastern European Yiddish word for pray, has a Romance language origin. Other Yiddish words with Romance backgrounds include leyenen (לײענען) 'to read' and tsholnt (טשאָלנט) 'a Sabbath stew' (spelled cholent in English). Many of the Old French words incorporated into Yiddish happen also to have been similarly used by the Catholic Church."
In a other direction -with all of the time that I've spent in Eastern Europe, I'm begginging to see the possible connections between the differences in Yiddish Dialect . . .
- The U sound of the Polisher Kumetz (e.g. the Russian водка [Vodka] is Vódka in Polish)
- The I of the Galicianer Shirik (e.g. the Ukrainian Меджибіж [Medzhybizh] when compared to the Russian Меджибож [Medzhibozh])
- The Nevler Wamed from the Polish Ł (I've seen that the Belarusian has the Łin the Łacinkaalphabet (which would also work out geographically with Nevel) however it is not as pronounced as the 'W' in Polish . . .)
Nor have I seen the source of Tziyrie in Galicianer Yiddish
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