4 ms·

[citation-needed] - unless you're talking about some alternate-history medieval Europe, your claim is patently wrong.

thaumasiotes 10y ago
Try to know what you're talking about before telling other people they are "patently wrong". Here ( http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/165247/yiddish-ashkenazi-woodworth?all=1 http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/16524... ) is a discussion of a history of Yiddish (the original work being in Yiddish, I think it's forgivable to read a discussion instead): > Nineteenth-century Jewish activists, demanding rights of citizenship, created the story that the Jews had been locked in ghettos since the Middle Ages > For Weinreich, based on both the linguistic and historical evidence, there could be no doubt that up until the 18th century “the Jews wanted to be by themselves. … Separate residence (strange as this may appear in the light of present Jewish and general conceptions of rights) was part of the privileges granted the Jews at their own request” so they could worship together; provide for their own slaughterhouse, bathhouse, cemetery, and social halls; study together; run their own rabbinic courts; supervise tax collection; and when necessary, protect themselves from attacks. > Archeology supports this part of Weinreich’s argument. Befuddled tour guides in Prague struggle to explain why, given the expectation of exclusion of Jews, the city’s famous Jewish quarter, Josefov, is so central to the old town. (One misguided explanation is that the Jews were given land near the river that was too marshy for the other city inhabitants, prone to flooding and disease-bearing miasmas.) But Prague’s Josefov is not an isolated case—it is typical. Weinreich’s point is that exclusion could also be exclusivity; restrictions also came with designated privileges. In Trier, Mainz, Aachen, Cologne, Worms, and more than 100 medieval towns in Central Europe, the Jewish district was both a central and a prime location, close to the economic heart of the city. The German Bishop Rüdiger, granting a charter of the city of Speyer in 1084 wrote, “I thought that I would increase the glory of our city a thousandfold if I were to include Jews.”
- Piskvorrr 10y ago
  "Archeology supports this part of Weinreich’s argument." Really? How? [proof by handwaving] "One misguided explanation" - misguided how? Guess what, the current Prague Jewish Quarter looks all pretty, but it is practically brand-new (1900+); what was there was the poorest part of town, a slum, if you will ("ghetto" is, ironically, too ambiguous in this context). This was razed to the ground with the exception of about 10 historical buildings; no wonder it's a "central and prime location" - now. In all - interesting, provocative, but not persuasive (wonder why you didn't choose to quote this sentence as well, hmmm: "Yet the historical, demographic, and geographical evidence does not support this entirely logical and neat story line—a fact to which Weinreich himself gives evidence in his notes.") Oh, and btw: since you chose to mention Prague, the historical Josefov was one of two ghettos. Still typical? In other words, my remark on "alternate reality" seems to have been spot-on.
  - thaumasiotes 10y ago
    > (wonder why you didn't choose to quote this sentence as well, hmmm: "Yet the historical, demographic, and geographical evidence does not support this entirely logical and neat story line—a fact to which Weinreich himself gives evidence in his notes.") Because that sentence is from a separate part of the article and refers to an entirely different point. I'll outline the structure for you: > Weinreich’s first innovation in the History was to argue, against apparent common sense and abundant personal experience, that Yiddish was formed not through isolation but through constant interaction combined with a chosen separateness. > Archeology supports this part of Weinreich’s argument. > Weinreich’s second argument is equally counterintuitive. Though in some places Yiddish and German were mutually understandable, he assiduously argued that they are different languages. But Weinreich deployed his formidable linguistic artillery to argue, contrariwise, that despite significant variations in spoken and written Yiddish across the expanse of Europe (western Yiddish, more purely German; eastern Yiddish, heavily Slavic; southern Yiddish, with influence from Hungary and the Balkans), Yiddish forms one language and shares one cultural sphere and worldview, quite distinct from the surrounding culture. In short, Yiddish and German are different, but all Yiddish is one. > Once he demonstrated that Yiddish is an independent language, Weinreich explained how it came to be, first as an altered language formed among medieval Jewish trading settlements in the French–German borderland along the Rhine valley. Weinreich deduced from traces left in early Yiddish that these first Jewish immigrants to the heart of Europe spoke a Romance language, having left Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek behind when they left the eastern Mediterranean, although Hebrew and Aramaic were still languages of study. But early on (in the 10th or 11th century) these Jews from Rhineland France, presumably through contact with Jewish settlements in southern Germany, converted from old Judeo-French to western Yiddish, which was more purely German with some elements of Latin or early French. In subsequent centuries—when, exactly, is a source of considerable debate—this language moved east with Jewish emigrants, settlers, and refugees, either in the 12th century (after the Crusades and persecutions) or in the 14th or 15th. There it picked up a significant cargo of Slavic vocabulary and expressions and became the Yiddish more familiar today: eastern Yiddish. > Yet the historical, demographic, and geographical evidence does not support this entirely logical and neat story line—a fact to which Weinreich himself gives evidence in his notes. Yiddish blossomed in printed books from the 16th century onward, but Weinreich argues that Yiddish began in the 10th century in the Rhineland—though there are little more than a dozen extant texts in Yiddish from before 1400. Many of these early traces of Yiddish are only a few lines long and, aside from the marginal glosses of the Talmudic scholar Rashi (c. 1100) from the Champagne region, the early texts do not congregate in the “right” geographic area. The claim that the historical evidence does not support the idea that Yiddish originated in tenth-century France is quite different from the claim that the historical evidence does not support the idea that segregation was a privilege given to eleventh-century Jews at their own request. You want the sentence you quoted to mean the latter of those, but an honest reader would have to admit that it means the former.

Try to know what you're talking about before telling other people they are "patently wrong". Here ( http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/165247/yiddish-ashkenazi-woodworth?all=1 http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/16524... ) is a discussion of a history of Yiddish (the original work being in Yiddish, I think it's forgivable to read a discussion instead): > Nineteenth-century Jewish activists, demanding rights of citizenship, created the story that the Jews had been locked in ghettos since the Middle Ages > For Weinreich, based on both the linguistic and historical evidence, there could be no doubt that up until the 18th century “the Jews wanted to be by themselves. … Separate residence (strange as this may appear in the light of present Jewish and general conceptions of rights) was part of the privileges granted the Jews at their own request” so they could worship together; provide for their own slaughterhouse, bathhouse, cemetery, and social halls; study together; run their own rabbinic courts; supervise tax collection; and when necessary, protect themselves from attacks. > Archeology supports this part of Weinreich’s argument. Befuddled tour guides in Prague struggle to explain why, given the expectation of exclusion of Jews, the city’s famous Jewish quarter, Josefov, is so central to the old town. (One misguided explanation is that the Jews were given land near the river that was too marshy for the other city inhabitants, prone to flooding and disease-bearing miasmas.) But Prague’s Josefov is not an isolated case—it is typical. Weinreich’s point is that exclusion could also be exclusivity; restrictions also came with designated privileges. In Trier, Mainz, Aachen, Cologne, Worms, and more than 100 medieval towns in Central Europe, the Jewish district was both a central and a prime location, close to the economic heart of the city. The German Bishop Rüdiger, granting a charter of the city of Speyer in 1084 wrote, “I thought that I would increase the glory of our city a thousandfold if I were to include Jews.”

Piskvorrr 10y ago
"Archeology supports this part of Weinreich’s argument." Really? How? [proof by handwaving] "One misguided explanation" - misguided how? Guess what, the current Prague Jewish Quarter looks all pretty, but it is practically brand-new (1900+); what was there was the poorest part of town, a slum, if you will ("ghetto" is, ironically, too ambiguous in this context). This was razed to the ground with the exception of about 10 historical buildings; no wonder it's a "central and prime location" - now. In all - interesting, provocative, but not persuasive (wonder why you didn't choose to quote this sentence as well, hmmm: "Yet the historical, demographic, and geographical evidence does not support this entirely logical and neat story line—a fact to which Weinreich himself gives evidence in his notes.") Oh, and btw: since you chose to mention Prague, the historical Josefov was one of two ghettos. Still typical? In other words, my remark on "alternate reality" seems to have been spot-on.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  > (wonder why you didn't choose to quote this sentence as well, hmmm: "Yet the historical, demographic, and geographical evidence does not support this entirely logical and neat story line—a fact to which Weinreich himself gives evidence in his notes.") Because that sentence is from a separate part of the article and refers to an entirely different point. I'll outline the structure for you: > Weinreich’s first innovation in the History was to argue, against apparent common sense and abundant personal experience, that Yiddish was formed not through isolation but through constant interaction combined with a chosen separateness. > Archeology supports this part of Weinreich’s argument. > Weinreich’s second argument is equally counterintuitive. Though in some places Yiddish and German were mutually understandable, he assiduously argued that they are different languages. But Weinreich deployed his formidable linguistic artillery to argue, contrariwise, that despite significant variations in spoken and written Yiddish across the expanse of Europe (western Yiddish, more purely German; eastern Yiddish, heavily Slavic; southern Yiddish, with influence from Hungary and the Balkans), Yiddish forms one language and shares one cultural sphere and worldview, quite distinct from the surrounding culture. In short, Yiddish and German are different, but all Yiddish is one. > Once he demonstrated that Yiddish is an independent language, Weinreich explained how it came to be, first as an altered language formed among medieval Jewish trading settlements in the French–German borderland along the Rhine valley. Weinreich deduced from traces left in early Yiddish that these first Jewish immigrants to the heart of Europe spoke a Romance language, having left Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek behind when they left the eastern Mediterranean, although Hebrew and Aramaic were still languages of study. But early on (in the 10th or 11th century) these Jews from Rhineland France, presumably through contact with Jewish settlements in southern Germany, converted from old Judeo-French to western Yiddish, which was more purely German with some elements of Latin or early French. In subsequent centuries—when, exactly, is a source of considerable debate—this language moved east with Jewish emigrants, settlers, and refugees, either in the 12th century (after the Crusades and persecutions) or in the 14th or 15th. There it picked up a significant cargo of Slavic vocabulary and expressions and became the Yiddish more familiar today: eastern Yiddish. > Yet the historical, demographic, and geographical evidence does not support this entirely logical and neat story line—a fact to which Weinreich himself gives evidence in his notes. Yiddish blossomed in printed books from the 16th century onward, but Weinreich argues that Yiddish began in the 10th century in the Rhineland—though there are little more than a dozen extant texts in Yiddish from before 1400. Many of these early traces of Yiddish are only a few lines long and, aside from the marginal glosses of the Talmudic scholar Rashi (c. 1100) from the Champagne region, the early texts do not congregate in the “right” geographic area. The claim that the historical evidence does not support the idea that Yiddish originated in tenth-century France is quite different from the claim that the historical evidence does not support the idea that segregation was a privilege given to eleventh-century Jews at their own request. You want the sentence you quoted to mean the latter of those, but an honest reader would have to admit that it means the former.