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On 11/11/2018 4:20 PM, Mark E. Shoulson
via Unicode wrote:
On
11/11/18 4:16 PM, Asmus Freytag via Unicode wrote:
On 11/11/2018 12:32 PM, Hans Åberg via
Unicode wrote:
Wir sind uns dessen bewusst, dass von
Seite der Gegenpartei weder Reue(?), noch Einsicht zu
erwarten ist und dass sie die Konsequenzen dieser
rabbinischen Gutachten von sich abschüttelen werden mit der
Motivierung, dass:
vir zind auns dessen bevaust dass fon zeyte der ge- gefarthey
veder reye , nakh eynzikht tsu ervarten izt aund dast zya dya
kansekventsen dyezer rabbinishen gutakhten fon zikh
abshittelen verden mit der motivirung , dass :
This agrees rather well with Beth's retranslation.
Mapping "z" to "s", "f" to "v" and "v" to "w" would match the
way these pronunciations are spelled in German (with a few
outliers like "izt" for "ist", where the "s" isn't voiced in
German). There's also a clear convention of using "kh" for "ch"
(as in English "loch" but also for other pronunciation of the
German "ch"). The one apparent mismatch is "ge- gefarthey" for
"Gegenpartei". Presumably what is transliterated as "f" can
stand for phonetic "p". "Parthey" might be how Germans could
have written "Partei" in earlier centuries (when "th" was
commonly used for "t" and "ey" alternated with "ei", as in my
last name). So, perhaps it's closer than it looks,
superficially.
I think that really IS a "p"; elsewhere in the document they seem
to be quite careful to put a RAFE on top of the PEH when it means
"f", and not using a DAGESH to mark "p". There definitely does
seem to be usage of TET-HEH for "th"; in the Hebrew text at the
beginning it talks about the אורטה׳ community—took me a bit to
work out that was an abbreviation for "Orthodox".
From context, "Reue" is by far the best
match for "Reye" and seems to match a tendency elsewhere in the
sample where the transliteration, if pronounced as German, would
result in a shifted quality for the vowels (making them sound
more Yiddish, for lack of a better description).
That word is hard to read in the original, hence the "?" in the
transliteration. It isn't clear if it's YOD YOD or YOD VAV and
the VAV is missing its body (the head looks different than it
should if it were a YOD). Which would match your "Reue" fairly
well—except that they generally use AYIN for "e", not "YOD".
"abschüttelen" - here the second "e" would not be part of
Standard German orthography. It's either an artifact of the
transcription system or possibly reflects that the writer is
familiar with a different spelling convention (to my eyes the
spelling "abshittelen" looks somehow more Yiddish, but I'm
really not familiar enough with that language).
The ü is, of course, not in the text in the original; it's just
"i". German ü wound up as "i" in Yiddish, in most cases.
I agree with Beth that the text reads like a transcription of a
standard German text, not like a transcription of Yiddish, small
infidelities in vowel/consonant renderings notwithstanding. These
are either because the transcription conventions deliberately make
some substitutions (presumably there's no Hebrew letter that would
directly match an "ü", so they picked "i") or because the writer,
while trying to capture standard German in this instance, is aware
of a different orthography. The result, before Beth tweaked it,
would resemble a bit a phonetic transcription of someone speaking
standard German with a Yiddish accent. The fact that there are no
differences in grammar and the phrasing is absolutely natural for
written German is what confirms the identification as German,
rather than Yiddish text.
Just because Yiddish is closely related to German doesn't mean
that you can simply write the former with standard German
phonetics and have it match a text in standard German to the point
where there's no distinction. I think the sample is long enough
and involved enough to give quite decent confidence in
discriminating between these two Germanic languages. Grammar,
phrasing and word choice are in that sense much better indicators
than pure spelling; just as people trying to assume some foreign
accent will give themselves away by faithfully maintaining the
underlying structure of the language - that even works if the
"accent" includes a few selected bits of "foreign" word order or
grammar. In those artificial examples, there's rarely the kind of
subtle mistake that a true non-native will make.
A./
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