You thought Yiddish was descended from German? Wrong. It’s from Basque. The truth is out there…
Note: Since it is no longer April 1, I’d better add, to clear things up for the overly literal, that the above should be read with eyebrows raised to the maximum level. The linked site is completely loony, despite its neat, professional appearance. As a matter of fact, I wondered if I myself was being taken in by an elaborate joke. I mean, “diaspora (exile, dispersion), .di-as.-.po-ora: adibide (advice) asagotu (to go far away) apokeria (filthy deed) oraintxe (right now): ‘The advice is to go right now, far from the filthy deeds'”? “Diaspora” isn’t even Yiddish! But naah, it’s way too much trouble for a practical joke. It has to be in earnest.
Mea culpa. My deepest apologies. I failed to investigate the linked site further; I was satisfied with the first morsel of yummy lunacy. Moss was not so lazy, and he has directed my attention (see Comments) to the deep well from which the Yiddish stuff is drawn. It turns out that “Basque” is actually ancient Saharan, the base from which linguists invented all other languages. Yes, linguists. Why wasn’t I in on this? It would have been so much more fun than digging around in dusty nineteenth-century German journals. Anyway, here is the inspiring conclusion, and I thank Moss for bringing this treasure our way:
From my work in with the following languages it appears that all highly developed languages, without exception, were invented by linguists; some languages turned out more elegant and useful than others. If this is indeed the case, then we should be entitled to start facing out some of the unnecessary and dying ones, such as Celtic, Friesian, Wallonian, Flemish, Catalan etc. Danish and Norwegian are almost the same so why not combine them, as the Basques did with their seven languages, which are now together called Euskera Batua or Unified Basque. Ukrainian and Russian, Galician and Portugese, Finnish and Estonian, Polish and Kashubian, Czech and Slovak, Macedonian and Bulgarian etc. all can be combined with a bit of good will. Why treasure something as artificial and unauthentic as the many unnecessary and people-dividing Benedictine language creations we we are now stuck with?
The European nations are making tremendous strides to unify under one government, one monetary system, one army, no boundaries, and now it is time to simplify the church-caused language bewilderment and start working toward a Unified European language, which we could call Euro Batua, which could be English or Spanish, but not German. The coming of the third millennium B.C. could be celebrated by starting to work toward the Universal language, it is long overdue. It is a pity that this Universal language cannot again be the Saharan of our ancestors, because it is just too complicated and too difficult to learn, but the oldest highly developed language in all the world shall not be allowed to die. Let Latin and Greek and Sanskrit only be remembered in books, we can well do without them, but the Basque language must survive and be spoken by a vibrant population, if necessary through the creation of a United Nations Heritage Region called Euskadi. It would be a worthy “Year 2000” project for the U.N.
The inventors of the Romance languages and English used mostly that half of the Basque language which begins with vowel-consonant-vowel (VCV and VCCV), but the linguists making up Yiddish…
Wait a minute…
::looks around the site a bit more::
Oh, this thing goes so much deeper than just Yiddish. Greatest bit of Psychoceramics I’ve seen this year.
Oh. Oh my. Thank you. Words cannot express my gratitude. How could I have been so careless?
I’m so glad you approve!
Also: thanks for “psychoceramics.”
Frisian isn’t dying. It will always live on, and we are in the process of reviving our ancient celtic language and writing. Friesian too is starting to be written again and Friesian literature is springing up, faster than you could say the word.