ext_21044 ([identity profile] muckefuck.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] topaz 2007-07-01 04:48 am (UTC)

I don't think you'd have a case for showing that any of these words was "derived from" Yiddish unless you could show evidence of prominent Jewish families among the early settlers in the area. Little actual Yiddish infiltrated mainstream German vernaculars and then mostly through the medium of Rotwelsch, a form of thieves' cant found chiefly in the urban underworld--as I understand it, not a substantial source of early Amish migration to Pennsylvania!

The common Standard German prefix ver- is actually pronounced "fehr-" (German v only sounds like English v in borrowed vocabulary) and there are a lot of verbal roots beginning in "sh" because of the universal palatalisation of /s/ before consonants in the dialects undergirding Pälzisch (the chief basis of Pennsylvania Dutch), Standard German, and Yiddish. Standard German equivalents for FERSHPRITZ'D, FERSHMEER'D, and FERSHTICKED would be, respectively, verspritzt, verschmiert, and verstückt.

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