Ashkenazi ethnogenesis in eastern Anatolia?

Thanks to Tomenable for pointing me to this study.

Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to primeval villages in the ancient Iranian lands of Ashkenaz

http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/03/03/gbe.evw046.abstract

"The Yiddish language is over one thousand years old and incorporates German, Slavic, and Hebrew elements. The prevalent view claims Yiddish has a German origin, whereas the opposing view posits a Slavic origin with strong Iranian and weak Turkic substrata. One of the major difficulties in deciding between these hypotheses is the unknown geographical origin of Yiddish speaking Ashkenazic Jews (AJs). An analysis of 393 Ashkenazic, Iranian, and mountain Jews and over 600 non-Jewish genomes demonstrated that Greeks, Romans, Iranians, and Turks exhibit the highest genetic similarity with AJs. The Geographic Population Structure (GPS) analysis localized most AJs along major primeval trade routes in northeastern Turkey adjacent to primeval villages with names that may be derived from "Ashkenaz." Iranian and mountain Jews were localized along trade routes on the Turkey's eastern border. Loss of maternal haplogroups was evident in non-Yiddish speaking AJs. Our results suggest that AJs originated from a Slavo-Iranian confederation, which the Jews call "Ashkenazic" (i.e., "Scythian"), though these Jews probably spoke Persian and/or Ossete. This is compatible with linguistic evidence suggesting that Yiddish is a Slavic language created by Irano-Turko-Slavic Jewish merchants along the Silk Roads as a cryptic trade language, spoken only by its originators to gain an advantage in trade. Later, in the 9th century, Yiddish underwent relexification by adopting a new vocabulary that consists of a minority of German and Hebrew and a majority of newly coined Germanoid and Hebroid elements that replaced most of the original Eastern Slavic and Sorbian vocabularies, while keeping the original grammars intact. "


Unfortunately, I don't find either the linguistic or the genetic argument persuasive.

Elhaik just keeps digging his hole deeper and deeper. It's amazing.

This is the Supplementary Data. Read it and weep.
http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/03/03/gbe.evw046/suppl/DC1

"Unfortunately, I don't find either the linguistic or the genetic argument persuasive."
Ha ha. At least this is where every one agrees

arvistro said:

"Unfortunately, I don't find either the linguistic or the genetic argument persuasive."
Ha ha. At least this is where every one agrees

Click to expand...

Do they? Well, that's good to know.

I was going to address what seemed to me the flaws in their reasoning, and what also seemed to me to be the incredibly simplistic and just plain wrong analysis in the Supplement, but it would have taken forever.

Unfortunately, the more wrong an argument is, the longer it can take to refute it. It's like where do you even begin?

etrified: Wow. "The prevalent view claims Yiddish has a German origin, whereas the opposing view posits a Slavic origin with strong Iranian and weak Turkic substrata."

I don't even know how you can even contest that Yiddish has a German origin - its completely ridiculous. Yiddish is clearly a Germanic language (though usually written in the Hebrew alphabet), more accurately with a strong lexical influence from Hebrew (to a lesser degree Slavic languages). If you're fluent in German you can readily understand most basic words of Yiddish.

It eludes me how they managed to get this even through the peer review in the first place! :nuts:

The story oh Khazars?

Yetos said:

The story oh Khazars?

Click to expand...

I suppose it's his attempt to go on with the Khazar hypothesis, perhaps in a different approach.

I agree with Angela, this paper is mostly rubbish. As for Yiddish being Slavic - no, this goes to Leshon Knaan, a language which was used for some period of time by Jews in West Slavic lands. But Leshon Knaan got extinct in the 16th century, due to mass immigration of Yiddish-speaking Jews from the Holy Roman Empire, who had been expelled from that area and fled eastward.

After Yiddish-speaking Jews joined communities of Knaanic-speaking Jews, the former language prevailed and the latter got extinct. However, Yiddish can be divided into Western Yiddish (long extinct) and Eastern Yiddish (the only surviving dialect).

A particular feature of Eastern Yiddish are its many Slavic loanwords, which were borrowed likely from Leshon Knaan. So there is some Slavic substrate to Yiddish, represented by Slavic-speaking Jews who got assimilated and absorbed by Yiddish-speakers.

Localizing Ashkenazic Jews

http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/03/03/gbe.evw046.abstract


Repost!

DejaVu, I've moved your post into the already-existing thread about the topic. As I said earlier, from a linguistic perspective the claim "Yiddish is Slavic with Iranic and Turkic influence" is quite ridiculous, especially because its just plain wrong. As an example, I have assembled a short list of lexical items that demonstrate this:

Yetos said:

The story oh Khazars?

Click to expand...

Yes, of course.

Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to primeval villages in the ancient Iranian lands of Ashke

http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/03/03/gbe.evw046.full.pdf

Abstract

The Yiddish language is over one thousand years old and incorporates German, Slavic,and Hebrew elements. The prevalent view claims Yiddish has a German origin, whereasthe opposing view posits a Slavic origin with strong Iranian and weak Turkic substrata.One of the major difficulties in deciding between these hypotheses is the unknowngeographical origin of Yiddish speaking Ashkenazic Jews (AJs). An analysis of 393Ashkenazic, Iranian, and mountain Jews and over 600 non-Jewish genomes demonstratedthat Greeks, Romans, Iranians, and Turks exhibit the highest genetic similarity with AJs.The Geographic Population Structure (GPS) analysis localized most AJs along majorprimeval trade routes in northeastern Turkey adjacent to primeval villages with namesthat may be derived from “Ashkenaz.” Iranian and mountain Jews were localized alongtrade routes on the Turkey’s eastern border. Loss of maternal haplogroups was evident innon-Yiddish speaking AJs. Our results suggest that AJs originated from a Slavo-Iranianconfederation, which the Jews call “Ashkenazic” (i.e., “Scythian”), though these Jewsprobably spoke Persian and/or Ossete. This is compatible with linguistic evidencesuggesting that Yiddish is a Slavic language created by Irano-Turko-Slavic Jewishmerchants along the Silk Roads as a cryptic trade language, spoken only by its originatorsto gain an advantage in trade. Later, in the 9th century, Yiddish underwent relexificationby adopting a new vocabulary that consists of a minority of German and Hebrew and amajority of newly coined Germanoid and Hebroid elements that replaced most of theoriginal Eastern Slavic and Sorbian vocabularies, while keeping the original grammarsintact.

I wonder why a Germanic speaker easily can learn Yiddish, and a native Yiddish speaker comprehends Germanic from the beginning.

Based on an anthrogenica thread I read about a month ago, the GPS tool isn't the cats meow. I think it gave a percentage of orcadian to indians. That's just one out of many issues. And european jews aren't Turksh-like, at least according to most (if not all) of the other calculators out there.

The study doesn't use ancient samples on top of all else.

dodona said:

I wonder why a Germanic speaker easily can learn Yiddish, and a native Yiddish speaker comprehends Germanic from the beginning.

Click to expand...

It's because Yiddish is a dialect of German, Dodona. Despite what the abstract says, I've never known of a reputable linguist who doesn't hold that.

The Sephardim speak Ladino, which is a dialect of Spanish, because their ancestors lived in Spain for so many generations.

It's the same phenomenon.

Elhaik is just desperate for anything to save his theory.

Whatever relationship exists between the Ashkenazim and Anatolians is far, far older than the Khazars.

Jews are not Semites. Semites have dark skin and black hair. Jews are Khazars. Khazars are Germanic nation. Language of Khazars is germanic Yiddish language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiddish
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews#The_Khazar_hypothesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_genetics_of_Jews
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazar_hypothesis_of_Ashkenazi_ancestry

Ashkenazi Jews for the most part are Levantine-Greco/Roman hybrids, they show little to no Turkic, East Eurasian genetic.