Talk:Knaanic language

needed expansion of article

The article needs to tell: WHAT ARE ALL THE JUDEO-SLAVIC LANGUAGES?

Obviously, the article mentions Judeo-Czech, but that just leaves people wondering what the others are.

Nothing like this existed.

I'm finally getting around to signing the above post. Gringo300 08:53, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

If people want to know, they can do google searches for Judeo-slavic languages, which turns up numerous results. It would behoove those who ask such questions, at least as much so as the purported "searchers", to conduct such searches, and to contribute to the article constructively, rather than attempting to detract therefrom by means of insipid questions. Tomer ^TALK 12:33, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

I was thinking the purpose of Wikipedia was to give people information. Sure, people can do searches elsewhere... for just about ANYTHING on Wikipedia. Yet Wikipedia does exist. Therefore Wikipedia needs to tell about the OTHER Judeo-Slavic languages.

Gringo300 21:11, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

reference?

Could someone please add any reference, to any articles, books, original texts (if they exist)?

Numerous sources are made immediately available upon a simple google.com search for "knaanic". When time permits, I'll see what I can do about adding such references to the article. In the meantime, perhaps you could do so yourself, rather than asking trolling questions of this nature.Tomer ^TALK 12:33, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

First of all, I think alot of readers would be thankful if you would not label legitimate questions as 'trolling', this is simply rude. Now, if one takes the time to follow such links, it is visiable that most of them are either:

• WP mirrors
• oneliners stating 'Yiddish might have been affected by Knaanic' (or the more extreem Wexler approach)
• A transliteration of the Lord's Prayer in Czech into the hebrew alphabet, in Ethnologue and it's mirrors (hardly authentic Knaanic text)

Automatic assumption of ignorance or lazyness is by far more 'trollish' than a request for bibliography.

I see that someone else was thinking the exact same thing I was... Gringo300 21:13, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Clearly there's been a breakdown in communication. Saying that questions are trolling is a very different thing from saying someone's questions are trollish. Please review what I wrote. Tomer ^TALK 01:37, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Etymology of name

This etymology is wrong and on purpose misleading. It refers to Kanaan as son of Ham. Because it was used by Radanites trading in Slavic slaves. As Kanaan is curesd to be slave of other Noah sons - Sem, Japhet so the people enslaved become Kanaan. Look up in Babylonian Talmud and Ham curse, plus 11th century identification of Slavs as Kanaanites by Nathan ben Yehiel from Rome and Simon ben Icchack of Troyes. Real Jews would never ever never identify themselves as Kanaanites. That is rediculous assumption. And a Lie. The origin of the name is well researched by a Jewish historian Matatiahu Mieses in his 1908 publication - "Origins of the word Ham" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.146.123.11 (talk) 20:09, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

It looks like Knaanic is congate with Canaan. If so, that should be mentioned. If not, that should probably be mentioned, to dispel the impression given by the similarity. Dvd Avins 06:40, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Done, although I don't have a source in front of me that I can cite to back it up. This is based on what I've read elsewhere previously... The same, in fact, is also probsibly true of Sfaradh, and possibly even of Ashkenaz. Tomer^talk 02:37, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

You seem to not have a strong guess on the etymological connection. I do. I'm guessing the name was given by others, as a referent to the people from Canaan who spoke the language. Dvd Avins 02:51, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

That's a fanciful guess, but one I've never read. Knaanic referred to a number of Slavic Jewish languages. From what I've read, "Slavia", to invent a placename, was referred to as Qna`an. Your theory is interesting, but flies in the face not only of WP:NOR, but also of the fact that Qna`anith/Knaanic was called that by its speakers, Jews, none of whom, to my knowledge, ever referred to themselves as people from Canaan, not only because the land of Qna`an ceased to be called that over a millennium earlier, but because Qna`an implies descent from Qna`an the guy, anathema to Jews. If reference was ever made to the various languages known as Qna`anith by non-Jews, it's more likely they called it Jevrejsko or something along those lines, not Qna`anith. Tomer^talk 06:35, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting putting my guess in the article; I was primarily responding to your previous statement on this page, influenced by your exact choice of words in the article. I don't think there's an NOR requirement for talk pages. As for the merits, what you say argues against my guess but not overwhelmingly, IMO. For my guess to be true, the name would have had to originate with the Gentile locals and later been adopted by the speakers. I've read of names of langages working like that, where the speaking group takes on the name assigned them by outsiders. If the Jews perceived that they were speaking Czech (or whatever the local language was called at the time) but Czech speakers perceived differences that warrented a distinct name, it would not be unreasonable for the jews to adopt the neam that was already being bandied about. Especially if the pronunciation (including local suffixes and/or prefixes) made the word distinct in the Jews ears from a word that would imply descent from Qna'an. Dvd Avins 10:27, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

You are correct: neither NPOV nor NOR apply to talk pages. That said, I don't know what discussion between the two of us as to the possible origin of the name can accomplish, other than to establish that neither of us is an expert in the field. To repeat myself earlier tho, a central weakness of your theory is that the Jews would not have called themselves exiles of Qna`an, nor would that territory likely have been referred to as such by Slavs. Everything you're saying is "interesting", but as far as the article goes, little more than "idle speculation". That said, I'll try to dig up the sources I've read previously, which support the text I added to the article. Tomer^talk 07:21, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Call for reference

Again, can someone please provide *any* source for Knaanic? Please do not tell us "Search google" again, but provide academic ref. After another search, I can say the following:

• Google searching with "filetype:pdf" yields nothing (just a ref for a language-code), compare for example 'even' a search on phoenician yields 40k results (in PDFs), so there's not alot of comtemporary academic research regarding Knaanic.
• A 'free' google search yields really alot of messy results: mostly wikipedia mirrors, and people in mailing-lists asking for reference.

I do not doubt the existance of Judeo-slavic languages all through history (I was hearing such on a daily-basis rather, eg, Israeli Russian). I'm just saying a wikipedia article about linguistics should have an academic reference, and preferably an example text (No fake LORD prayers please)

Anyways - I'm adding a 'lacking source' tag to the article. Oyd11 22:59, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

This article seems to be sourced mainly from Ethnologue [1]. Rudjek

Sorry, returning the unref'd. Ethnologue provides no refrence (except for the nice three-letter language code), please replace the unref tag by a more fitting tag, but do not leave it like that. Evidently, some sort of reference is missing. Oyd11 23:44, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand. The entire first paragraph of this article as it is at present has been copied from Ethnologue, so that should be a sufficient source for the first paragraph. As a rule, Ethnologue gives more information than just a language code. I have not been able to find much, but I have found the following:

• Judeo-Slavic was a West Slavic language used by Jews living in Central Europe in the Middle Ages in Slavic-speaking regions corresponding approximately with the current territory of the Czech Republic. The term Knaanic referred mainly to the Judeo-Slavic closest to Old Czech, but there were other variants of Judeo-Slavic. All variants became extinct in late Middle Ages. ^[2]
• It is mentioned in this book.
• Someone called Mark Louden mentions in his book that Slavic speaking Jews are called "Knaanim" ^[3]
• A .edu and PDF mentions that the traces of "Judeo-Slavic" speech (along with the name "Knaanim") have long since disappeared. ^[4]

Rudjek

Ok, I've probably used the wrong template then. I ment 'reference' in the sence of bibliography, assuming encyclopaedic articles are to provide that. Ie, I didn't mean to doubt factuality.

From the link you've provide, the following ref seems appropriate:

• "History of the Yiddish language" / Max Weinreich, 1980

Oyd11 17:09, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

• I've seen several naive stupidities in Ethnologue (classifying Crimean Gothic as a "Gothic dialect", giving the same ISO code to Old Church Slavonic and later recensions, saying that Bosniak language has 4M speakers etc.) which demonstrate very amateurish approach, but giving ISO codes to non-existing languages like this "Knaanic" beats them all. Either there are some influential Jews in SIL, or someone used flawed sources. FFS, even Old Novgorod dialect does not have its own code! If someone would propose this for deletion, it would be very hard to prove the existence of this Knaanic "language" by citing acknowledgment of it by relevant experts in the field. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 18:34, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Pictures

What is it? (origin, author, age, authenticity...) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.83.176.178 (talk) 10:19, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

A really serious reference

I think the only serious reference concerning the so-called "leshon kenaan" (לשון כנען) or Jewish Czech (צ'כית יהודית) is this article written in Czech:

Šedinová, Jiřina: Literatura a jazyk Židů v Českých zemích, in EUROLITTERARIA & EUROLINGUA 2005, Technická univerzita v Liberci, Liberec 2005

Its author, Jiřina Šedinová, is one of the best known Czech specialists in Hebrew and in Jewish culture of Bohemia and Moravia ("Czechia"). In her article she mentions the existence of several thousands glosses in medieval Czech called "leshon kenaan" in Hebrew. These glosses appear in Jewish religious texts, e. g. in Or zarua by Yitzhak ben Moshe or Arugat ha-bosem by Abraham ben Azriel. There are no differences between the language of these glosses and medieval Czech spoken by the gentiles.

"Leshon kenaan" did exist but it is just a Hebrew expression for medieval Czech and other West Slavic languages (Polish and Sorbian). If there was a distinct Jewish language based on Czech or any other West Slavic language, its existence has never been proved.

The inscriptions on the coins we can see in this article are written in Polish (but with Hebrew script). I repeat - there is no evidence of any distinct medieval Jewish language based on any West Slavic language.--Henriku (talk) 23:36, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Not a coin!

The illustration presents a "brackteate"'- a medal! It was a well known way of giving someone a distinction, and of course if the king wanted to give an award to a prominent Jew, it would be marked in letters that the members of Jewish community understood. The idea that Polish king would struck coins with Hebrew letters is patently absurd, — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.67.127.74 (talk) 18:03, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Jews ruled over Poland

The coin tells us all. Jews ruled over Polish lands. (they were Jewish kings)

@89.143.212.50: It's generally acknowledged that there were a handful of families within the Polish nobility that had some degree of Jewish origins. However, that isn't the context for the minting of those coins. I feel I should also remind you that talk pages are not a forum for discussing personal theories, or a subject that is unrelated to the editing of an article. Quinto Simmaco (talk) 06:35, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Wexler

I modified the wording on Wexler's acceptance, as I thought it was WP:UNDUE as far as the phrasing. It is, of course, certainly worthwhile to mention his theory though. Just to not give an abundance weight to it, especially with the article not really being of sufficient length for a section where it might be appropriate. While the phrasing does reflect the current reality of Yiddish linguistics, and historical linguistics in general, I do realise that there are a few scholars who have noted that some of his approaches and even some aspects of his ideas are novel and worth discussing, even if his conclusions are incorrect. Therefore, I'm not at all opposed to a more qualified modification of the phrasing one way or another, even if it might qualify as borderline WP:FRINGE. Feel free and be bold if you think it's unbalanced, but take care. Quinto Simmaco (talk) 06:58, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Max Weinreich's two articles on Knaanic

Page 646 of David L. Gold’s Studies in Etymology and Etiology (with Emphasis on Germanic, Jewish, Romance, and Slavic Languages) contains full bibliographical references to two article on Knaanic by Max Weinreich, which should be cited here: https://books.google.com/books?id=l015C5vm1XkC&q=basic+relationships#v=snippet&q=basic%20relationships&f=false

If that URL does not lead directly to them, put the words “basic relationships” in the search box of Gold’s book on line (https://books.google.com/books/about/Studies_in_Etymology_and_Etiology.html?id=l015C5vm1XkC) and you will be taken to that page S. Valkemirer (talk) 01:51, 14 March 2023 (UTC). S. Valkemirer (talk) 01:45, 14 March 2023 (UTC)