Re: Judean-Sanskrit/Bantu/Austronesian?

Kristian Jensen wrote:
>
> Here's an idea: Judean-Sanskrit. I know there a group of Jews that
> live in India. As to when and how they got there, I really don't
> know. But perhaps a Judean language could arise in India if history
> presented itself differently.
>
Most versions I've heard state Iraq as the origin of the two main groups
of Indian Jews (in one case, in the distant past; in the other case,
where the Iraqi origin isn't in question, in the more recent past). So
Arabic and the Iraqi Jewish dialects thereof might also be involved.

But that's not all on the subcontinent! What about a certain people in
North East India, close to Bangladesh, who see themselves as Jews.
Several thousand are studying Judaism and intend to claim the right to
come to Israel under Israel's "Law of Return," which guarantees
citizenship for all Jewish immigrants.

> Here's another idea: Judean-Bantu. I saw a TV-program once (I think
> it was BBC) about studying the genetic make-up of people around the
> world and how such studies reveal a lot about human history. Among
> the people shown were a Bantu-speaking group from Zimbabwe that
> claim to be Jews (celebrating Hanukka, practicing circumcission,
> etc.). They also claim to be one of the lost tribes of Israel and
> the true builders of the ruins of Zimbabwe. They look African so
> there are many skeptics, but a genetic study of them revealed that
> they in fact have more Yemenite blood in them than the surrounding
> Bantu-speaking people. This lead the TV program to theorize that
> they are perhaps distantly related to Yemite Jews who also claim to
> be true Jews and one of the lost tribes of Israel. It was theorized
> by the program that Yemenite Jews might have had trade relations
> along the East coast of Africa. Some might have settled in Africa,
> introduced Judaism, and intermarried with the local population so
> their descendants are now the Zimbabwean Jews. If this situation is
> true, then what if the Jewish language was more influential in the
> development of this tribe's language? What would this Judean-Bantu
> language look like?
>
Who can say? And what spices would they use in their gefillte fish?

Your hypothesis re. the Zimbabwe Jews is also one of the commonest
proposed origins of the Jews of Ethiopia, almost all of whom are now in
Israel.


> Here's another idea again: Judean-Austronesian. What if Yemenite
> Jewish sailors were bold enough to venture away from the coast of
> East Africa to 'discover' Madagascar? What if they settled in
> Madagascar? Might there not have been a Jewish language that would
> have developed when influenced by the local Austronesian speakers?
>
Are lemurs kosher? Steg: your help is needed!


But really, why limit ourselves to the Jews?  Here are a couple more
ideas to add to Kristian's list before I sign off:

1: What if the Welsh-speaking settlers in Patagonia, instead of more or
less fizzling out, had dominated the mainly Castillian-speaking
surrounding population?  How would the resulting language (Gallego,
perhaps :):)) have looked?

2: Perhaps one of the biggest linguistic "ifs" of all: what if French,
and not English, had become the majority language (lingua franca?) of
the European settlers in North America (with a Que'bec-style Anglo
island in, say, New England)?  What would this French look like, how
would it have influenced, and been influenced by, Native American
languages and the other immigrant languages, and what would its
relationship with Metropolitan French have been?


        Yours conhistorically (conhysterically)


        Shaul