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by gumby 755 days ago
What tokai said was OK: English is also classified as a Germanic language even though it includes a lot of French words, not to mention Hindi etc.

For that matter, a German word like „Dolmetsch“ doesn’t make German a Turkic language.
1 comments
eigenket 755 days ago
I think calling something a Germanic language is a bit different to calling it a German language.

I completely agree with your point about a "Germanic language" but I disagree about "a German language".

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tokai 753 days ago
It developed from High German with elements of Aramaic and Hebrew, in the area we would now call west Germany. The only way it's not a German language is if you deny the historic and linguistic roots of the language.
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eigenket 752 days ago
It did not develop exclusively from high German, as I wrote before and it was geographically widespread enough for clear Eastern vs Western dialects to emerge:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiddish_dialects#Eastern_Yiddi...

Rather than existing "in the area we would now call west Germany" as you would like to believe for some reason. Eastern Yiddish in particular is much more than "a German language" (unless you want to call Polish a German language as well).

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