New DNA Traces Origins of Yiddish To…Turkey

The Times of Israel:

New DNA analysis technology shows that Yiddish, the historic language of Ashkenazi Jews, may have originated in northeastern Turkey, according to a study by an Israeli-born researcher.

The study by the University of Sheffield’s Dr. Eran Elhaik, which was published recently in scientific journal Genome Biology, used a Geographic Population Structure (GPS) tool to locate the origins of Yiddish speakers’ DNA.

“We identified 367 people who claim they have two parents who are Ashkenazic Jews and we divided them into people whose parents only speak Yiddish and then everyone else,” Elhaik told WIRED.

The results, Elhaik said, showed that many of them came from the vicinity of four ancient villages in northern Turkey whose names are conspicuously similar to “Ashkenaz” — Askenaz, Eskenaz, Ashanaz, and Ashkuz — and which are all located near a crossroads of the ancient Silk Road trade route.

“North east Turkey is the only place in the world where these place names exist — which strongly implies that Yiddish was established around the first millennium at a time when Jewish traders who were plying the Silk Road moved goods from Asia to Europe wanted to keep their monopoly on trade.

“They did this by inventing Yiddish — a secret language that very few can speak or understand other than Jews.

Our findings are in agreement with an alternative theory that suggests Yiddish has Iranian, Turkish, and Slavic origins and explains why Yiddish contains 251 words for the terms ‘buy’ and ‘sell’.

This is what we can expect from a language of experienced merchants.”

Sauce: https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-dna-tech-pinpoints-yiddish-origins-to-north-turkey/

>Video is by Dr. Eran Elhaik.Unearthing Ancient Ashkenaz and the Origin of Yiddish'''.

He is an Israeli molecular geneticist.

Sauce: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2013/05/16/israeli-researcher-challenges-jewish-dna-links-to-israel-calls-those-who-disagree-nazi-sympathizers/#546dcb6428bc