Editing Knaanic language (section)

==History==
The language became extinct some time in the [[Late Middle Ages]], possibly because of the expansion of the [[Ashkenazi]] culture and its own [[Yiddish language]], descended from early [[Middle High German]]. That hypothesis is often backed by the large number of Yiddish loanwords of Slavic origin, many of which were no longer in use in [[Slavic languages]] at the time of the Ashkenazi expansion. They are believed to come from Knaanic rather than from [[Czech language|Czech]], [[Sorbian languages|Sorbian]] or [[Polish language|Polish]]. The linguist [[Paul Wexler (linguist)|Paul Wexler]] has hypothesised that Knaanic is actually the direct predecessor of Yiddish and that the language later became [[Germanisation|Germanised]].<ref name="Wexler">{{cite book | author =Paul Wexler | title =Two-tiered relexification in Yiddish: The Jews, Sorbs, Khazars and the Kiev-Polessian dialects| year =2002 | publisher =Mouton de Gruyter | location =Berlin | isbn=3-11-017258-5 }}</ref> In other words, the Knaanim, that is, the people speaking the Judaeo-Slavic languages, were the main cause of changes in Yiddish.<ref name="Louden">{{cite journal | author =Mark Louden | year =2000 | title =Contact-induced phonological change in Yiddish: Another look at Weinreich's riddles 
 | journal =Diachronica | volume =17 | issue =1 | pages =85–110 | publisher=John Benjamins Publishing Company | doi =10.1075/dia.17.1.05lou}}</ref> That view has been dismissed by nearly all mainstream academics, however, and contrasts with the more widely accepted theories of [[Max Weinreich]], who argued that Slavic loanwords were assimilated only after Yiddish had already been fully formed.<ref name="Weinreich">for instance {{cite book | author =Max Weinreich | title =For [[Roman Jakobson]]: Essays on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, 11 October 1956. | year =1956  | pages =622–632 | chapter =Yiddish, Knaanic, Slavic: The basic relationships | publisher =Mouton | location =The Hague }}</ref><ref name="Weinreich3">''History of the Yiddish Language'', op.cit., pp. 727</ref>
The Jewish commentator [[Rashi]] was aware of this language.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.sefaria.org/Rashi_on_Deuteronomy.3.9.2|title = Rashi on Deuteronomy 3:9:2}}</ref> 

===Coinage===
A possible early example of Knaanic is a 9th-century letter for a Jewish community of [[Ruthenia]].<ref name="Datner"/> One of the very few commonly-accepted examples of Knaanic is inscriptions on [[bracteate]] coins issued under [[Mieszko the Old]] and [[Leszek the White]], two [[Poland|Polish]] rulers of 12th and 13th century. The last evidence of usage of the language (written with the [[Hebrew script]]) comes from the 16th century.

[[Image:Brakteat01.jpg|200px]]
[[Image:Brakteat02.jpg|200px|]]

The reason that Knaanic inscriptions, which use Hebrew letters, appear on coins minted for a Polish duke is that at the time, he leased some mints to Jews. The mint masters were responsible for collecting bullion and striking coins as well as periodically taking in and restriking existing coins.<ref name=Bankoteka>''Bankoteka'', p.25.</ref>

The inscriptions on the coins range widely. Some are Hebrew names, possibly those of the mintmasters. Some are the names of the towns in which the mint operated, for instance [[Kalisz]], the burial place of Mieszko the Old. Some have the duke's name. One in the [[National Bank of Poland]]'s numismatic collection bears the word ''[[Berakhah|bracha]]'', Hebrew for blessing.<ref name=Bankoteka/>

{| class="wikitable"
| <small>'''Inscription (Knaanic)'''</small>
| dir="rtl"| {{lang|czk|{{Script/Hebrew|משקא קרל פלסק}}|rtl=yes}}
|-
| <small>'''Transcription'''</small>
| {{lang|czk-latn|mškʾ krl plsk}}
|-
| <small>'''Interpretation (Polish)'''</small>
| {{lang|pl|Mieszko, król Polski}}
|-
| <small>'''Translation'''</small>
| '[[Mieszko III the Old|Mieszko]], king of Poland'
|}