Yeah. Yiddish-speaking Jews are not "indigenous" as it were to Eastern Europe, s opposed to the small population of Turkic Jews.
What is "indigenous" in eastern europe, especially in the southern, forest free areas, were all the riders from asia went trough?
About the jews here the figures of the 1937soviet census:
Jews: 2 669 147 crimean jews: 6 104 mountain jews: 14 410 grusinian jews: 10 central asian jews. 25 437
for completness. Karaim: 3 464
The first group - Jews without special features - is the Y-speaking minority, counted only in the soviet union of 1937 - without the 3,5 Million eastern jews in the Polish Republic (in the borders of the between-the-wars-period, including southern Lithuania, western Belarus and western Ucraine). The starting point was a allegedly zionist myth: In the history of Zionism the yiddish speaking eastern jews played a important role, the small groups in the south of russian empire did not.
There is broad consensus that Yiddish is a linguistically german language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiddish_language). Yiddish written in latin letters is not too difficult to understand for germans.
Of course there were quite a lot of differences in the Yiddish, especially in spooken language. But thats quite normal. As late as 1934 a uncle of mine moved from Kiel to Rostock in northern germany, only 140 kilometers eastward in the core of the "lower german language" district (lower german = "Plattdütsch", all the g erman areas wich did not take part in the second german sound shift). But the children in his class were laughing at him and did not understand, what he said. Only via official german (Hochdeutsch) communication was possible. The establishment of standardized language is a part of the building of a national state. And without intense communication it may take quite a lot of time to establish the standard in every corner of a country.
Sebastian
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