Pennsylvania German language

Area where Rhine Franconian is spoken. 1 Hessian, 2 Palatinate German 3 Lorraine Franconian

The ancestors of Pennsylvania German speakers came from various parts of the southwest corner of the German-speaking region of Europe, mainly the Palatinate, but also including the Electoral Palatinate (German: Kurpfalz), the Duchy of Baden, Hesse, Saxony, Swabia, Württemberg, Alsace (German Elsass), German Lorraine, and Switzerland. Most of them spoke Rhine Franconian, especially Palatinan and to a lesser degree Alemannic dialects, and it is believed that in the first generations after the settlers arrived these dialects merged. The result of that dialect levelling was a dialect very close to the eastern dialects of Palatinian, especially the rural dialects around Mannheim/Ludwigshafen.

"Pennsylvania German" is mainly derived from Palatinate German, spoken by 2,400,000 Germans in Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region (a region almost identical to the historical Palatinate).[10] There are many similarities between the German dialect that is still spoken in this small part of southwestern Germany and Pennsylvania German. When individuals from the Palatinate (Pfalz) region of Germany today encounter Pennsylvania German speakers, conversation is often possible to a limited degree.

Pennsylvania German has primarily been a spoken dialect throughout its history, with very few of its speakers making much of an attempt to read or write it. Writing in Pennsylvania German can be a difficult task, and there is no spelling standard for the dialect. There are currently two primary, competing models which numerous orthographic (i.e., spelling) systems have been based upon by individuals attempting to write in the Pennsylvania German dialect. One 'school' tends to follow the rules of American English orthography, the other the rules of Standard German orthography (developed by Preston Barba and Buffington). The choice of writing system is not meant to imply any difference in pronunciation. For comparison, a translation into Pennsylvania German, using two spelling systems, of the Lord's Prayer, as found in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, is presented below. The text in the second column illustrates a system based on American English orthography. The text in the third column uses, on the other hand, a system based on Standard German. The English original is found in the first column, and a Standard German version appears in the fifth column. (Note: The German version(s) of the Lord's Prayer most likely to have been used by Pennsylvania Germans would have been derived in most cases from Martin Luther's translation of the New Testament.)

Since 1997, the Pennsylvania German newspaper Hiwwe wie Driwwe[11] allows dialect authors (of whom there are still about 100) to publish Pennsylvania German poetry and prose. Hiwwe wie Driwwe was founded by Michael Werner. It is published twice a year (2,400 copies per issue)—since 2013 in cooperation with the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at Kutztown University. Since 2002, the newspaper is published both online and in print.

In 2006, the German publishing house "Edition Tintenfaß" started to print books in Pennsylvania German.

In 2014, Jehovah's Witnesses began to publish literature in Pennsylvania German.[12]

Pennsylvania German for the most part does not reflect the diverse origins of the early speakers from regions along the upper Rhine River (Rhineland, Württemberg, Baden, Saarland, Switzerland and the Elsass/Alsace) but almost exclusively the strong immigrant group from the Palatine.[13]

Pennsylvania German is not a corrupted form of Standard German, since Standard German evolved as an archaic — and for a long time artificial — koiné language in a very long process that started in the time of classical Middle High German (1170–1250), see Standard German: Origins. Pennsylvania German instead reflects the independent development of Palatine German, especially from the region that is called Vorderpfalz in German.[13]

Several vowel and consonant in Pennsylvania German represent older forms of the German language, e.g. "p" instead of "pf" or "v" instead of "b", while Standard German consonants shifted. They only appear as shifts if Standard German is erroneously seen as the basis from which Pennsylvania German evolved. The correspondence between Standard German and Pennsylvania German occur with a fair degree of regularity.

The American English influence is most significant on vocabulary[14] and to a much lesser degree on pronunciation; the English influence on grammar is relatively small. The question of whether the large loss of the dative case — the most significant difference compared with Palatine German — is due to English influence or reflects an inner development, is disputed.

The people from southern Germany, eastern France and Switzerland, from whom the Pennsylvania German culture and dialect sprang, started to arrive in America in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. To a more limited extent, this is also true of a second wave of immigration in the mid-19th century, which came from the same regions, but settled more frequently in Ohio, Indiana and other parts of the Midwest. Thus, an entire industrial vocabulary relating to electricity, machinery and modern farming implements has naturally been borrowed from the English. For Pennsylvania German speakers who work in a modern trade or in an industrial environment, this could potentially increase the challenge of maintaining their mother tongue.

Numerous English words have been borrowed and adapted for use in Pennsylvania German since the first generations of Pennsylvania German habitation of southeastern Pennsylvania. Examples of English loan words that are relatively common are bet (Ich bet, du kannscht Deitsch schwetze = I bet you can speak Pennsylvania German), depend (Es dependt en wennig, waer du bischt = it depends somewhat on who you are); tschaepp for "chap" or "guy"; and tschumbe for "to jump". Today, many speakers will use Pennsylvania German words for the smaller numerals and English for larger and more complicated numbers, like $27,599.

Conversely, although many among the earlier generations of Pennsylvania Germans could speak English, they were known for speaking it with a strong and distinctive accent. Such Pennsylvania Dutch English can still sometimes be heard to this day. Although this more recently coined term is being used in the context of this and related articles to describe this Pennsylvania German-influenced English, it has traditionally been referred to as "Dutchy" or "Dutchified" English.

Pennsylvania German, which is now in its fourth century on North American soil, had more than 250,000 speakers in 2012. It has shifted its center to the West with approximately 160,000 speakers in Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa and other Midwest states.[2] There is even a small but growing number of Pennsylvania German speakers in Upper Barton Creek and Springfield in Belize among Old Order Mennonites of the Noah Hoover group. The dialect is used vigorously by the horse and buggy Old Order Mennonites in the northern part of the Regional Municipality of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.[15]

While speakers without an Anabaptist background in general do not pass the dialect to their children today, the Old Order Amish and horse-and-buggy Old Order Mennonites do so in the current generation and there are no signs that this practice will end in the future. There are only two car driving Anabaptist groups who have preserved the dialect: The Old Beachy Amish[16] and the Kauffman Amish Mennonites, also called Sleeping Preacher Churches.[17] Even though Amish and Old Order Mennonites were originally a minority group within the Pennsylvania German-speaking population, today they form the vast majority. According to sociologist John A. Hostetler, less than 10 percent of the original Pennsylvania German population was Amish or Mennonite.

Pennsylvania German Sticker "We still speak the mother tongue"

There have been efforts to advance the use of the dialect. Kutztown University offers a complete minor program in Pennsylvania German Studies. The program includes two full semesters of the Pennsylvania German dialect. In the 2007–2008 school year, the classes were being taught by Professor Edward Quinter. In 2008–2009, Professor Robert Lusch served as the instructor.

Since 2005, Pennsylvania Germans have been working on a Pennsylvania German version of Wikipedia.

According to one scholar, "today, almost all Amish are functionally bilingual in Pennsylvania Dutch and English; however, domains of usage are sharply separated. Pennsylvania Dutch dominates in most in-group settings, such as the dinner table and preaching in church services. In contrast, English is used for most reading and writing. English is also the medium of instruction in schools and is used in business transactions and often, out of politeness, in situations involving interactions with non-Amish. Finally, the Amish read prayers and sing in Standard, or High, German (Hoch Deitsch) at church services. The distinctive use of three different languages serves as a powerful conveyor of Amish identity."[18] Although "the English language is being used in more and more situations," nonetheless Pennsylvania Dutch is "one of a handful of minority languages in the United States that is neither endangered nor supported by continual arrivals of immigrants."[19]

Because it is an isolated dialect and almost all native speakers are bilingual in English, the biggest threat to the dialect is gradual decay of the traditional vocabulary, which is then replaced by English loan words or words corrupted from English.

In the United States, most Old Order Amish and all "horse and buggy" Old Order Mennonite groups speak Pennsylvania German, except the Old Order Mennonites of Virginia, where German was already mostly replaced at the end of the 19th century. There are several Old Order Amish communities (especially in Indiana) where Bernese German, a form of Swiss German and Low Alemannic Alsatian, not Pennsylvania German, are spoken. Additionally, English has mostly replaced Pennsylvania German among the car driving Old Order Horning and the Wisler Mennonites.

Other religious groups among whose members the Pennsylvania German dialect would have once been predominant, include: Lutheran and German Reformed congregations of Pennsylvania German background, Schwenkfelders, and Schwarzenau (German Baptist) Brethren.[21] Until fairly recent times, the speaking of Pennsylvania German had absolutely no religious connotations.

In Ontario, Canada, the Old Order Amish, the members of the Ontario Old Order Mennonite Conference, the David Martin Old Order Mennonites, the Orthodox Mennonites and smaller pockets of others (regardless of religious affiliation) speak Pennsylvania German. The members of the car driving Old Order Markham-Waterloo Mennonite Conference have mostly switched to English. In 2017, there were about 10,000 speakers of Pennsylvania German in Canada, far fewer than in the United States.

There are also attempts being made in a few communities to teach the dialect in a classroom setting; however, as every year passes by, fewer and fewer in these particular communities speak the dialect. There is still a weekly radio program in the dialect whose audience is made up mostly of these diverse groups, and many Lutheran and Reformed congregations in Pennsylvania that formerly used German have a yearly service in Pennsylvania German. Other non-native speakers of the dialect include those persons that regularly do business with native speakers.

Among them, the Old Order Amish population was probably around 227,000 in 2008.[22] Additionally, the Old Order Mennonite population, a sizable percentage of which is Pennsylvania German-speaking, numbers several tens of thousands. There are also thousands of other Mennonites who speak the dialect, as well as thousands more older Pennsylvania German speakers of non-Amish and non-Mennonite background. The Grundsau Lodge, which is an organization in southeastern Pennsylvania of Pennsylvania German speakers, is said to have 6,000 members. Therefore, a fair estimate of the speaker population in 2008 might be close to 300,000, although many, including some academic publications, may report much lower numbers, uninformed of those diverse speaker groups.

There are no formal statistics on the size of the Amish population, and most who speak Pennsylvania German on the Canadian and U.S. censuses would report that they speak German, since it is the closest option available. Pennsylvania German was reported under ethnicity in the 2000 census.[23]

Pennsylvania German speakers live mostly in the United States and Canada, but there are also some speakers who belong to traditional Anabaptist groups in Latin America. Even though most Mennonite communities in Belize speak Plautdietsch, some few hundreds who came to Belize mostly around 1970 and who belong to the Noah Hoover Mennonites speak Pennsylvania German.[24] There are also some recent New Order Amish immigrants in Bolivia, Argentina, and Belize who speak Pennsylvania German while the great majority of conservative Mennionites in these countries speak Plautdietsch.[25]

In Mario Pei's book Language, a popular poem in the dialect (with significant English influence in the form of loanwords) is printed; the free-translation is, in the main, by J. Cooper.

Following the links, there are two examples of spoken Pennsylvania German: Die mudder schprooch (The mother tongue)[26] and Bisht du en Christ gebore? (Are you born as a Christian?).[27] More example of spoken Pennsylvania German can be found at the page "American Languages - our nation's many languages online" of the University of Wisconsin.[28]

An example of a Pennsylvania German song is "Mei Vadder un Mudder sinn Deitsch" (My father and mother are German), here sung by John Schmid.[29]

The Office character Dwight Schrute and his family, including his cousin Mose, are known to be Pennsylvania Dutch. Nevertheless, in the series Dwight speaks High German rather than the Pennsylvania dialect.

Orange is the New Black character Leanne Taylor and family are featured speaking Pennsylvania Dutch in flashbacks showing her Amish background before ending up in prison.

Science-fiction writer Michael Flynn wrote the novella The Forest of Time, depicting an alternate history in which the United States was never established, but each of the Thirteen Colonies went its own way as an independent nation. In that history, Pennsylvania adopted the Pennsylvania German language as its national language and developed into a German-speaking nation, with its own specific culture, very distinct from both its English speaking neighbors and European Germany.

• German-Pennsylvanian Association
• Hiwwe wie Driwwe
• Dr. Michael Werner- PG publisher/journalist
• Pennsylvania Dutch English
• Pennsylvania Dutch Country
• Hutterite German
• Languages in the United States
• Plautdietsch
• Texas German
• Kurrent handwriting
• Solomon DeLong – PG author/translator
• H. L. Fischer – PG author/translator
• Louis August Wollenweber – PG author
• Thomas C. Zimmerman – PG author/translator
• Assabe and Sabina
• The Forest of Time
• Jersey Dutch
• Hunsrik language

• Keiser, Steven Hartman. Pennsylvania German in the American Midwest (Duke University Press, 2012), 197 pp. online review

Pennsylvania German edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikisource has the text of the 1921 Collier's Encyclopedia article Pennsylvania Dutch.

Organizations

• German Society of Pennsylvania
• The Pennsylvania German Society
• Deutsch-Pennsylvanischer Arbeitskreis / German-Pennsylvanian Association

Pennsylvania German

• Hiwwe wie Driwwe – The Pennsylvania German Newspaper

Further information

• Recordings of native speakers
• Pennsylvania German in non-Amish, non-Mennonite communities
• From the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online
• Possible explanations for the confusion of names
• An annual Pennsylvania German dialect festival: "En Friehyaahr fer die Mudderschprooch"