Pennsylvania Dutch (language)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pennsylvania German ("Deitsch")

Spoken in

USA :
specifically Northern Indiana ; east-central Illinois , southeast Pennsylvania , central Ohio

Canada :

Kitchener - Waterloo Region, Ontario

Belize :

Cayo
speaker 350,000-420,000 (2012)
Linguistic
classification
Language codes
ISO 639 -1

-

ISO 639 -2

gem (Germanic (other))

ISO 639-3

pdc

Pennsylvania Dutch , also known as Pennsylvania German , Pennsylvaniadeutsch, Pensilfaanisch, Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch, Pennsilfaani or Pennsilveni-Deitsch , is alanguage variant of the German language in North America that is mainly based ondialects of the Upper Palatinate / Electorate of the Palatinate . It is used by hundreds of thousands of members of the Pennsylvania Dutch and their descendants in language islands today, especially in the US states Pennsylvania , Ohio and Indiana , as well as in the Canadian Ontario spoken. Numerous speakers (especially Amish old regulations and Mennonites old regulations ) is also available in the states of Iowa , Kentucky , Michigan , Missouri , New York and Wisconsin . Some speakers also live in Kansas , Oklahoma , Minnesota , Montana, and a few other states.

Pennsylvania high German, on the other hand, is an ancient high German based on the 18th and 19th centuries. Century, expanded to include elements and structures of Pennsylvania German and American English . This variant is only actively used by around 5000 speakers. Most speakers come from the groups of Amish old order and the Mennonites old regulations and officials in their communities (bishops, preachers and deacons).

designation

The designation "Dutch" is an example of the linguistic economic language change , whereby the Pennsylvania German self-name "Deitsch" was pronounced by the English speakers as "Dutch" (usually "Dutch"). In itself, this development was not entirely illogical, since "Dutch" and "Deitsch" (as well as German , Tysk , Duits and Diets ) have a common origin in the ancient Germanic word * þiudiskaz , in addition to phonetic similarities .

Although the German origin of the Pennsylvania Dutch is beyond question in today's Pennsylvania German community, the majority of the Pennsylvania Dutch call themselves "Dutch" instead of "German" in English. The main historical reason for this is the almost non-existent German emigration to America in the period 1760–1830. The Germans who emigrated in the 19th century were viewed as closely related by the Pennsylvania Dutch, but viewed differently: The newly immigrated German-Americans saw the Pennsylvania Dutch as backward because they had no national consciousness and had little or no command of Standard German. In contrast, the Pennsylvania Dutch believed that the new German-Americans were elitist and condescending. A clear example of this difference are the terms "Deitsche" for Pennsylvania Dutch and "Deitschlenner" (literally "Deutschländer") for Germans, which is now common among German speakers in Namibia and Romania for Germans from Germany.

When the German-Americans assimilated into American society during the 19th century, this difference disappeared again and in the contemporary Pennsylvania German language “Deitsche” is both the shorter self-name and the word for German. Another reason for keeping “Dutch” instead of “German” was the hostility towards Germans among Americans during World War I, which resulted in anti-German hysteria and German-speaking Americans being attacked and forced to assimilate. Today, however, it is common for many Pennsylvania Dutch to identify themselves as German-American (in addition to Pennsylvania Dutch); likewise, the terms Pennsylvania Dutch and Pennsylvania German are completely interchangeable.

history

The German population in the United States in 1872

In order to avoid religious persecution, members of various Protestant faiths ( Mennonites , Schwarzenau Brethren , Schwenkfelder , Pietists and Moravian Brothers ) emigrated to Pennsylvania , especially in the 18th century . Many came from the historic Electoral Palatinate , but also from the neighboring areas in Baden , Württemberg , German-speaking Switzerland and Alsace . The majority of the immigrants came after 1710. In the 18th century there were still different dialect areas depending on the population composition, with a balance between the various Middle Franconian , Rhenish Franconian , Swabian , Bavarian and Alemannic dialects, with the Palatinate in particular taking place at the local level interspersed, elements of Alemannic were also preserved to a lesser extent. From around 1800 one can assume a supra-regional alignment of the dialects on the basis of Palatine and describe Pennsylvania Dutch as a uniform language variant of German. In 1938 an agreement was reached on German orthography at an orthography congress , which, however, is interpreted quite freely.

Todays situation

Blue: the counties with the highest percentage of Pennsylvania speakers.
Red: the counties with the highest number of Pennsylvania speakers

Pennsylvania Dutch appears to some linguists as an endangered language. Only a minority of German immigrants of the 18th century have passed the language on to this day. Up until the two World Wars, Pennsylvania Dutch was a relatively widespread language in southeastern Pennsylvania, with around 800,000 speakers. Only the anti-German measures and repressive laws in the wake of the world wars as well as the social pressure on the speakers led to the fact that in many cases the language was no longer passed on to the next generation. Only the conservative Anabaptist groups, essentially the Amish and the old-order Mennonites , withstood this pressure. There are also individual families outside of these groups who hold on to the dialect. In the religious groups where the language is still alive today, there is no sign that it could be abandoned.

Today, Pennsylvania Dutch is passed down to the next generation primarily by the Amish and old-order Mennonites. Originally, these groups made up less than 10% of the Pennsylvania-Dutch speakers. Since the Amish and Mennonites are very large, the number of speakers is growing very quickly. In these groups, which among themselves speak exclusively Pennsylvania Dutch, numerous English loanwords lead to a change in vocabulary.

The Pennsylvania German dialect is largely no longer spoken in population groups that do not belong to the above-mentioned religious communities. The loss of language in smaller groups began as early as the 1830s when e.g. B. a law on the Pennsylvania school system (1834) led in the medium term to an increased use of English. Still, the Pennsylvania German was very much alive until World War I. With the war, however, extensive repressive measures began against everything German, which intensified in the Second World War . Since then, the Pennsylvania German has been passed on to children almost exclusively by the old-fashioned Amish and Mennonites, so that speakers outside of these groups are mostly rare and very old today.

Today's Pennsylvanian German speakers from the Amish and Mennonite group should be able to read and understand High German in the form of Bible texts, but few are able to use it as a colloquial language. The Amish service is held in Amish High German, which is ultimately a mixture of Bible High German and Pennsylvania German.

Exact speaker counts are not available. Most of the information is between 300,000 and 350,000 speakers. The language is spoken and actively used every day by at least 300,000 people in the United States and more than 5,000 in Canada. Most speakers live in the states of Pennsylvania ( Berks County , Chester County , Crawford County , Lancaster County , Lebanon County , Lehigh County , Mifflin County , Schuylkill County , Snyder County , Somerset County , Union County ), Ohio ( Holmes County , Trumbull County , Tuscarawas County , Wayne County ), Indiana ( LaPorte County , St. Joseph County , Starke County ) and New York ( Yates County ) - see also the adjacent map.

The old order Mennonites have tens of thousands of speakers. There are also several thousand speakers from other Mennonite parishes, Beachy Amish (only partly spoken by the older generation and the Old Beachy Amish), also several thousand Lutherans , Unitarians and Catholics . The vast majority of speakers live in the United States; the number of speakers in Canada is considerably lower. Due to the migration of the Amish and Mennonites of the old order, speaker populations moved further and further west over time because land is cheaper to buy there. Small settlements of old-order Mennonites have existed in Belize since the 1970s , and there have been recent attempts to settle new-order Amish in Bolivia and Paraguay .

In 2003 the German-Pennsylvanian working group was founded in Ober-Olm (Rheinhessen) and entered in a German register of associations. It promotes linguistic and cultural exchange between the German and Pennsylvania German language areas. Since March 2006 there is also a Wikipedia in Pennsylvania German (see section Web Links ).

The country singer John Schmid sings his songs among other things, on Pennsylvaniadeutsch.

Characteristics

Similarities to the Palatinate

In its basic structure, Pennsylvania Dutch is very similar to the Upper Palatinate and Electoral Palatinate between Mannheim , Ludwigshafen , Speyer and Neustadt , but differs from it in the following points:

  • Extensive task of the dative
  • The indefinite article is always “en”, ie “en man”, “en Fraa”, “en child” in contrast to “en man”, “e Fraa”, “e child” in the Upper Palatinate
  • No coincidence of "sch" and the "ch" pronounced as the " I sound "
  • In words like “short”, “there”, the vowel appears as “a” and not as “oa”, ie “katz”, “dat”, instead of “koatz”, “doat”
  • The "r", where it does not drop out at the end of the syllable, is either pronounced as in American English or as a tongue-r , but never as a palate-r as is common in today's German
  • The double sound “au” (as far as it goes back to Middle High German / ou /) is spoken in many sub-dialects as a long “a”, a phenomenon that is more characteristic of the West Palatinate in the region of origin, whereas it competes with the long open “òò” in the Upper Palatinate
  • Preserving old words that are slowly disappearing in the Upper Palatinate, such as seller "this, that", ebbes "something", ass (relative "that / what") etc.
  • No loan words derived from French such as “alla” (from French “allez”). Contrary to popular belief, this is probably not due to the fact that the Palatinate was only occupied by the French after the great wave of emigration.

Special features

  • American English loanwords that are mostly used like German words, d. H. Verbs and adjectives are inflected in German (e.g. English “to farm” appears as I have farmed ). Nouns get a German article and are used in compound words with German nouns (e.g. carpenterarwett from English “carpenter” for “carpenter” and the Pennsylvania-Dutch word for “work”). The proportion of loanwords is around 15 percent, with fewer loanwords used in the regional variants in Pennsylvania than in the American Midwest .
  • Partial coincidence of nominative and accusative forms, as well as in the Upper Palatinate
  • Breakdown of the dative, e.g. B. Accusative in geb mich sell book "give me this book", but still with the book "with the book"
  • frequent use of the do paraphrase, d. H. Verbs are conjugated in combination with duh "to do" as an auxiliary verb, (e.g. I duh Kieh milke for "I milk cows"), as well as common in German and southern Dutch dialects as well as the German colloquial language
  • Use of a tense form (or progressive ) with “am” and a verb in the infinitive , e.g. B. I'm am melke, as well as in other German dialects as well as in the German (cf. am-progressive ) and Dutch colloquial language.
  • Monophthong "e" or "ä" for "ei" in the regional variants of the Midwest ( Däätsch instead of Deitsch )

Influence of American English on vocabulary

  • Loan words (see above)
  • Loan translations or semantic borrowings (e.g. hod turned out better for English "has turned out better", which actually means "went better out")
  • Loan meanings in which the meaning of a similar English word influences the meaning of the German word (e.g. I equal for “I like”, influenced by English “to like” and the adjective “like”; the coincidence of the meanings of “know "And" know "in" know ", as in English" to know ")

Influence of American English on pronunciation and grammar

  • Pronunciation of "r" and "l" as in American English (in the regional variants in Pennsylvania, but not in the Midwest)
  • Acceleration of the dative breakdown (not the dative breakdown itself, which also takes place in dialects without English contact)
  • the future tense auxiliary verbs figgere and zelle (instead of "werden"), z. B. I cell clap you for "I'll hit you"
  • possibly the expansion of the use of progressive constructions (the form of the progressive does not correspond to American English)

Text samples

Sticker on Pennsylvania Dutch: "We still speak the mother tongue"
Pennsylvania German newspaper Hiwwe like Driwwe

A uniform spelling for Pennsylvania Dutch never emerged. Initially, the focus was on the writing of the dialect texts according to the rules of the written German language of the time - with all the problems ( phoneme - grapheme relation) with which modern dialect poetry in Germany is also confronted. In 2004 there were 80 to 100 Pennsylvania German dialect authors.

A few published texts in special dialect columns of local English-language newspapers, the majority published in the Pennsylvania German newspaper Hiwwe wie Driwwe, founded by Michael Werner . Since 2011, the jury of the Palatinate dialect poet contest in Bockenheim an der Weinstrasse has been awarding the "Hiwwe wie Driwwe Award" as a special prize for Pennsylvania German literature.

An example of this "German orthography" is the following version of the Lord's Prayer :

Our Vadder in Heaven,
May your Naame loss be holy,
Let the rich go,
Your will is lost,
on earth as in heaven.
Our daily bread is given to us,
Un forgive our debts,
How I messed up, I guilty
And lead us to the temptation
awwer hald us vum ewile.
Fer Dei is rich, the graft,
and the hallichkeit in Ewichkeit.
Amen.

In addition, due to the close contact with English, a partially "English orthography" has developed. In particular, the newspaper publisher Edward H. Rauch contributed to the spread of this variant with his bilingual publication Pennsylvania Dutchman . The preface to the first edition from January 1873 gives a typical impression:

The Pennsylvania Dutchman is net yusht intend
for ridiculous un popular lehsa shtuff for olly
de our Pennsylvanish Deitsh - de mixture fun
Deitsh un Aenglish - fershtehn, awer aw for usefully
un profitable instruction for olly de druf ous sin
known tsu wasra with the shproch, un aw with em
geisht, character un hondlunga fun our fleisicha,
Ehrlicha and taahlreicha folk in all de Middle and Westlicha Shtaata.
The Pennsylvania Dutchman is not only designed
to furnish amusing and popular reading matter for all
who understand the peculiar dialect or compound of
German and English known as "Pennsylvania Dutch", but also profitable
and interesting instruction for all who may desire
to become familiar with this language, and the
customs and peculiarities of the Pennsylvania
Germans, constituting a very numerous, substantial and
worthy class of People of the Middle and Western States.

See also

literature

Grammars and Overviews

  • AF Buffington, PA Barba: A Pennsylvanian German Grammar. Schlechter's, Allentown 1954.
  • Ernst Christmann: Pennsylvania German as a Palatine dialect . Dümmler, Bonn 1950.
  • J. William Frey: A Simple Grammar of Pennsylvania Dutch . 3. Edition. Brookshire Lanc 1985.
  • Earl C. Haag: A Pennsylvania German Reader and Grammar. Pennsylvania State University, University Park and London 1982, ISBN 978-0-271-02142-3 .
  • Silke Van Ness: Pennsylvania German. In: Ekkehard König, Johan van der Auwera (Ed.): The Germanic Languages. Routledge, London / New York 1994, pp. 420-438.

Dictionaries

  • C. Richard Beam: Revised Pennsylvania German dictionary, English to Pennsylvania Dutch . 2nd Edition. Brookshire Lanc 1994, ISBN 1-880976-00-5 .

Special examinations

  • Lotti Arter-Lamprecht: German-English language contact. The multilingualism of an Old Order Amish community in Ohio from a sociolinguistic and interferential linguistic point of view (= Swiss Anglistic Works, 117). Francke, Tübingen / Basel 1992.
  • Karl-Heinz Bausch: In other words - was gschwind in English ded's mena? Observations on Pennsylvania German Today. In: Sprachreport . Issue 4, 1997, ISSN  0178-644X , p. 1-6 .
  • Heinrich P. Kelz : Phonological analysis of the Pennsylvania German . Buske, Hamburg 1971.
  • Mark L. Louden: Basics of the Pennsylvania German sentence structure. In: Erhard Eggers, Jürgen Erich Schmidt, Dieter Stellmacher (Hrsg.): Modern dialects - New dialectology. Files of the 1st Congress of the International Society for Dialectology of German 2003. ZDL supplements. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-515-08762-1 , pp. 253-265.

Movies

  • Pennsylvania Dutch, its grammar and syntax, its history, literature and distribution are the subject of a film essay entitled “ Penn'a Du ”, which the German director Georg Brintrup shot in the United States in 1981/82.
  • In 2017, the Palatinate producers Benjamin Wagener and Christian Schega filmed the documentary Hiwwe wie Driwwe - Pfälzisch in Amerika in Pennsylvania and the Palatinate . It is a cinematic implementation of the journalistic approach of the newspaper Hiwwe wie Driwwe . Members of the editorial team work in front of the camera - especially co-editor Douglas Madenford, who is the protagonist of the documentary. The film, from which excerpts were shown on October 15, 2017 on the 12th German-Pennsylvania Day , is slated to hit cinemas in 2018  .

Web links

Wikipedia in Pennsylvania German

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Steven Nolt: A History of the Amish . Good Books, Intercourse Pa 2003, ISBN 1-56148-393-1 , p. 337.
  2. ^ Hughes Oliphant Old: The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church, Volume 6: The Modern Age. Eerdmans Publishing, 2007, p. 606.
  3. ^ Mark L. Louden: Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language. JHU Press, 2006, p. 2.
  4. ^ Irwin Richman: The Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Arcadia Publishing, 2004, p. 16.
  5. ^ W. Haubrichs: Theodiscus, German and Germanic - three ethnonyms, three research terms. On the question of the instrumentalization and value assignment of German language and popular names. In: H. Beck et al .: On the history of the equation “Germanisch-deutsch” (2004), pp. 199–228
  6. ^ Etymology Online Dictionary.
  7. ↑ Merriam Webster.
  8. ^ Mark L. Louden: Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language. JHU Press, 2006, pp. 3-4
  9. ↑ Jürgen Müller: Review of: German-Americans in the First World War . In: sehepunkte , Edition 8 (2008), No. 3, March 15, 2008, accessed on October 27, 2019.
  10. ^ Mark L. Louden: Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language. JHU Press, 2006, p. 255
  11. ^ Marion Hahnfeldt: Country with a difference: "Hoscht you meh deitsche songs?" In: www.welt.de. August 19, 2018. Retrieved August 19, 2018 .
  12. ^ Steven Hartman Keizer: Language Change Across Speech Islands . Dissertation, Ohio State University 2001, p. 105.
  13. ^ Claudia Blank: The Influence of American English on the Lexicon of the Pennsylvania German of the Old Order Amish in Lancaster County; Pennsylvania. Dissertation University of Regensburg. Regensburg 1994. Helga Seel: Lexicological studies on the Pennsylvania German. Word formation of the Pennsylvania German. Speech contact phenomena in the Pennsylvania German vocabulary. F. Steiner, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-515-05100-7 .
  14. ↑ Christian Schwarz: The do-Periphrase in German (PDF), master's thesis at Ludwig Maximilians University. Munich 2004, pp. 15-18.
  15. ↑ Nils Langer: Linguistic purism in action - how auxiliary do what stigmatized in Early New High German . Studia linguistica Germanica. Volume 60.Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2001, ISBN 3-11-017024-8 .
  16. ↑ Melanie Schwarz: The course form in the German and English language. A comparison . Master's thesis, University of Bamberg. Bamberg 2002.
  17. ↑ Ulrich Groenke: Aspect in a German dialect and in Icelandic. Comparable structural facets of Cologne and Icelandic. In: NOWELE. Odense 21-22.1993, pp. 151-158, ISSN  0108-8416 .
  18. ↑ Barbara Meister Ferré: Stability and change in the Pennsylvania German dialect of an old order Amish community in Lancaster County . F. C. W. Vogel, Stuttgart 1994.
  19. ^ Albert F. Buffington, Preston A. Barba: A Pennsylvania German Grammar . Bad, Allentown 1965.
  20. ^ Jörg Meindl: Pennsylvania German in Kansas. Language Change or Loss? In: Mathias Schulze, David G. John, Grit Liebscher, Sebastian Siebel-Achenbach, James M. Skidmore (Eds.): German Diasporic Experiences - Identity, Migration, and Loss . Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo 2008, ISBN 978-1-55458-027-9 , pp. 431-442.
  21. ^ Steven Hartman Keizer: Language change across speech islands, the emergence of a midwestern dialect of Pennsylvania German . Dissertation Ohio State University 2001. UMI, Ann Arbor 2002, p. 13.
  22. ^ William D. Keel: Reduction and Loss of Case Marking in the Noun Phrase in German-American Speech Islands. Internal Development or External Interference? In: Language Island Research. A memorial for Hugo Jedig. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-631-46969-1 , pp. 93-104.
  23. ^ A b Mark L. Louden: Basics of the Pennsylvania German sentence structure. In: Erhard Eggers, Jürgen Erich Schmidt, Dieter Stellmacher (Hrsg.): Modern dialects - New dialectology . ZDL supplements. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-515-08762-1 , p. 257.