What language is Pennsylvania Dutch most closely related to?
Pennsylvania Dutch (also known as Pennsylvania German) derived from a dialect spoken by southwestern Germans. The ancestors of the language came from Southwestern Europe, where lots of people spoke German. It's believed that the dialect appeared after the merger of Rhine Franconian and Alemannic dialects. The result of that dialect levelling was a dialect very close to the eastern dialects of Palatinian, especially the rural dialects around Mannheim/Ludwigshafen.
Dutch has nothing to do with the Dutch people here: it's just a left over from an archaic sense of the English word "Dutch" which referred to any people speaking a non-peripheral continental West Germanic language on the European mainland.
More Info:
en.wikipedia.org
What are your thoughts on this subject?
49 Comments
Shrnkrap8
It's actually a bastardization of the word Deutsch, referring to the German language.
Eric Elias
The Pennsylvania Dutch are actually an ethnic group referred to as the Pennsylvania Germans, NOT to be confused with the Amish who were a sect of a different religion and immigrated at a different time.
littledick
To those of you who think they should all speak American English like the rest of us, most Amish do and are in fact bilingual. That's more than I can say for most Americans. And if they speak German in public, so what? They will speak our language in public, IF NECESSARY, viz., to non-German speakers (that's most of us uneducated Americans), to public officials, to store clerks, etc., etc., so I see absolutely no problem here at all. I feel a lot of Americans who knock those who speak another language are just jealous of the fact they never learned a language other than American English.
Sarah Hearn-vonFoerster
Exactly. Thank you.
Stephen Forest
Perhaps should have mentioned that Dutch was confused with Deutsch.
Kathy Mcginty
My mother's family were Pennsylvania Dutch aka Mennonite. Mom and her siblings didn't speak English until they went up school. Her parents and her siblings would switch to Germany when they were all together.
Maia
littledick, so true!
Donna Smith
Missed it
d p catalano
My mom was Pennsylvania Dutch. 😎
Annie
Got it right.
Caroline Cannon
Got it right.
Carroll Price
Eric Elias, Mennonites and Amish are closely related sects of the Christian religion,. The Amish are actually an off-shoot of the Mennonite sect..
joan musicmasters
Ma Bales, "'The' should speak English"? What the heck? Most "Americans" have no idea how to speak proper English; and as you have shown, cannot write it, either. Quit putting people down who aren't like you, and "give peace a chance."
Ellen Wolf
What Shrnkrap8 said.
littledick
We speak the American dialect of English. Dialects are mutually intelligible, languages usually are not. All Amish are Pennsylvania Germans, but not all Pennsylvania Germans are Amish.
littledick
The cognoscenti call it Pennsylvania German.
Cheryl McMeekin
Had no idea
Joanne Serin
cwisconsin, first of all, there is no such language as American. Our language is called English. Now to your point. English is a difficult language to learn, especially if you have to also learn another alphabet (e.g. Asian languages, Middle Eastern languages, Greek, Armenian, Russian, and others). It's even more difficult if you're poor, un- or under-educated and/or illiterate in your primary language, if you've come here as an adult (my great-aunt came here in 1903 as a teen, and while she learned to speak English just to get along, she never learned to write it. My grandmother, on the other hand, came at age 6; she learned to speak, read, and write in school, where she was forced toberite with her right hand. Times gave changed, and language acquisition methods have improved, but the age at arrival is still an important factor.), if you have to work long hours to support yourself and your family, you may have multiple obstacles. I greatly admire those who do become fluent, but I will not look down on those who have difficulties that may limit or prevent their learning English.