 | Pennsylvania Dutch Dialect - Notes | |
Pennsylvania Dutch refers to the Pennsylvania Germans who settled in Pennsylvania, beginning in the very late 1600's through the 1800's, and their culture and language. The language matured in isolated parts of the state among immigrants from several German speaking countries and their descendants. Various studies have shown that the language has many characteristics of the German spoken in Southwest Germany, but includes aspects of other dialects of German including Swiss. These aspects of a somewhat isolated group of people with slightly different dialects forming a somewhat homogeneous new dialect has intrigued linguists since and caused it to be a subject of much study.
The name Pennsylvania Dutch comes from the English use of the term Dutch to refer to people of the Germanic countries in general. The Pennsylvania Dutch are in no way related the Dutch from Holland (although some of the earliest German immigrants were from Northern Germany, I believe, and had what appear to me to be Holland Dutch names). The details of whether this name resulted from English speakers incorrectly hearing and writing Deitsch, or if it was already a common way of referring to the people of Germany has been debated. Dr. Don Yoder addresses this in an interesting article here.
Another one is here.
The name Pennsylvania Dutch is also extended to those who moved on to the South or West and retained aspects of the Pennsylvania German culture and language.
The German's of Pennsylvania and their descedants continued to use the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect until the early 1900's when it began to rapidly fall out of favor. The reasons are many and complex. English had replaced German by law in the schools with the creation of the public school system. People found it difficult to assimilate into the mainstream Pennsylvania culture by speaking German or having a strong German accent (compare with ongoing debates today on getting a job in America without fluent knowledge of English!). If you check the census records of the early 1900's, you'll see that only the oldest members of the community spoke only German. If you look into the writings of the late 1800's and the early 1900's, for example within the Pennsylvania German Society, they knew what was happening and most did not actively resist the demise of the language (other than the Amish and Mennonite closed communities, there are not many young dialect speakers in 2005).
Another factor affecting the decline in use of Pennsylvania German was the participation of this country in two world wars with Germany. Although the Pennsylvania Germans had been citizens of this country for many generations (most of the families tracing their roots to immigrants in the early and mid-1700's), their allegiance could be suspect when speaking the German language in public. I have to think this was certainly an accelerating factor in what was already a dying trend.
In their daily lives, the Pennsylvania Germans kept Bibles printed in Standard German (and church services were supposedly done in the Standard German dialect). There were also many newspapers written in the Pennsylvania German dialect (my local newspaper still has a periodic Pennsylvania Dutch column!). The older newspapers were written in Fraktur style fonts (as were the Bibles) and the common handwriting was done in Sütterlin (although technically, Sütterlin script was developed in 1911, it's essentially the same German script of the 1700's). . Fraktur letters have the little hooks on the bottom of many lower case letters and have very ornate upper case. The average literate Pennsylvania German must have been used to reading Fraktur letters (which strain my eyes). Sütterlin looks very similar to English cursive writing, but with enough differences to confuse someone not familiar with the style. This cursive style was common in Pennsylvania German wills, letters, and note books (of which I have several old examples). I've observed some differences over the years in some of the Sütterlin characters and I've compiled a list of them, but you should be able to figure out most wills and document by using any of the fonts shown in books and on the internet.
Note that there are some aspects of the dialect that are still not captured at this site. In order to really understand enough of the dialect to read or listen, you will need to study the grammar used in Pennsylvania Dutch (see the resources). The inflections (rise and fall) within the sentence are not normally described in the texts (but see resources). Also, even in pronunciation, there are subtleties not captured in the sound clips. To me, it's as if the sounds are generated further back in the throat. Also, there are subtleties in the way the tongue and lips form certain sounds that is not easily captured in an mp3 file.