The duality between the two men is kinda funny. On the one hand, there's a native English speaker really excited about his German heritage. On the other hand, there's a native German speaker really forced to be in the video by his girlfriend. =P
@Oscar Mannhein This is the same problem we have as Native American's. I am Cherokee and our language is going fast. Many of the smaller tribes have already lost their language. Fortunately, we are a larger tribe, and doing everything we can to preserve our language. When our older people pass away, our language is going away accordingly. I hope the Pennsylvania Dutch people can do so as well, because when this is gone, it's gone for ever.
@@armoricain People tend to misjudge us bigger guys in both directions. Too many people are afraid of us who shouldn't be. But there are also a few who aren't, and should be.
Depends on where from Germany ur from. I think Pennsylvanian Dutch is really simular to Plattdeutsch, wich is only spoken by few these days in the north. It's the perfect balance of German, Dutch and English and hard to understand by people not from the area if talked fluently. He probably from the south tho.
Even I as German (who is 2 times a week in the Netherlands and worked for a Dutch Company) can understand most words and also how the sentence is built in some cases. For these parts sound Dutch. - Anyway, I think Dutch just derived from a different Germanic Dialect which we call Friesisch (I think Dutch Friesian) and German from another Germanic Dialect. All together they are in the group of west germanic languages together with English, German, Dutch, Afrikaans, South-German, Friesisch and Jiddisch.
@@marcnobel3938 Yiddish. I used to be able to understand and converse in it, as it was spoken in my family (my mother, born in America, did not learn English until she was 5 and started school). But once I started learning German, it became harder and harder to hold into my Yiddish. Now I only understand some, as it is a dying language and I lost all my family who spoke it. The Amish (Pennsylvania Dutch) maintain their language, which I think is a great thing, and still al speak fluent English as they live in the US and work with Americans on a regular basis.
He is referring to his "tribe" if you will. He is ethnically German, and identifies as so. When he says "we" he is referring to his people, his family, his ancestors.
When I was an exchange student from the Netherlands in Pennsylvania and my host family told of this language called Pennsylvania Dutch that they thought was similar to Dutch (Nederlands) So they introduced me to their neighbours and they began to speak Pennsylvania Dutch. I quickly picked up they were speaking a German dialect so I replied back in Standard German and explained to them them that my host family thinks their language is identical is mine. My host Mum turned to my host Dad and said something like "Oh it is must be nice for him (me) to be able to speak in his language". LOL
Before 200, 300, 500, 1000 years no book exist how say numbered how do you should write or speak THIS language. The first "books" use latin or other high educated languages, but nobody normal person can read -> mean nobody want to write letter. So are exist less books about writing/reading a language and every wrote "up to him". Look into the first german lutheran bible - most school kids of 2020 can read that. Same with old books from different people. Look at one of the immigrant list of US habour where family member earn different name. Today we know that family names never change! So we can use one passport over 200 borders without problems ... But come as european traveler to asia - I count till yet 5 different thai writing of my easy name. Same is happend with the word "dutch, deitsch, deutsch, duuch" ... Fun Fact: HM William I. King of the Nederland and Grand Duke of Luxemburg was german over "Prince of Nassau-Orange-Fulda" and her mother. From the side of born he is also "fully german", he self named it "Nederlanden" - so of course people struggle these days with 'correct names'. Same with the Columbus continent - why named it America?
@@maaifoediedelarey4335 Vergiss nicht dass er Ostdeutscher ist! Die waren mal zwei ganz verschiedene Länder...deswegen....(Übrigens--"das ist die Tatsache" würde man auf Deutsch sagen/schreiben.)
When I was 11 years old my family and I went on summer vacation and took in the east cost. We stopped in a restaurant in Pennsylvania Dutch country. Next to us was another family. My father and mother overheard their conversation which was spoken in my father's dialect, Swabian. My father asked the family when they came over from Southwest Germany. The father in their family answered, "Oh, about 300 years ago." They were Pennsylvania Dutch, yet they spoke Swabian, my father's native dialect.
that's true, there was an vocal switch after that, swabians did not make this switch, including 2 before that, and a badensian switch was overtaken by the rest of Germany later, as far as I understand and can remember the explanation I once read about.
Living in rural central PA, I kinda wanna learn it. I just went to an Amish hockey tournament (they built their own ice skating rink in a field) and we hung out, we brought a little bus with a portable grill and sold food and soda, and I kinda enjoy listening and trying to decipher what they're saying based on cognates. It's also fun hanging out with the rebellious Amish around my age who wanna drink beer and smoke weed. They get nuts.
@@tenienteramires4428 When I worked in rural Louisiana (25 yrs ago), I treated an old man in his 90's who didn't speak any English, only French. His daughters translated for him. I naively asked how long he had been living in the US, they laughed and said all his life. When he was born, c. 1900, they said no one spoke English in their area. By the time the daughters went to school, the nuns would paddle them if they spoke French. So they spoke Cajun French at home and English at school. Much of the spoken French language was then lost in the following generations. Sadly a lot of language is lost because of prejudices.
It is literally the language that all Americans would be speaking even to this day if Benjamin Franklin hadn't chosen English we would live in a country where pa Dutch would be the main language and you'd only hear English in certain Areas of the country
Fun fact. The Three Stooges were Jewish and grew-up in Yiddish speaking households. In their slapstick comedy routine (short films), they often seem to be "making-up" words as they go along. Well...not always. Sometimes they are actually using minor curse words from their Yiddish language. When translated to English, some of what they said would need to be censored.
I always wondered: are there any people actually speaking Yiddish these days besides those super orthodox Jews living in some NYC boroughs? Man, I'd love to learn Yiddish.
Do you consider Yiddish to be a dialect of German instead of a separate language? I’ve been learning German for a year and a half, and have studied some Yiddish and seen many videos of it, and I can understand it better than actual German dialects like Bavarian lol. Heck, Yiddish even has Bavarian words in it, thus further reinforcing my opinion that it’s a dialect with Hebrew influence , rather than its own language
We are recognised since 1588 as "Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden". We changed names a couple times, but saying that the Netherlands didn't exists in the early 1700's is false and definitely NOT a myth. The language that was spoken here during 1200 to 1550 is "Diets", the etymological brother of "Duuts" (which evolved into Deutsch/German). The reason why in the English language "Dutch" has become the word for the Netherlands, actually did derive out of confusion. At least, that's what I have been told. Maybe the Pennsylvanians know better...
Dank je. Hij deed het voorkomen alsof wij niks waren. Maar jouw antwoord was heel correct en terecht. Tuurlijk komen wij voort uit "duits", maar wij zijn echt wel een taal op ons zelf. En ik weet dat er in Amerika nog wel regio's zijn waar ze geen "deutsch" maar Nederlands spreken.
Actually: There is a difference between the forming of countries and the forming of language. Diets was not a/one language but a collection of languages and dialects. Some Polish territories were also Diets. Even today you can follow a trail of local dialects that changes from town to town totally understandable to a neighboring town even across borders. It's called the dialect continuum: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum It was around 1500 that people started differentiating between two *written* languages as German (Overlands) and Dutch (Nederlands ) .So written, formal dutch was a thing but in speaking there were huge differences. But stricktly speaking (modern) Dutch was only formalized in 1882.
Nathan Laoshi Deutsch ist nunmal sehr komplex, deshalb merken wir direkt wenn jemand kein Muttersprachler ist, wie zum Beispiel Sie. Ich kenne einige Amerikaner, manche davon wohnen hier schon seit den 80ern, und kaum einer davon spricht mit passabler Grammatik geschweige denn mit korrekter Aussprache.
Sort of, until he called standard German Hochdeutsch. Bavarian German or even Swiss German (which I can't understand at all) are classified as Hochdeutsch, Hochdeutsch means high German, as opposed to Niederdeutsch, which means low German. The high and low comes from average sea level. Also his grammar was a little off. Mein Vater hat kein mehr Tabak. should be Mein Vater hat keinen Tabak mehr. He translated that sentence from English directly into German and didn't place the words in the correct order.
This is not true. "Hochdeutsch" can also be used as a synonym for Standarddeutsch. de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standarddeutsch "Standarddeutsch, genauer Standardhochdeutsch, auch mehrdeutig Hochdeutsch und schweizerisch Schriftdeutsch genannt, ist das Ergebnis der Normung der deutschen Sprache."
Bavarian and Swiss German are definetly not standard High German, the bavarian Dialekt is rather Middle-High German and even that is an exaggeration since the bavarian Dialect is super hard to understand has almost nothing in common with "high german". Also, Niederdeutsch is not really commonly used, and only because People come from the Northern Part doesnt mean they automatically speak Niederdeutschd or rather Flat German.
The Swiss speak "Schweizer Deutsch" and pronounce it as "Schweetzer Dootsch." They learn Hoch Deutsch in school, but even when they speak it (for example, the announcements on my recent flight on SwissAir was--supposedly--in Hoch Deutsch), there is still a very Swiss lilt to their German. You can tell it is not really Hoch Deutsch. It is definitely not the same, as the others note as well in this thread.
This is really interesting for me (German Linguist). I first came in contact with preserved German language when I was in Houston in 2004. I felt like flung back 200 years. It was kind of a west-northern German dialect they spoke. The guy should work on Pennsylvania_Dutch Wikipedia article to make his language known to more people in Germany.
West northern dialect? Do you mean Plattdütsch? Well, some consider this a different language, not simply a dialect. Otherwise Dutch could also be interpreted as a German dialect. Convince me otherwise.
@@boredatom Plattdeutsch is indeed classified as a seperate language. Like the Dutch from the Netherlands or the Danish. They come from the same language family, but they are seperate languages.
sieh dir mal die zeitung hiwwe wie driwwe an die ist von leuten aus der pfalz und auf pensilvania dutch gemacht es gibt auch ne sehr schöne dokumentation über die sprache und die herkunft wo der doug ais diesem video durch die pfalz reist take a look at the dialect newspaper hiwwe wie driwwe ... it is made from people from the palatinate and in the pensilvania dutch langurage there is allso a realy nice documentary movie the same doug as in this video trawels around in the palatinate and its mostly originated from the southwest of germany
When 2 dialects are no longer understandable, then they are considered separate languages. That’s what happened with Latin which was one language, but as local dialects evolved, people could no longer understand each other. Those Latin dialects became separate languages (Portuguese,?Spanish, French, etc).
When he said, "Me, speaking a foreign language...." I was thinking, after more than 300 years of it being spoken in the Eastern USA, is it really a foreign language? :)
Interesting! But in some southern german dialects 's(h)pringa' with an "sh" sound has that same meaning and at the same time the meaning of "run". There you can see. Our languages are based the same. Recently i watched a video about old british English and i wondered how germanic it sound, the pronounciation was totally different and reminded more on germanic or Scandinavian languages
I'm from Baden, and I live about 25 km away from the Rhine river, which is the border to the Pfalz. I myself speak badischen dialect and I'm familiar with the pfälzischen, hessischen and schweizerischen dialect as well. So naturally I understood Doug, when he talked "dutch", which is basically pfälzisch for my ears. But sadly the dialects here in Germany are getting lost piece by piece from generation to generation. I speak less dialect then my parents did, my kids speak a lot less dialect then I do and my grandchildren speak almost clean high german. It's not intentionally. But you have to learn high german anyway and so it just happens. For me it's kind of a miracle, that these people after three centuries still speak that language while otherwise speaking english. Wow!
Because what they call Pennsylvania Dutch is not the real Dutch from the Netherlands but German with a dialect from the South-West of Germany. They should call their language Pennsylvania Deutsch or Deutch and not Dutch because it isn´t Dutch at all.
Prometh With Codeine it is German, as the original commented noted to, Pennsylvania “Dutch” is a variation of Pfälzisch German, which is a region is southwestern Germany, with an obvious English contribution. It is German.
@@mawin_y2k And you´re absolutely wrong on this one. I´m from southern palatinate (südpfalz) and I understand 95 % of what he´s saying. I guess you´ve been to the Rheinland part of our state and there they sound completely different.
@@FrancisJoa looong years ago "dutch" was a collective name for "modern dutch aka netherlandish", duits, dutsch, doitsch, and however it was called back then in their respective regions. It is the language family of the germanic languages.
This is one the best overviews of the Pennsylvania Dutch language I've seen. Everything Doug said rings true to me. I'm an eighth-generation PA Dutch "Schneck from Schnecksville" Pennsylvania. My 88 year old parents are fluent in the dialect, having learned it from their parents. (I only know words and phrases.) 50 years ago when I was young, you'd often hear it spoken in public. Now it's getting rare to find fluent speakers, outside of the Amish and Old Order Mennonite communities. Those who can still speak it are usually over 80.
I'm 68 and from Allentown,Pa. and when I was a kid you heard Pennsylvania-Dutch even in Town! ....And English Speakers used Pennsylvania-Dutch Words and Phrases and pronunciations .... most people would pronounce House as Haus!
left myerstown at age 12 and worked hard to lose my pa accent intexas (they thought i was strange sounding lol) but let me go back and talk with pa dutch friend for an hour and it all comes right back
I‘m from Swittzerland and can understand the words, because it‘s close to swissgerman. In Switzerland (german part) everybody is speaking his dialect, high german isn‘t used in daily conversation.
65% in D sprechen auch Dialekt, im Süden natürlich deutlich mehr. Bei der Arbeit und am Telefon Standdarddeutsch. Außer man spricht auch dort mit Bekannten/Kollegen.
Schwiizer dütsch ghört halt, so wie badisch, (wa zu dem amisch-dütsch gworde isch, will karlsruh' un so, un i han gmeint ou vo dä pennsylvannias',) zu de Allemannische Sprooche. Vo dem her. x)
Well, ist is called „Kelly Dose her thing“. And he has not appeared to be very eager to present himself in Front of the camera before. But ist is well possible that he simply behaves friendly and neutral in a german way. And does not want to steal her the show.
Zeg dat wel,ik snap er niks van,Duts isBrabants dialect voor Duitsland,GERMAANS,is een volk dat uit stammen bestond. Germania genoemd, door de Romeinen
The English called all people speaking Dutch, Low or High German varieties "Dutch" because these people called themselves and what they spoke Duits(ch), Deutsch, Deitsch, Dütsch or Dietsch. Historically all continental West Germanic languages (except Frisian) were called Diutisk, Theodisk (Latin: Lingua Theodisca, from West Germanic thiud, diot = people), later Diutsch or Dietsch, then also Duits, Deutsch etc. They were regarded varieties of one language from Amsterdam to Vienna at least until the beginning of the 19th c.. The appearance of two standardized languages for writing, Dutch and (High) German, changed the perception. In the middle of the 18th c. High German scholars began to call only High German "Deutsch" anymore. Since then "Nederduits" (Dutch) was just called Niederländisch (Netherlands). In the Netherlands the old names (Nederlands) Duits and Nederduits were officially changed to Nederlands in 1815. Then Hoog Duits (High German) was just called Duits. Linguistically there is the old Continental West Germanic Dialect Continuum. By selecting certain features different segments can be defined as Dutch, Low German, Central (High) German and Upper (High) German. But there are transitional segments, especially along the Rhine (Rhenish fan). Ultimately the difference between dialect and language is just political. Dutch and Low Rhenish (both Low Franconian), Central Franconian and Rhine Franconian (both West Central German) dialects could be combined into one language "Frankish" by selecting different appropriate features. But then the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany had a problem. Dutch and Luxembourgish would be varieties of another language "Frankish" and that would be a further language in addition to Standard German. Nobody wants something like this!
Walter Ross True! It's essentially the same word - just with varying pronunciations. Spelling conventions came along later in the various regions, which makes the words look more different than they really are.
As a Swiss I understood much more than the east German guy; we still use the words Schüür, Schpringe (for running) and Tubak. Well the last one isn't used anymore by young people but people still know the word.
There's even a (small) Wikipedia in Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch. Believe it or not, I don't have any trouble to understand it! 😄😄 pdc.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haaptblatt
My boyfriend is American and speaks English natively, but he learned German in high school and college. Standard German, of course. So I played a few RU-vid videos to him of Bavarians and Swiss Germans speaking and his eyes crossed.
I'am Dutch born in Amsterdam and find the mutual Germanic languages fascinating. As a young boy my parents brought me all over Europe, mostly to German speaking countries, like Austria, Switzerland, Germany and Belgium. ( yes there is a German speaking community there too) I do understand German, no problem. More surprised i was about the Scandinavian language ( not Finnish), i wouldn't have thought that we would have that much in common. What i would like to say is, hold on to your heritage, teach your children to be proud of their backgrounds and keep up speaking some Dutch at home!.
Finnish is a very own language which has more similarity with Hungarian. And same for us Germans. Reading Dutch is easy hearing it is a bit more challenging but manageable. But it's simpler to learn Dutch or Scandinavian when you're native german/Dutch whatever
Yes, I am Belgian so my Dutch is a little different from the NL (even though it's grammatically etc exactly the same) but learning and speaking German, English and even Indonesian was so much easier for me than others I know. I can even read and hear and understand Afrikaans without ever having been educated in it
I study German and can get "the gist" of most conversations when I get used to the speaker, and I can get about 70% of what's written. Out of sheer boredom, I started Danish on Duolingo, and most words seem to be English-looking (hun for 'her'), German-looking, or occasionally Scottish-slang-looking (such as 'bairn' for child). It's quite intersting. My mother has been to Denmark a few times to see family, though I've only been once, and even being surrounded by the language for a week or two was enough to begin to understand snippets.
I drive often from Germany to Calais and am surprised at how far into France German is spoken and towards the East you can be sure that drivers with license plates ending in 57,58,55 , can speak German. @Christian 74
Just to say, when Misha says they sound Dutch, he’s probably talking about the accent and tone of the language, which makes sense because English and Dutch have more in common because of vowel and consonant shifts that occurred a long time ago. So German speakers surrounded by English speakers would start to sound more Dutch after a few hundred years even though the words and grammar are German. Lang Focus has a good video on Germanic languages if you’re interested in that kind of info. Also, my partner is from Baden-Württemberg, so he finds it funny to listen to PA Dutch speakers because they sound like Americans speaking a really old version of his dialect.
I think there are more Dialects in Germany than you could count. I'm from Lower Franconia (tiny part of Bavaria) and even here if you drive from village to village, often every village has its own kind of dialect. For example my grandfather grew up in a village here, and I hardly can understand him because of his dialect. If he drives 50km and would speak to locals from another village, I'm sure, if they try to communicate in their own dialect and not in Hochdeutsch, they would have their problems to understand each other. But the dialects - especially the tiny ones - are dieing out. Good video and Grüße aus Deutschland!
@@antonias9727 was ist denn die östliche vorstadt von nürnberg? Schwaig oder Röthenbach oderwie? und ist da der dialekt so krass, dass die fürther da einen nicht verstehen würden? ich finde die franken hören sich relativ gleich an ob jetzt in Roth, Spalt, Nürnberg oder sonstwo um Nbg herum^^ gruß aus der südstadt :D
allmääächt... mei Ansbacher Mama hat immer gsocht dass die Nümbercher u. Fürther an "ordinären" Dialekt homm 😂😂😂 🇩🇪🇺🇸 Sie bestand auf Hochdeutsch mit uns wenn nicht mit Einheimischen... 😌 Ade bleibt scheh!! 💞
Interesting. I worked in a Yiddish community in Melbourne Australia and picked up a little Yiddish and i also thought some of the Amish speech had similarities to some Yiddish words.
Not really a surprise to me when knowing how their structured around my area.... it's highly beneficial to have tons of kids- increase your workforce. lol Unlike most of us, the vast majority of Amish don't leave the flock and keep on contributing throughout their lifespans. Also the bigger the family the easier it is to have street cred within the community.. lol There is literally entire amish communities of nothing but family members. My buddy said he is going to keep popping out kids until it falls off.
@@MrLightning59 - You can't just change the meaning of words. When you are convinced something is true, but you are wrong, you are not lying, but mistaken.
Gosh this guy to the right.... I'm German myself but trust me, he just seems to be extremely bored and uninterested in the topic, and judging by his body language he seems to be pretty insecure, too. Having the honor and privilege to speak to someone who is capable of speaking a dying language that is 300 years old and like a time capsule of his own heritage should've been met with more enthusiasm. Should I ever visit the US I'd definitely come to the Fredericksburg area to learn about American-German history.
the main dialect of german "hochdeutsch" is not really luthers german but more of an artifical language made up in the 18th century to fit in the middle of all the dialects and it comes closest to the german from hannover, not the region from wittenberg
Actually, Luther tried to use a language that all (or at least most) germans could understand. "Hochdeutsch" refers to the southern dialects (e.g. bavarian) in the "higher" mountainius regions. Luther tried to make up a "middle" language. Yes, bavarians DO speak a "high" german (hochdeutsch) dialect, sorry.
@@2manyIce yep, though if i am not mistaken the standard german Hochdeutsch originated in a flat german dialect, but using high german pronounciation (or vice versa, can't remember exactly which way around it was)
The original German of Hanover in Lower Saxony is Low German (Low Saxon). Hochdeutsch = Standard German derived from East Central German (Upper Saxon) and East Upper German (Austro-Bavarian) chancellery languages with East Franconian as an important additional component in both. So Hochdeutsch combines Northern and Southern features in an unique way. Hanover German stands for the Northern Pronunciation of Hochdeutsch (derived from Low German pronunciation) and got prominent because of the dominance of Prussia in the 19th c.. South Germans, Austrians and Swiss Germans (Upper German speakers) usually pronounce Hochdeutsch differently: "away = weg", Northern pron. "wech", Southern pron. "wek". But because people learned first their dialect and then Hochdeutsch in school until the middle of the 20th c. pronunciation in accord with the letters became widespread. Therefore many people in the North also pronounce weg = wek, because b, d, g in final position is devoiced to p, t, k (final devoicing). But "Weg = way" is pronounced "Wech" by most North Germans and "Wek" by South Germans, Austrians and Swiss Germans.
Dude on the right is a regular German. He does not want to be there, can't figure out why people are interested in this topic, and has never so much as googled German dialects to get an idea of how many there are. Also, P-dutch is not that difficult to keep up with if you speak any of the associated German dialects+English. Dude here had trouble because he has likely never been exposed to these dialects at all.
Micha B. If I had the sound turned off I would have assumed that Mischa was the typical American urbanite raised on flapjacks ,hamburgers & doughnuts& that the bright effervescent chap on the left was a jacked up German./ European.
This is so interesting. I watched this video several times with friends in the last 2 years and we had so cool discussions about our roots,dialects,history. Thanks for that inspiration.
That was really interesting, never heard of Pennsylvania Dutch before 🤗 I'm from Northern Germany - I didn't understand anything except "hund" and "haus" 😂😂
Linguistic segregation between rural and urban is one of the first things to be aware of. Dialects are usually spoken in rural areas. In Cities bigger than 200k in population Standard-German is primarily spoken or a mixture of High-German with the respective Dialect yet almost never the "strong" dialect and slang.
Interesting video. I'm Scottish, and when I used to go to Germany, there were so many words that I understood, even though I never did German at school. The words were not similar to proper English, but to the Lowland Scots I grew up speaking. In Britain, which itself is made up of 4 nations, there are so many different dialects. A broad Geordie would struggle to be understood by a Scouser or a Cockney. It's the same in Ireland, and if you know the country, you can identify someone's county, just by their accent. My pet hate is the presumption that because you have a regional dialect, you are stupid.
That makes sense. The area where Scots is spoken had influence from Scandinavian (Germanic) languages as well as Low German languages due to trade. I've also noticed when I look at Scots that the "non-English" stuff I can understand sometimes because I recognize it from German. You say something like "kenn" for "to know" right? It's "kennen" in German.
I'm from Baden-Württemberg and I think that it's very hard to keep the local dialects alive. Standard German is simply the language for everything. It's the only language we learn in school (except for foreign languages like English) and we have to comunicate with a lot of people from other German speaking regions. There are no standard rules for my dialect, almost no learning resources and no standard spelling. I'd say that my native language is not my dialect, but rather standard German. I can only understand the dialect to some extend and the number of fluent speakers is dwindling (the dialect is also much closer to Standard German than it was just 100 years ago). I'm glad that I live in a country where we can understand each other flawlessly, but sadly this nationalism and standardisation is also killing a part of our identity.
@@russianbotfarm3036 i'm dutch and i can understand some of it, i live more in the center of the Netherlands and i think if you live more at the border of the Netherlands/Germany you probably understand even more, but it sounds more german to me then dutch.
@@russianbotfarm3036 no it's not. But we Dutch preserved words of the Germanic dialects which modern German hasn't and vise versa. Also most dutch people can understand or speak German but Germans often can't speak Dutch as it's not as much in their culture to speak other languages. So for us it's a matter of using our German knowledge, and where the Germans get lost we have our native language backing us up.
I can guarantee this is standard German behavior. It seems standoffish and maybe even rude, but it's all good. Smiles and useless interjections are inefficient.
Voor Limburgers en Brabanders wel, oost/west Vlamingen zullen hier al meer moeite mee hebben omdat hun taal veel Franser is.. Brabant en Limburg was veel meer op het Duitse Rijk gericht. (Als we hedendaags "Vlaanderen"/NL sprekendn België opsplitsen)
My father in law was Swiss and said that PA Dutch was Swiss German. His brother from Switzerland had a wonderful conversation with a local PA Dutch speaker and they said there were only a few words that were different.
Its my understanding that the Amish were originally from Switzerland . They moved north into parts of Wuertemburg and then moved into the areas along the west side of the Rhine where they stayed for some time with some later moving to the area of Eastern Pa.
My family lives in South central PA. When my son learned German, and then went to Germany as an exchange student he figured out that the colloquial English people from our area speak is not entirely grammatically correct. It has some German word order in it and phrases that are not standard English. I have lived here for 30 years now, and am so accustomed to it, that it does not sound incorrect. The people in Germany were actually correcting his English! America is a big place - we don't all sound like we're from LA or New York!
That’s really interesting. I think about dialect a lot because I don’t feel it’s that common in the US or at least the differences aren’t so great that I’m one from PA can’t understand someone from Iowa which seems to be the case with some specific places and strong dialects in Germany. (The exception being Cajun Louisiana) so thanks for sharing!
There is a similar parallel with the french spoken by french-Canadians vs. standard French. The early french settlers came mostly from the region of Normandy and after the British won the french Canadian dialect was able develope relatively independent from France. The big difference is the literacy rates early French settlers was relatively high and the language was both written and spoken regularly for over 200 years to the present. Anecdotally i have met French speakers from Europe that live or lived in Quebec and found it quite difficult to understand the Quebecois.
Being Dutch and raised in my regional language (Limburgish) I can say that being raised in your home dialect helps with learning foreign languages. At the moment I speak 6 languages including the regional language, and learning a 7th one.
@@Dankschon Certainly. Aside from Dutch and Limburgish, I speak English (of course), German, French and Spanish. And I can understand Afrikaans, but not so much speak it.
@@peterkeijsers489 Thank you Sir, how much time did you take in order to learn all of those languages? Which one was the hardest, and which one was the easiest?
@@Dankschon I've learnt English, German and French at middle school, and Spanish while living in Mexico. As I said, Dutch and Limburgish are my native tongues, and Afrikaans I learnt from listening a lot to a South African friend. I also learnt a little Italian from a former Italian girlfriend, but I didn't practice it lately so I wouldn't call that a language I master (anymore). For me, the easiest languages to learn were German and English, since they are so similar to my native tongues. Both took me about 4 years to learn on (near-)native level.
I had no idea that the Amish didn't speak the same Pennsylvania Dutch as everyone else. Makes me want to study this more after learning about how far pockets of German dialects spread over the US.
German is probably the language with the most dialects in the world, in my area you'll have a different dialect every 30 kilometers. And no, I am really not joking. You have Öcher Platt in Aachen, which contains French words aswell (sort of, but it's not really gramatically correct). Then there's Cologne, which has it's own dialect (probably one of the best known German dialects) with partially different words and in between you have the Voreifel with yet another dialect. I grew up in the Voreifel and understand that dialect a bit, but when two people from Aachen speak their dialect I don't understand them. The German language that is spoken today originally was a commercial language used by traders and so on so that they could understand one another.
To be honest, I'm not surprised by the mixture of languages here, where Dutch, Pennsylvania Dutch, and German are so similar. I am Dutch, but I have lived for a year more less in Swiss. In Swiss the young children get learned a language very similar to our own, sure it still has some words we can not translate, but it also sounds familiar to Pennsylvania Dutch, it could be an offspring from that language and that in the early years of Europe people migrated from the south to the north following the river the Rijn and brought this language to the area. But that is just what I have been thinking about this topic. Because when I was sitting on a train in Swiss I could understand every word this kid was talking, even tho I had never heard the real Swiss language, we had a travel companion from Germany and he could not understand the kid at all. Asked us to translate, when we talked to her grandparents, they explained it was the old language of Swiss, that they learned their children before they learned German at school.
The similarity of Dutch and Pennsylvania Dutch comes from the dialectal origin, both are Frankish (the Germanic tribe of the Francs). Dutch is lower frankish and the dialect of Rheinland-Pfalz/Saarland/Luxembourg from which PD originates from are Moselfränkisch or Rheinfränkish middle German. So there is definitely a link between Dutch and PD, but it is not very obvious when listening. Myself as a Saarlandisch speaker (my dad was also from nothern Germany so I also have notions of lower German dialects) I understood all of Dougs examples and I am able to understand written Dutch but struggle when it is spoken (dutch has itself a very heavy dialectal variety and some are easier to understand (Limburgish, vlams) some others are less easy.
I am dutch.. and i struggle to understand limburg dialect.. to be honest i can't understand them at all when they are talking too each other in their dialect. Flemish is much easier to understand although that is another country (belgium). 😁
My project manager when I worked in Brussels was Limburger. I had less difficulties to understand him and when he phoned home (my desk was just in front of his so I heard everything he said) I even understood more than when he talked to the other vlams speakers in the office. This said, my experience with the different dialects of the Nederlands is not that extensive and I do struggle to understand it when spoken but not that much when written. The remarkable is that the syntax of the language is so much closer to the middle german dialect I grew up with (Saarländisch of the Rheinfränkisch variety) than official German. When I read dutch, it always sounds like a child learning saarlandisch (close languages always sound like the other makes children errors, I'm sure if you listened/read of my dialect, you would have the same impression).
Don't forget that they still speak languages/dialects in the Netherlands that have no problem to be understood in Germany, like Lower Saxon etc. So it's very hard to actually tell if Amish language was influenced or not. Fact is that I as a Dutchman have no problem understanding the Amish language at all and certain words clearly are Dutch influenced imo, for example : 1st word is Pennsylvanian Dutch, 2nd word is (modern) Dutch, 3rd word is English, 4rd word is (modern) German Beede - Gebeden - Prayed - Gebete Bees - Boos - Angry - böse Dot - Dood - Dead - Tod Qwaart - Kwart - Quarter - Viertel Haas - Haas - Hare - Hase Middaagesse - Middageten - Lunch (Mid-day food literally) - Mittagessen Nammidaag - Namiddag - Afternoon - Nachmittag mudder, midder - Moeder - Mother - Mutter Like you see, a lot of times the T and D are switched compared to German, just like in Dutch. Notice that in Dutch Pronounciation a single 'e' is pronounced as 'ee' in a verb, so for example 'gebeden' is pronounced as 'gebeeden'. And the 'oe' in Dutch is pronounced almost the same as the the German letter 'u' or the 'oo' in foot. An 'oo' is pronounced like the 'o' in the english word 'go'. The Mennonites were a Dutch sect, founded by a Dutch Frisian preacher and I am fairly sure that a lot of them immigrated to America to live in Mennonite colonies because a lot of my family actually did around that time. My great grandparents on my mothers side were last real Mennonites in the family, though my mother was still baptised as an adult (now atheist) and my grandma still uses the silent prayer. My great grandmother was also buried in a special direction (I forgot what it represends, but I thought it was the head point either towards or away from Jerusalem).
Maybe that's why I ,as german from Hessen, can understand some dutch when I visit your lovely country. In my experience, my "understanding" differs from region to region in the netherlands. And it's not standard german that helps me, it's my dialect. Very interesting, thanx.
West Central German had much more Low German and North Sea German features in the Middle Ages than today. Many medieval texts from Moselle and Middle Rhine regions look like a mixture of Dutch with High German. Even ft > ch was very common in West Germany. Boven, tussen, dat, wat, her etc. appeared regularly.
Most people in lower saxony DONT understand dutch, only the ones in east-frisia that live close to the border and have a matching dialect. people from Hannover or Wolfsburg can not!
@@hkw242 It's the same the other way around. Dialects don't stop at the border. I live half an hour from the German border and I know people understand eachother without any problems because of the dialect. The moment they switch to Dutch and German there might be a problem, although many people living near the border speak both languages.
I think i passed the exam with almost an A :-). "Mein Bruder springt stark" war sinngemäß schwer zu übersetzen. Thank you for conserving this little piece of history.
@Herbert Bisdorf: Dein Wort in Gottes Ohr 😎. Schrift-/Hochdeutsch war die erste Fremdsprache, die ich zu lernen hatte. War 'ne furchtbare Zeit für mich 😭.
As a German born in Saarland it's always amazing to listen + to hear words like: "Shaya / Scheier", "Scheune" in High German, "barn" in English. But in our dialect, "Scheier" (with a more or less variated "ei") is still in use. "Douack"/ "Duack" is "tobacco", but in my dialect we use to say "tuwack", besides the hard "t" it's very close to the Pennslyvania-Dutch-expression. My dialect (Moselfränkisch) is part of the dialect-family what is called "Westmitteldeutsch". That goes today for the German "Bundesländer" (German states) Hessen, Rheinland-Pfalz + Saarland, for the southwestern regions of Nordrhein-Westfalen, then for Luxembourg, for Eastern-Belgium, for some minor parts of the Netherlands and for all that parts in Lorraine which are located close to the German border. With that in mind I would say, Pennsylvania Dutch is more or less related to this dialect group --- maybe the rarest part of it. Myself, in my daily life I speak High German (have to), but with the color of my dialect, so to say. But I am born and raised as a dialect speaker + and it's a part of me to speak that. Heck, I am even thinking in dialect. Dialect as a stigma: That's what I experienced when in the military. But later on, only some mockery here and there. Today my reaction is: "Hey, it's my dialect, you have yours or at least you have an accent, so what?" As a person with an university degree in German linguistics I do know: Nearly nobody speaks an absolute perfect High German/Hochdeutsch, even not the people around Hannover; they are close to perfection, but they have some words which are not pronounced in the High-German-manner. Why? Maybe this here makes it a little bit better to understand: Another expression for High German/Hochdeutsch is "Schriftsprache", that means 1) the language of the bible (i.e.v. the Luther-translation, still one of the texts with the biggest influence on our language), 2) the language used for everything written. The best speakers of High German are (at least in my opinion) --- actors (theatrically trained) and some TV-folks. The actors needed to be as good as possible to speak their stuff clearly. But: Even Goethe had dialect-words in his work. And Schiller spoke all of his life with very strong accent ... As you said: Dialect is part of our identity + with that something what makes each of us, let's say, colorful, at least a little bit. Go ahead with that good work! I guess it's the same with Gaelic in the US, there will be differences to that Gaelic in Ireland as well.
"...and to me, that's sad. _Speak your dialects._ Learn German, sure, but _speak your dialects."_ I'm inclined to agree with this sentiment. Look at the English-speaking world. In the US _alone,_ someone from Montana is inclined to say things with a different dialect than someone from Georgia. But once we look _beyond_ the US, a Canadian dialect is bound to be profoundly different from a Jamaican. This kind of difference puts us in a position to indulge our inner explorers, since after all, true exploration, as I seem to recall mentioning before, is found not in seeing new things, but in having new eyes.
Even in the USA, dialects are lessening and/or being lost. There's a generic American accent that's taking over. I believe this is the product of national broadcast media. When you watch the evening news, it's hard to tell if someone's from the Midwest, South, Northeast, etc. There might be small touches that give it away, but many people work hard to lose that regional flavor. You don't hear too many "New Yawkuhs" on the tv or radio, even though there's plenty of them.
Thanks, Renaissanceman. Very interesting! I can understand why a non-native of the US couldn't hear the differences in American accents, other than Deep South. That accent is pretty distinct and also well-represented in tv and movies. Even within that, there are distinct differences in dialect and accent. Louisiana doesn't sound like South Carolina, for instance. It's the same reason Americans can't identify local UK dialects. As time goes by, they get more and more similar. I have a pretty good ear and can often place different US accents (at least the major ones), but the differences are often extremely subtle and, depending where they're from, are often a mishmash of several if they're located somewhere in-between the major population centers. Like the State of NY (which is enormous - more than 4000 square km larger than England), for instance. Depending on whether you're closer to - and how close you are to - NYC, Pennsylvania, CT, VT, MA, English Canada or French Canada there are, mostly subtle, differences. Although if you compare two of those accents from pretty far distances, say the City to far Upstate, the differences are more pronounced. On a larger scale, the Midwest, Southwest, Pacific West, Hawaii, etc each have their own subtle rhythm and accents based on who originally settled there and who still moves in & out, with some local variations within those vast areas. Another reason for the melding of that American accent is that Americans move a lot from one area to another for various reasons. A move of thousands of miles due to work, retirement, weather, or other reasons is not unusual in the USA. For the most part, we can usually tell a Scot from an Englishman from an Irishman, but after that it gets trickier. Welsh? I dunno. That's also because most of what we hear is from tv. On many English tv shows, I'll leave the subtitles on, since invariably they'll say something I don't understand. Especially if they talk fast. I have a coworker who I thought was Scottish by her accent, but she's English. But she's from the area of England nearest the border with Scotland. You probably would've gotten a kick out of the posh English accents coming from my two American (then) pre-teen girls saying "Good evening from London, this is BBC World News. I'm Philip Hayton." They probably could've given your Jeeves a run for his money, if only for one particular sentence that they heard several times a week.
The gosh-darndest accent I ever did hear was a colleague from the Carolinas who had just returned to (another part of) the US after completing a D.Phil. at Oxford. Jolly jumble of down-home, Oxbridge, and just a trace of General American. It didn't last.
Well, the situation is really not comparable between the US and Germany. There are a couple of very distinct dialects in the US (mostly in the South) but even they are usually not hard to understand for Americans from other regions. This is very different in Germany. In Germany, pretty much every dialect is highly divergent from the standard language and a lot of it is incomprehensible to speakers from other regions. This has become less pronounced in the 20th century with some dialects dying out and others being used less often, but generally it's still true. You can still find old people in rural areas that don't speak Standard German and they are very hard to understand for other Germans who are not from the same region. The dialects have different grammars, different phonologies and a different vocabulary. In fact the only reason why Bavarian for example isn't seen as a different language is because of political reasons. Swiss German for example is definitely seen as another language which makes a lot of sense because it's completely incomprehensible to Germans (except for those Germans who live at the Swiss border, they have similar dialects). The same is true for Low German dialects spoken in the north. These differences between the dialects go back to ancient times when Germany was still inhabited by different Germanic tribes who all spoke variations of one West Germanic language (if you could call this language German at that point is debatable). Even in the earliest extant German texts from the 800s or 900s, you'll find dialectal variation: there are Old Bavarian texts, Old Low German texts, Old Alemannic texts, etc. So basically, these dialects have been evolving separately for more than a thousand years which explains why they are so different from each other.
The Netherlands existed since 1581. so the story doesn't quite add up. And the Anglo-Dutch wars started since 1652, surely the English used Dutch for people from the Netherlands exclusively by then.
@@DutchPointOfView Overijssel didn't sign the Act of Abjuration (Plakkaat van Verlatinghe) in 1581. They were part of the Union of Utrecht, but that was a bit later (1588).
Wether you are right or wrong from a Dutch perspective, the perspective of the English is what matters here, thanks to strong anti-Dutch propaganda efforts in the 17th century on their part the English looked at the matter differently.
Hmm, I understand some words. Its similar to Swabian sometimes. For example: Schire = Scheure, we also say springen to running.. what he calls Swissstyle i think is "allemannisch" its all related.
They came from the Palatine region and Alsace & Lorraine and NW Switzerland in the 1700s, that's way. One Swiss canton speaks the closest modern dialect to Penn Dutch.
Interesting. In Danish we would say "min broder (bror in everyday speak) løber (probably laufen in German) stærkt". You can both be "stærk" (strong) and run stærkt (fast).
I'm living near Wolfsburg, Germany (where Volkswagen comes from) and here we only speak what we call Hochdeutsch (High German) which is kind of the official language throughout Germany ... Other dialect speakers here would say, we're the only Germans without a dialect. :D My parents are from West-Berlin originally (American-Sector to be more precise) and people say they hear that when I'm talking, since I use the dialect of my parents without noticing it.
I love this guy....i from "Oberschwaben" i can talk "Hochdeutsch" and speak and understand "Schwäbisch" and i listen to a video where people Pennsylvanian Dutch....and i understand a lot!!!
What is this guy talking about? The Netherlands as a country already exists since 1581as we know it today. So already centuries before Pennsylvania existed. The word Dutch comes from the Dutch word Diets. Diets is the name of the predecessor of the current Nederlandse taal.
Pennsylvania Dutch has no relivance to those of us from the Netherlands. How quick do Americans forget, that it was us from the Netherlands that we were the ones to have colonised New Amsterdam before it became New York 1664.
A better (short) explanation instead of what he said is, that all Germanic languages, in English, were called "Dutch" as an umbrella term. The English relations with Germanic Europe were mainly with the Netherlands (through rivalry and trade) and thus the Dutch name got associated with the Netherlands. When Germany unified and received their official English language name of "German", the term "Dutch" was no longer officially associated with Germanic Europe which got us in the situation that the Netherlands is in today. The Pennsylvania Dutch broke off from Europe before all this happened, and therefore still used the English "Dutch" (Deutsch for them).
S. Thats not true. Only the Dutch language (of the Netherlands) was called Dutch. Not the other germanic languages. Stop putting this false information about our Dutch language.
I love this kind of content, so interesting to see how much of German culture was ex- and imported into other countries and communities . 👍 btw. is it the camera angel or is your boyfriend that huge, he looks twice your size ☺
i'm glad you enjoyed the video :) and it's a combination of both hahaha he's 1.91m tall which is taller than both Doug and I and then the camera exaggerated it even more hahaha i didn't realize how much until i sat down to edit this. we probably should've put him in the middle
I will say I grew up speaking only high German, something that was common during the wall times in Berlin. Berliner was more popular in East German so it was nice to hear more berliner after the wall came down
I am from Sothern Mexico and I used to live in eastern Pennsylvania in the late 90's and I remember our first ESL english teacher using the expression "Pennsylvania Dutch" during class which i didnt understand at the beginning. But now I use a lot when I say that I´m proud that I lived and learned english in Pennsylvania Dutch!! :-)
Interesting. ‘Springa’ means run in Swedish, similarly, but is completely different in Danish, where ‘springe’ means to jump. Also, the non-Amish diminutive form is very similar to the one used in standard Dutch.
I really liked to watch this video cause I'm living in the area Doug mentioned: In the middle of Rheinland Pfalz. We speak this dialekt and I could understand let's say 90 - 95% Doug said XD It sounds like an really old dialekt, somekind very old people in a one horse town somewhere in the "Pfälzer Wald" (a big forest area in rhineland palatinate) possibly still speak ;)
Also meine Sportlehrer haben auch "springen" statt "rennen" oder "sprinten" gesagt. Habe aber trozdem den Satz zuerst nicht verstanden. Und "Scheier" 6:59 ist ein altes Wort für Scheune, dass nur noch bei bestimmten alten Bauwerken benutzt wird(Scheuer).
Ich glaube das kommt aus dem Dänischen. Wir sagen tatsächlich "Stark rennen" (at løbe stærkt) für schnell rennen. Er hat auch "Ich habe kein mehr Tabak" oder so was gefasst, was wir eben auch tun (jeg har ikke mere tobak).
Ist das Dänische, nicht auch aus dem Deutschen entstanden? Aber schön, dass ich Dummbeutel, "springt" auch noch falsche geschrieben habe... :-) Peinlich. Ich verbesser das gleich mal...
@@Marton988 Dänisch und Deutsch sind verwandt, aber das Dänische hat sich nicht aus dem Deutschen herausentwickelt. Dänisch ist eine Nordgermanische und Deutsch eine Westgermanische Sprache.
My grandfather came to the US from Bavaria in 1919 ( Wallner) and my grandmother was Pennsylvania Dutch ( Lehman). Quite often they would speak to each other in a mix of the two languages, especially when they were arguing with my mother or each other, or speaking to their parents. I used to relate some words they used with common English American words such as house and shed example. Yes, we ate a lot of dumplings, schnitzel, strudel and of course pie spy when visiting them.
Around 1700, the German language was as widely available as written German as it is mostly still spoken today. German and Dutch were two clearly distinguishable languages. Dutch is most closely related to "Plattdütsch", the German-Frisian dialect. This has nothing to do with Palatinate, Rhineland-Palatinate or Hessian dialects. "Deitsch" is not said anywhere in Germany today. "Deitsch" was Yiddish, Palatinate, Hungarian-Germans and Czech-Germans said "Deitsch" (e.g. my grandma and her relatives) and in Austria it is still used today. "Deitsch" therefore seems to me to be much more appropriate than Dutch. Pennsylvanian Deitsch seems to me not a pure Palatine dialect either. I have already noticed that some of the Pennsylvania immigrants at that time came for example from Koblenz. This still belongs to the northernmost tip of Rhineland-Palatinate, but linguistically it is already a different dialect. Further east lies the Westerwald, which also belongs to the northernmost part of Rhineland-Palatinate and where "Wäller Platt" is spoken. "E Koppsche Kaffee" ist in Wäller Platt eine Tasse Kaffee. This is exactly the word that you used. Die "Scheier" ist die "Scheune" auf pfälzisch, auf Hessisch ist es die "Scheuer". In the Pfalz und in Hessen dialects are still spoken and they sometimes differ from village to village. All over Germany there are a lot of different dialects spoken which can differ so much, that 100 km may be enough, that people have problems to understand each other - this perhaps makes the merit of Martin Luther clearer, through which the Germans got a uniform written language that is identical and understood from Kiel to Munich and from Cologne to Dresden. Today in Germany there are both: people who only speak High German and people who use dialects. In rural areas, dialects tend to be found among younger people, and in certain regions dialects are more common: Bavarians, Swabians and northern Germans have a better tradition across the board. Perhaps Bavaria is always associated with German in the US, which absolutely does not correspond to the German understanding. There it is more like that, compared to all other federal states, Bavaria is more of an outsider, mainly due to the politics of the CDU/CSU under Franz-Josef-Strauß in the 60s and 70s. Bayern always "brät die Extrawurst" which means to make or to be an exception. When I hear Pennsylvanian Deitsch, I hear 80-90% Palatine dialect, I hear definitly no Dutch (a country, where I spent a lot of my vacations). But there are also words that come to me from "Wäller Platt" and from Hessian "Hessisch", as spoken in rural southern Hessen. It would be exciting for me to find out more precisely where the immigrants of that time 300 years ago came from. To me it sounds like a mixture of languages from today's different regions. It sounds to me as if there were Palatines, North Rhineland Palatines and South Hessians who came together and each had their own dialect, everything came into one big pot and the Palatine dialect was enriched with words from other dialects "from the neighborhood". Also interesting was to explore, that there are no words from the french language used which has long been common in the Palatinate and Saarland, not least because of the proximity to the French border. Thanks for your video and so much inspiration.
The guy simply doesn't know what he is talking about. Germans have always existed in the area and were always called Germans. Germany was a semi-tribal nation (at least provincially) until the 1840-1860s when the German Empire tried to merge all the German states and Kingdoms that made up the Holy Roman Empire with a single language and culture. Many of the German states, principalities, and kingdoms that made up the Holy Roman Empire were direct descendant states of the settlement of the Germanic tribes. For example, the Hessian tribes settled in what is today Hesse and spoke Hessian dialects for the most part until very recently (within the last 50-100 years). The Baiuvarii tribes settled in what is today Bavaria, and the majority of people in Bavaria still speak the Bavarian dialects which descended to an extent from the old dialects spoken by the Baiuvarii tribes. The Romans called the area "Germania". The German states and principalities always saw themselves as belonging to the German nation. Even during the time of the Holy Roman Empire, the official name of the empire was the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation". So people knew exactly what culture and nation they belonged to. It should be noted that "nation" is not the same as "country". Nation can be transnational and denote a common people with shared culture and ancestry. It doesn't necessarily mean a country with borders. This definition is still in use in most of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, where for example, Hungarian Nation means all Hungarians (not just Hungarians in Hungary). The Hungarian nation also means Hungarians in Serbia, Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, etc.
I'm actually half Dutch (I live in Holland) and half German, and my mother is from the area around Schwäbisch Hall. Some parts had me totally confused, but I think I was able to understand half due to the similarities with the Schwäbisch dialect (for example "Scheier" in Schwäbisch is "Scheune" in Hochdeutsch (and barn in English)). Although I haven't had a lot of experience with Schwäbisch (I visit my family once or twice every year, for the past 19 years (my whole life)), it really helped me with understanding Pennsylvania Dutch. Very interesting video!
I would love to speak to someone who speaks Pennsylvanian Dutch. I am from the palatinate so "pfälzisch" is my dialect. But throughout history this dialect was also heavily influenced by French. For example we say "trottwa" from the french "trottoir" which means "sidewalk". Or "lawabo" from "lavabo" which means "sink". I don't know if the Armish are in any way influenced by the french language, but this would be very interesting for me.
have you checked out doug's channel? ru-vid.com he talks a lot about the PA Dutch language and while it isn't the interactive engagement you're looking for, you will probably still find it very interesting!
Do you also know "Mach mer kei fisematente!" ? It means, don't put shame on me. It origins from the french "visite ma tent" (visit my tent), a phrase used by french soldiers (Napoleon time) to invite local girls for having fun and is said by parents. I'm from Hessen, so I wonder if this is a thing at your place, too. We have the "trottewar" and "portmohne" here , too.
There were some earlier French loanwords in medieval Middle High German. But the Amish emigrated to America in the 17th c.. French influence grew vastly after the 30years war up from the middle of the 17th c.. That explains the once numberless French words in South West Germany. Guess the Amish emigrated too early to get thoroughly influenced by French .
To run in swedish is "springa", close to the "schpringt", The German language has had a huge impact on the swedish language prior to WW2, much like english is today. Schtarrick means strong here. The swedish word for strong is "stark". Pretty close as well, at least how it sounds.
In Austria, people also use "springa" or "springan" instead of the German word "laufen" (run). This is very confusing for Germans, because in most German dialects "springen" means "jumping".
My father told me often "spring mal schnell zum Bäcker" statt "lauf ..." he is from silesia, I dont know if it has to do with this region, he used normally german we used in the Berlin-Area.
"Speak your dialects!" 😅😅😅 I guess on the countryside also young people speak dialect! Even immigrants often speak soon dialect and some exchange students don't learn standard german properly.
I remember growing up using PA Dutch words, and confusing all of my friends that weren't from this area! I'd say things like "Quit rutschin'!" and they would be completely dumbfounded as to what it meant.
I am from Albuquerque New Mexico and we have a lot Spanish and even Navajo, Tiwa spoken here. There are old Navajo’s who do not speak English who live on the Res as they call it. When I was going to UNM I knew some Navajo who tried to teach me some of the Navajo language and I was able to speak a word or two but have forgotten them. But my Spanish is better and continues to improve. I am now able to get someone a cup of coffee using Spanish with the correct amount of azucar (sugar) and Lechea (milk), and wish someone a Feliz Navidad at Christmas time. Tiwa is the language of the Pueblo Indians here in New Mexico.
Man, I would love to be able to talk to one of them about the Navajo language! and congrats on learning some spanish :) have you ever heard of duolingo or babble? those apps are pretty cool and maybe can help you learn even more
Navajo is a really beautifull language. So meaningfull and they can make new Words like in German, with manny information. but Navajo is so different and so poetic. its sounds beautiful too. Awsome Language.
It also depends on what part of Pennsylvania and timeline you are talking about. Here in the small towns near the Poconos we spoke more German than anything else. the highest number of German immigrants would come in the mid 1800's to the 1920's.
@@lapolf1769 Naja das konnte man sich denken finde ich :D Wenn man versucht fremde Sprachen und Dialekte zu verstehen muss man häufiger um die Ecke denken oder kreativ sein. Aber gut kann jedem mal passieren ^^
i bi au us de Schwiiz. weni numä dütsch würde rede hät i vill abr nöd alles verschta. abr i cha au luxemburgisch u d'zwei sproche/dialekte sönd mega ähnlech
