The reciprocal influence of languages affords an interesting subject of investigation, and it is the object of this essay to present an outline of a dialect which has been formed within a century, and which continues to be spoken, subject to the influences which developed it. Of such languages, English, Wallachian, and Hindûstânî, are familiar examples.
Like other languages, the dialect of German known as Pennsylvania Dutch presents variations due to the limited intercourse of a widely-scattered agricultural population, and to the several dialects brought from abroad, chiefly from the region of the Upper Rhine, and the Neckar, the latter furnishing the Suabian or Rhenish Bavarian element. The language is therefore South German, as brought in by emigrants from Rhenish Bavaria, Baden, Alsace (Alsatia), Würtemberg, German Swisserland, and Darmstadt. There were also natives from other regions, with certain French Neutrals deported from Nova Scotia to various parts of the United States, including the county (Lancaster) where the materials for this essay have been collected. These, and probably some families with French names from Alsace, are indicated by a few proper names, like Roberdeau, Lebo, Deshong and Shunk (both for Dejean), and an occasional word like júschtaménnt (in German spelling), the French justement, but which a native might take for a condensation of just-an-dem-ende.
Welsh names like Jenkins, Evans, Owen, Foulke, Griffith, Morgan, and Jones occur, with the township names of Brecknock, Caernarvon, Lampeter, Leacock ('Lea' as lay), and in the next county of Chester—Gwinedd and Tredyffrin; but there seems to have been no fusion between Welsh and German, probably because the Welsh may have spoken English. Local names like Hanōver, Heidelberg and Manheim, indicate whence some of the early residents came.
The French-American ville appears in German Pennsylvania, in Bechtelville, Engelsville, Greshville, Lederachsville, Scherksville, Schwenksville, Silberlingsville, Wernersville, Zieglerville; paralleled by the English town in Kutztown, Mertztown, Schäfferstown, Straustown; burg in Ickesburg, Landisburg, Rehrersburg; and the German dorf has a representative in Womelsdorf.
Pennsylvania German does not occur in the counties along the northern border of the state, but it has extended into Maryland, Western Virginia, Ohio, and farther west; and it has some representatives in western New York, and even in Canada. In many of the cities of the United States, such as Pittsburg, Chica’go, Cincinnăt’ĭ, and Saint Louis, recent large accessions from Germany have brought in true German, and to such an extent that the German population of the city of New York is said to exceed that of every European city except Berlin and Vienna. The newer teutonic population differs from the older in living to a great extent in the towns, where they are consumers of beer and tobacco—luxuries to which the older stock and their descendants were and are but little addicted. The numerous allusions to the 'Fatherland' to be met with, belong to the foreign Germans—the natives caring no more for Germany than for other parts of Europe, for they are completely naturalised, notwithstanding their language.
Several thousand Germans had entered Pennsylvania before the year 1689, when a steady stream of emigration set in, and it is stated that their number was 100,000 in 1742, and 280,000 in 1763. They occupied a region which has located the Pennsylvania dialect chiefly to the south-east of the Alleghenies, excluding several counties near Philadelphia. Germantown, six miles from Philadelphia, although settled by Germans, seems to have lost its German character. The language under the name of 'Pennsylvania Dutch' is used by a large part of the country population, and may be constantly heard in the county towns of Easton on the Delaware, Reading (i.e. red-ing) on the Schuylkill, Allentown on the Lehigh, Harrisburg (the State capital) on the Susquehanna, Lebanon, Lancaster, and York.
A fair proportion of the emigrants, including the clergy, were educated, and education has never been neglected among them. The excellent female boarding school of the Moravians were well supported, not only by the people of the interior, but also by the English-speaking population of the large cities, and of the Southern States—a support which prevented the German accent of some of the teachers from being imitated by the native teutonic pupils—for the education was in English, although German and French were taught. Booksellers find it to their advantage to advertise the current German and English literature in the numerous German journals of the interior, and there is a Deutsch-Amerikanisches Conversations Lexicon in course of publication, which gives the following statistics of one of the German counties.
"The German element is strongly and properly represented in Allentown, and in Lehigh county generally, where the German language has retained its greatest purity, and so strong is this element, that in the city itself there are but few persons who speak English exclusively. An evidence of this is found in the fact that in seventy of the eighty Christian congregations in the county, some of which are over one hundred years old, Divine service is conducted in the German language. Allentown has seven German churches: (two Lutheran, one Reformed, two Methodist, one United Brethren, and one Catholic); and nine German journals, of which are published weekly—Der Unabhängige[1] Republikaner (fifty-nine years old), Der Friedensbote (fifty-seven years old), Der Lecha County Patriot (forty-three years old), Der Weltbote (fifteen years old, with 12,000 subscribers), and Die Lutherische Zeitschrift. The Stadt-und Land-Bote is a daily, the Jugendfreund semi-monthly, with twenty thousand subscribers; and Pastor Brobst's Theologische Monatshefte is monthly. Since the beginning of the year 1869, the German language has been taught in the public schools."[2] The Reading Adler is in its seventy-fourth, and the Lancaster Volksfreund in its sixty-second year.—Dec. 1869.
The convenient quarto German almanacs (with a printed page of about five and a half by seven and a half inches in size), were preferred to the duodecimo English almanacs, even among the non-Germans, until the appearance of English almanacs in the German format about the year 1825.
The early settlers were extensive purchasers and occupiers of land, and being thus widely scattered, and having but few good roads, the uniformity of the language is greater than might have been supposed possible. These people seldom became merchants and lawyers, and in the list of attorneys admitted in Lancaster County, commencing with the year 1729, the names are English until 1769, when Hubley and Weitzel appear. From 1793 to 1804, of fifty-two names, three are German; from 1825 to 1835, twenty-four names give Reigart and Long (the latter anglicised). After 1860 the proportion is greater, for among the nine attorneys admitted in 1866, we find the German names of Urich, Loop, Kauffman, Reinœhl, Seltzer, and Miller. At the first school I attended as a child, there were but three English family names, and in the playground, English and German games were practised, such as 'blumsak' (G. plumpsack), 'Prisoner's base,' and 'Hink'l-wai[3] was graabscht du do?' which was never played with the colloquy translated.
Pennsylvania Dutch (so called because Germans call themselves Deutsch[4]) is known as a dialect which has been corrupted or enriched by English words and idioms under a pure or modified pronunciation, and spoken by natives, some of them knowing no other language, but most of them speaking or understanding English. Many speak both languages vernacularly, with the pure sounds of each, as in distinguishing German tōd (death) from English toad; or English winter from German winter, with a different w, a lengthened n, a flat t, and a trilled r—four distinctions which are natural to my own speech. Children, even when very young, may speak English entirely with their parents, and German with their grandparents, and of two house-painters (father and son) the father always speaks German and the son English, whether speaking together, or with others. The males of a family being more abroad than the females, learn English more readily, and while the father, mother, daughters, and servants may speak German, father and son may speak English together naturally, and not with a view to have two languages, as in Russia. Foreign Germans who go into the interior usually fall into the local dialect in about a year, and one remarked that he did so that he might not be misunderstood. Some of these, after a residence of fifteen or twenty years, speak scarcely a sentence of English, and an itinerant piano-tuner, whose business has during many years taken him over the country, says that he has not found a knowledge of English necessary.
The English who preceded the Germans in Pennsylvania brought their names of objects with them, calling a thrush with a red breast a robin; naming a bird not akin to any thrush a blackbird; and assigning to a yellow bird the name of goldfinch, but adopting a few aboriginal names like racoon, hackee and possum. The Germans did this to some extent, for blackbird saying 'schtaar' (G. staar,[5] starling,) for the goldfinch (oriole) 'goldamschl,' for the thrush (G. drossel) 'druschl,' for a woodpecker 'specht' (the German name), and for a crow 'krap.'
The ground-squirrel is named 'fensǝmeissli' (fence-mouselin, fence being English); a large grey squirrel is called 'eech-haas' (for eich-hase, oak-hare); and in Austria a squirrel is akatzel and achkatzel (oak-kitten). The burrowing marmot (Arctomys monax), known as ground-hog, is called 'grun'daks' (from a fancied analogy with the German dachs or badger) and in York County 'grundsau,' a translation of the English name. The English patridge (partridge, Dutch patrijs) is Germanised into 'pattǝreesǝli'—also called 'feld-hinkli' (little field-chicken),—hinkl being universally used for chicken or chickens.
The usual perversions by otōsis occur, as in the city of Baltimore, where foreign Germans say 'Ablass' for Annapolis and 'Kälber Strasze' (Street of Calves) for Calvert Street—but the citizens themselves have replaced the vowel of what with that of fat, in the first syllable of this name; and the people of New York now pronounce 'Beekman Street' with the syllable beak instead of bake according to the earlier practice.
A German botanist gave 'Gandoge' as the locality of an American plant; a package sent by express to 'Sevaber' (an English name), and a letter posted to the town of 'Scur E Quss, Nu Yourck,' arrived safely; and I have seen a handboard directing the traveller to the English-named town of 'Bintgrof.' As these present no special difficulty, they are not explained.
English rickets for 'rachîtis' is a familiar example of otōsis, and it appears in the following names of drugs furnished by a native druggist who speaks both languages, and who was able to determine the whole from the original prescriptions.
Allaways, Barrickgerrick, Sider in de ment, Essig of Iseck, Hirim Packer, Cinment, Cienpepper, Sension, Saintcun, Opien, High cyrap, Seno and mano miset, Sking, Coroces suplement, Red presepeite, Ammeline, Lockwouth, Absom's salts, Mick nisey, Corgel, Chebubs, By crematarter potash, Balderyon, Lower beans, Cots Shyneel.
[1] Un-ab-häng-ig, un-off-hang-ing, in-de-pend-ent, Polish nie-za-wis-ty.
[2] Allentown has just completed one of the finest public school buildings in Eastern Pennsylvania.—Newspaper, February, 1870.
[3] As if 'hühn-kel weihe' chicken hawk, 'wai' rhyming with boy.
[4] In an article on (the) "Pennsylvania Dutch" in the 'Atlantic Monthly' (Boston, Mass., Oct., 1869, p. 473), it is asserted that "the tongue which these people speak is not German, nor do they expect you to call it so." On the contrary, the language is strictly a German dialect, as these pages prove. The mistake has arisen from the popular confusion between the terms Dutch and German, which are synonymous with many. In Albany (New York) they speak of the Double Dutch Church, which seems to have been formed by the fusion of a 'German Reformed' with a 'Dutch Reformed' congregation. These are different denominations, now greatly anglicised. In 1867 the Rev. J. C. Dutcher was a Dutch Reformed pastor in New York.
[5] Words in single quotations are Pennsylvania German. The system of spelling is described in the next chapter. High German words are commonly in italics, or marked G.
In his "Key into the Languages of America," London, 1643, Roger Williams says that "the life of all language is pronuntiation"—and in the comparison of dialects it deserves especial attention. To enable the reader the more readily to understand these pages, and to compare the words with literary German, the principles of German orthography will be used as far as they are consistent, but every letter or combination is in every case to be pronounced according to the power here indicated—except in literal quotations, where the originals are followed. A single vowel letter is always to be read short, and when doubled it must have the same sound, but lengthened—but as a single vowel letter is often read long in German, and as short vowels are often indicated by doubling a consonant letter, this absurd mode is sometimes used to prevent mispronunciation through carelessness.[6] The 's' is also sometimes doubled to prevent it from becoming English 'z' with readers who, in careless moods, might rhyme 'as' (as) with has instead of fosse. In a PG. poem of Rachel Bahn, commencing with—
most English readers would be likely to rhyme 'is' with phiz instead of hiss, which will be prevented by writing 'iss,' etc.
Although I have visited various counties of the State at distant intervals, the facts given here pertain chiefly to a single locality, so that if it is stated, for example, that 's' with its English sound in 'misery' does not occur, or that 'kǝp' (head) is used to the exclusion of hauptzhauptzwvmetmatcheerjeercherryjărrycarryzwv