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Pennsylvania Dutch/German

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12 messages over 2 pages: 1
embici
Triglot
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 Message 9 of 12
13 December 2012 at 4:40pm | IP Logged 
There are many Low German Mennonites in Ontario, Canada. I don't know much about their
language but here is a page with links to words and phrases:
http://mcco.ca/lowgerman/relating/communication
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fnord
Triglot
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Switzerland
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Speaks: German*, Swiss-German, English
Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch

 
 Message 10 of 12
13 December 2012 at 5:10pm | IP Logged 
Chris Ford wrote:
Additionally, I was wondering if those who are fluent in modern High German (or older
variants of German) would be able to understand either written or spoken Pennsylvania Dutch? There are videos
at the above link as well

Just spent a few minutes watching some of the Deitsch Web-TV videos. Not unexpectedly, it sounded like some
hybrid between German and American English to me.

As a native speaker of (standard) German, I understood most but not everything of it. However, I had to
concentrate hard on the conversation. At times, I found it a little bit hard to keep up with the conversation. The
frequent code-switching and borrowing from English threw me off a bit. I also found the American accent very
strong. It if, of course, unlike any other (European) variety of German that I'm accustomed with. I believe
comprehension would get much easier after a few hours of "tuning in" to it.

That being said, I am not sure how much the average German speaker would get. Having learnt two related L2
languages (English, Swiss-German) certainly helped me a lot - as did my comprehension skills in Luxembourgish.
The latter should be most closely related to Pennsylvania Dutch.

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Iversen
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Denmark
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 Message 11 of 12
14 December 2012 at 2:42pm | IP Logged 
daegga wrote:
the "missing" ge- can be easily explained: as you see in g'saat, the e got elided, the same would happen in gekommen, rendering it an unpronounceable g'kumme, so the g just gets omitted too.


That sounds like reasonable explanation. But the consequence then is that Pennsylvanian Dietsch behaves like Dutch, standard High German, Schwäbisch and Austrian etc., but NOT as standard Low German (or Platt), where the ge- simply isn't used.

Edited by Iversen on 14 December 2012 at 2:43pm

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daegga
Tetraglot
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Austria
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 Message 12 of 12
14 December 2012 at 4:05pm | IP Logged 
On the German wikipedia page about Pennsylvania Dutch it is written that most of the first speakers were from the Pfalz region in Germany (and therefore speaking 'pfälzischen Dialekt'). This is a Middle German dialect, and those dialects are High German (but words often look like those in Low German, because the sound shift wasn't always done where it theoretically should be in a High German dialect). So having ge- for participles makes sense.


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