What’s it like growing up PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH?
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- Опубликовано: 12 июн 2024
- Doug Madenford aka @PADutch101 grew up speaking Pennsylvania Dutch which is a German dialect that’s spoken by over 300k people here in the US and Canada! And I got to ask him all the questions that I’ve always wondered about: Like how often does he speak PA Dutch in his everyday life? Can he communicate with the Amish community? How does the language integrate new words for modern inventions? And why are more and more people from Germany building relationships with the PA Dutch?
Part 1: Can Germans understand Pennsylvania Dutch? 😅 ▸ • Can Germans understand...
German Reacts to Pennsylvania Dutch ▸ • German Reacts to Penns...
Doug's channel ▸ / @padutch101
Doug's Front Porch, Ep. 74 - Feli from Germany ▸ • 74 - Feli from Germany
Documentary: Hiwwe wie Driwwe - The roots of the Pennsylvania Dutch ▸
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0:00 Intro
1:26 A language frozen in time
2:38 Parallels to German dialects
4:37 Do I speak Bavarian dialect?
5:45 Longing for dialects
9:18 How is the internet affecting PA Dutch?
11:39 Is there standardized spelling and grammar?
14:18 Does PA Dutch have slang?
15:21 Words for new technologies
17:07 Doug's family story: 13 generations PA Dutch
26:26 When do you speak it in everyday life?
28:12 Germans are fascinated by the PA Dutch community
31:30 Check out Doug's content!
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ABOUT ME: Hallo, Servus, and welcome to my channel! My name is Felicia (Feli), I'm 29, and I'm a German living in the USA! I was born and raised in Munich, Germany but have been living in Cincinnati, Ohio off and on since 2016. I first came here for an exchange semester during my undergrad at LMU Munich, then I returned for an internship, and then I got my master's degree in Cincinnati. I was lucky enough to win the Green Card lottery and have been a permanent resident since 2019! In my videos, I talk about cultural differences between America and Germany, things I like and dislike about living here, and other topics I come across in my everyday life in the States. Let me know what YOU would like to hear about in the comments below. DANKE :)
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This video clears up a lot with Doug. I'm a native speaker of Pennsylvania Dutch and was born and raised Amish. But when i first heard Doug speaking the language, i noticed instantly that his accent is very different and it doesn't sound like he's a native speaker. I know now it's because his family were Protestant Germans and not Amish or Mennonite. So those 2 groups must have different pronunciations. But i can still easily understand him 😊
I think the Amish tend to have more of a Swiss accent? There's definitely an old accent difference, and maybe the Amish just kept more of a Bern or Emmental accent.
I think its more of a generational thing because all the older non amish/mennonite speakers around lehigh/berks counties have very thick accents even when they speak english and i think the accents are different between the older and younger mennonites around here too. Best examples on youtube would probably be videos of dopey Duncan and professor schnitzel.
I think you're definitely on to something with your comments. I grew up in the 60's-70's hearing my grandma conversing in Dutch with her neighbors. I'm non-sectarian Dutch on both sides but never picked up the language, yet growing up in Kutztown there was a certain inevitable immersion in the sounds and accent. In addition, I had 4 years of German in H.S. Years later I found myself perusing the tables at a sale and there was a Mennonite father & son chatting in Dutch next to me. Even though I couldn't follow the convo, I was struck by how different they sounded. The accent sounded more Swiss to my un-educated ear.
The Amish and Mennonites are also Protestants who are originally German/Deutsch speaking
@@bobjoe7508 sorry you are misconceiving the situation!! The definition of the term Protestant are for those Christian churches (or communities of Christians) that develop during or after the Protestant Reformation that split off from the Roman Catholic Church or split off from another Protestant group that ultimately went back to this split from the Catholic Church. The Lutherans, Mennonites and Amish all started during the Protestant Revolution and are all thus different types of Protestants but Protestants all nonetheless, as they are all different types of Christians to different degrees.
I’m living in Pennsylvania and, even though I’m puertorican and not at all German, I find this stuff fascinating
Mexican here.
I think anyone who has been immersed in or among multiple languages and variants of their own native language can't help but be fascinated by this stuff.
My wife is Pennsylvania Dutch. We traced her family back to Besigheim in Baden-Württemberg . After some time we made contact with her German relatives. When we visited all were amazed that her PA Dutch was very close to the local Schwabisch dialect.
Both PA Dutch (via the original palatinate dialect) and Swabian are allemannic dialects. With a little sense in languages it is quite easy for speakers of this German dialect to understand each other (at least 70-90% of the time). Speakers of other German dialects like Bavarian would have a much harder time (probably less then 50% of the time) and Germans without any knowledge of south-west German dialects most likely would not understand a thing.
My mom was born and raised in southeastern Pennsylvania. I remember my grandpa telling me how our family spoke PA Dutch up until the 1940’s. My grandfather tried to teach me, but at the time I really wasn’t interested…I was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, and only spent my summers in PA. But now I wished I had learned a little bit.
My grandmother was an American born German. Her parents spoke German but didn't teach it to their children. They spoke German to each other when they didn't want their children to know what they were saying. I feel that I am missing a part of my heritage, the language, the culture, etc.
Das ist toll
I like to listen to native German Langauge speakers
Same here.. my dad grew up speaking Swiss German but didn’t pass it down to me. I feel I’m missing part of my heritage. I’m trying to learn Swiss German now in my 30’s.
@@zaram131you are starting with the much more complicated, I guess. 😊
@@zaram131No problem. I started with 55. But I do not speak it but understand like 100%
I got goosebumps hearing Doug talk about getting goosebumps! I wish I had learned yiddish from my Grandmother who spoke it.
Never too late.
South Australia also had a significant German speaking Lutheran community in the Barossa Valley. During WW1 German speakers were also interned in camps despite having been born in Australia. Speaking German at home peresisted into the 1980s.
Yikes, were they alive when they were interred? ;)
@@NextExiter interned 🙃
I'm from Pa Dutch family/region and I'm surprised you didn't mention our Pa Dutch accent when we speak English, I switch to that when I talk about my hometown of Oley, Pa. Also my mother from Kentucky met my Pa Dutch dad she thought he had a speech impediment because his accent was so thick
Fleetwood native here who has lived in Maine since 1998. Mainers have quite an accent themselves and I've lost a lot of my PA dutch accent for the most part, but get me on the phone with my sister in Fleetwood and it definitely creeps back in...10 years ago, I was at a grocery store deli, in line behind two men in hunting garb and I instantly noticed their PA dutch accent. I spoke right up asking them if they were, by any chance from Berks county, and they actually were
from Birdsboro! They were amazed that I recognized the accent, they sounded "just like home"
Born in Reading in '59 and called Kempton "home". My dad's side was PA Dutch and while he was off in officer training for the USAF, my mom and I stayed behind and lived with the relatives. I was pretty much raised by/with the "Dutchies" and pretty much only spoke Dutch until I was about 3 yrs. old. The old ladies would have me entertain them by singing and dancing while they were quilting for the "Ladies Aid" at the local church. My mom and I joined my dad after he graduated and was stationed in TX. From there we traveled as a military family to numerous states, slowly losing my Dutch. I must have retained my accent for awhile because I was called upon to read out loud more than any other pupil while in elementary schools in GA and VA. I figured that the teachers wanted to hear my accent and sometimes try to "correct" my pronunciation of certain words. I have very few relatives living that spoke Dutch and as this video discusses, wished that I had retained what I once knew.
Say nahw vunce! Let's go t' Ahllentahwn nahw!
@@theBaron0530vell ya go tu da A B E tire care ya dum bunny. I miss those commercials lol
Yep, @@patrickisswayze3446! We miss Punkin' and Homer Schneck!
I was fluent in Pennsylvania Dutch when I was a kid. I loved going into Lancaster to the stores and speak with the Amish. I forgot how to due to lack of practice opportunities, but I would love to learn again
Ich liebe die Deutsche Sprache
If you knew a language as a child and "forgot" it, you can relearn that language rather easily. It will all come back with time. immersion and practice.
When I grew up (before school) I spent a lot of time with my best friend's family who was Italian and they only spoke Italian with each other. I never spoke Italian myself but I was immersed in it. Then we moved away and I lost all contact with the language. When I was 17 my class made a fortnight-long field trip to Rome where we stayed in a hostel (bed and breakfast) and had to fend for everything else on our own. With the knowledge of 2 years of French (which is very different from Italian and all other Romance languages) and the vocab with Latin/Romance roots in English and German, I was able to figure out restaurant menus and how the ticketing of the Roman bus service worked, though all the instructions were Italian only. 20 years later we visited American friends in Aviano and their oldest daughter was in Italian primary school and had homework to do. Though my friend already lived in Italy for a year (and her family is Italian-American) I understood more than double the instructions and texts and could help her daughter.
Why are these places where people speak Pennsylvania Dutch named after English cities? You would have thought they would be named after the places the people came from in Germany, but nope, they're called things like Lancaster and Reading? What's up with that?
@@conlon43321. Pennsylvania was an English colony as it was founded by William Penn in 1681, so long before the establishment of Great Britain in 1707. German town or even village names in an English colony wouldn't be appropriate, would they?
2. In other areas German settlers named their settlements after German towns or persons. E.g. Frankfort, Kentucky or Bismarck, North Dakota. This happened either before an English colony was officially incorporated or after 1776.
@@conlon4332 What @twinmama42 said -- once German-speaking immigrants arrived, they filled the areas in and around these already established English towns, villages, and rural townships... but also 1) the Deitscher (PA Dutch people) had their own way of saying the names of these places, like Allentown was "Allenschtaeddel" or "Ellsdaun", and even Lancaster is pronounced/spelled Lenggeschder. 2) They did sometimes establish their own towns with German names, like Hamburg, Manheim, Strasburg, or named their new towns/villages from German surnames that were stylized like the English-named towns around them, like Kutztown, Schnecksville, Trexlertown, etc. and in my neck of the woods, Jacobsburg, Kesslersville, Edelmans, etc. 3) The last point about tiny villages in my area (Northampton County) brings to mind the fact that most PA Dutch were farmers who lived far away from one another, not within a town like in Europe, so that's another reason that there aren't many German-named areas that have become well-established towns -- some of these places aren't even 'towns' anymore, the names just live on in road names. 4) Some towns in Eastern PA were founded by German pietist religious groups that gave their settlements biblical names -- the Moravians founded Nazareth, Bethlehem, Lititz, Emmaus -- Conrad Beissel, a Dunkard, founded Ephrata. Just some thoughts from your great question!
That was so interesting. I am from Stockholm, Sweden and my mother and I lived in Washington D.C. when I was 9-11 years old. The second year we were there my mother would speak swedish to me and I would answer in english because that was what I spoke in school and with my friends. It is so easy to loose your native language when you are young and because of my own experience I find it facinating that they have kept pensylvania dutch alive during the last century.
I have Pennsylvania Dutch in my family history, but we weren't raised in the language: the few times I heard it growing up was from my maternal grandfather, who was born in the 1917, and he spoke it only when he was angry (typically cursing... so mainly "bad words").
I went to Kutztown University in the mid to late 1980s and I recall that in the spring of 1986, there was an issue with the lock on my 100-yearold dorm room door and the two men from facilities came to work on it; they were speaking Penna Dutch to each other... Despite my 2-years of German in high school, I couldn't understand most, but when I caught a few words that I recalled from my late grandfather used in his moments of anger, I realized the one guy was telling the other one a joke not meant for mixed company and I laughed at the punchline--they both looked at me in surprise, though I quickly admitted to them that I only understood a few of the key words, but got the gist of the joke.
I used to love going to Farmer Brown's in Moselem Springs, and Renninger’s just south of Kutztown and hear the language used at the counters. Now living 45-minutes away, I haven't been back to Renninger's in decades (sadly, Farmer Brown's is now a car dealership...).
And yes, I regret not asking my grandfather to teach me the language before he passed when I was 13...I didn't know what I'd be missing...all I've got left is occasionally calling someone a Gretz... I'm glad there are folks like Doug out there keeping the language alive...
Amen brother! It took me a month to finally sit down and watch this video because I was sure that I was going to see some "locals" commenting and that I would be spending some time replying to comments, I wasn't wrong! I had just replied to another comment basically explaining my early childhood's interaction with Dutch. I'm currently living in Reading, surly not the Reading that I was born in 64 yrs. ago, but I will always Kempton "home". I also miss Farmer Brown's and the old Moselem Springs restaurant, now doctor's offices? Renninger's still rocks! Now I can outten the light and go to bed once!
I read recently about a place in Virginia so isolated that they still speak English like it was spoken in the 1700s. Crazy to think. Very interesting video as always, Feli!
appalachia used to be that way. lots of interesting documentaries
Tangier Island
The “Hoi toid” High Tide accent- its found in the “region of North Carolina, which encompasses the Outer Banks and Pamlico Sound (specifically including Atlantic, Davis, Sea Level, and Harkers Island in eastern Carteret County, the village of Wanchese, and also Ocracoke) as well as in the Chesapeake Bay (such as Guinea Neck in Gloucester County and Tangier Island in Virginia and Smith Island in Maryland). VERY interesting stuff!
I heard from a Cajun musician that their language version of French is frozen from the time they were transported to Louisiana. He claimed it is the metropolitan French from the early 1700’s.
You are thinking of Tangier Island.
Wow! Fascinating! I only learned standard German starting in 8th grade and then through exchange student time in Germany....to Hamburg and Hessen mostly and more in college. Now I really want to move to rural Pennsylvania and start taking trips to Rheinland-Pfalz, lol.
What a great interview! Thanks again, Feli, and of course to Doug, too.
This was outstanding Feli, super interesting! Thank you for doing this video, and of course thanks to Doug as well, he's an excellent guest. 👍👏💯
The Guckbox, i love it! To this day you sometimes hear people referring to the TV as "Glotzkiste" or "Glotze" in Austria. Which means more or less the same as in Pennsylvania Dutch.
I‘m connected to Doug since many years and we also had plenty of conversations. I love your interview 😍
You should watch his movie „Hiwwe wie driwwe“
Feli this video is fantastic. You are a true professional and you found a great subject.
This conversation hit hard. I’m PA Dutch and my family quit speaking it during WW1. My dad left PA when he was a young man and my siblings and I never learned much about the culture. I relayed to Doug’s statement about young people wanting to feel connected to their past and culture. Now I’m 24 and want to connect with my family’s heritage. I’m learning the language with Doug’s videos. Thank you both very much.
This was the coolest video!! Yay!
Wow! I am a German-English language professional, and I found this very interesting in so many ways. Never been to Pennsylvania, but it is definitely on my bucket list now. Thanks to Feli and Doug for that!
I was born and raised outside of Reading, Pa, in the heart of PA Dutch Country. Although I'm the son of immigrants from southern Italy, I loved learning German in high school and then later in college. What I always noticed was how much I could understand when I went to the different farmers markets in the area and listened to some of the young Amish working the stands. The dialect really reminds me of when I was Switzerland years ago.
Reading, PA? Isn't it where Taylor is from?
Yep! She's from West Reading.@@jairorubenmendoibarra5142
A lot of the Amish originally came from those border regions between Germany and Switzerland, so there are Swiss roots in PAD as well
I also grew up in Reading, Pa. Both my fathers parents were from families who arrived in the 1600‘s and never married outside on the protestant german community. My father was the first to marry outside of the community .
i'm actually out in Oley now. There are a lot of family farms out here that have never changed in 150 years.@@bobfognozzle
Just to touch on the "de-Germanization" during WW1; we had a town called Berlin in Ontario. Ironically; they changed it to Kitchener. After Lord Kitchener; who "invented something quite horrible. The concentration camp; during the Boer Wars in South Africa.
Not correct : concentration camps were invented in 1890 by the Spanish in their war against the Cuban liberation movement.
@bouli3576 Still a nice story!
Coming from a Native American background, with grandparents who spoke their native language fluently, maybe even better than English, and parents who didn’t want my generation to be stigmatized so didn’t push for passing it down, I can completely relate to what Doug is saying.
There is also Dutch-ified English. Gary Gates has a book on it. An "Inwaluable" Introduction to an "Enchoyable accent of the "Inklish lankwitch"😅
I find this quite fascinating since I grew up in Doug's area. I hope you get to go to the Kutztown folk festival and sample the cuisine. Such yummy German food. In the 70's I worked with two older guys who spoke Pa. Dutch and on Thursday night they would tune in to an AM radio station that broadcast a program in Pennsylvania Dutch. The station was from Kutztown. Thanks for making these videos. I hope you travel there sometime and make a video about it.
Outstanding interview!!
Doug was great and very informative.
Thank you
The fate of minority languages isn’t a good one. In southern Brazil, they’re trying to keep the German language and culture alive in the face of a Portuguese-speaking society. You don’t want to stand out too much and you still want to keep your identity. That’s true with people in the US who speak Pennsylvania Dutch as well.
Brazil is increasingly assimilating people. The US ambassador to Brazil in the early 1900s said the descendants of the Confederados could mostly still speak English, but they’re all native Portuguese speakers now.
I think the Amish and mennonite are very resilient to assimilation so they will act as a reliable repository for Pennsylvania Dutch. And then the community’s surrounding them who are culturally Pennsylvania Dutch can tap into them as a resource to learn the language
I do not know whether or not my mother spoke Pennsylvania Dutch. But she does speak a form of German spoken only in the US. She never taught any of us. She can't read it very well. And it was pretty thoroughly stamped out during school. Right after world war II the US went out of its way to kill the German language. And even though they had people helping them win the war that were native German speakers they still punished the Germans living in the US for WWII. Just as they did the Japanese. Although the punishment for the Germans was more subtle and long lasting.
When my mother went to grade school she spoke fluent German and broken English. By the time she left school she spoke fluent English and barely ever spoke German. Whole german-speaking neighborhoods disappeared. This didn't just happen in my town this happened throughout the US. Oh kaiser towns, as they were called, transitioned to English speaking German Americans.
As a child, I didn't know that anything was missing. But as an adult I feel its absence. I have better familiarity and ability to speak Spanish. A language that has nothing to do with me. Then the language that my parents and grandparents spoke. This is truly sad.
As the child of Bavarian immigrants, and having just earned a Masters in Linguistics, this was particularly fascinating for me. Great show!
Feli and Doug, thank you very much! You asked great questions, Feli, and Doug, you’re a great teacher. I found this faszinierend! I would have liked to see a clip with Doug playing his Pennsylvania-Deutsch music! Well done! ❤
We want more !
I was born and raised midwest Amish and stayed there till I was 37 years old. I now live in Texas and have for a number of years, I really enjoyed this show and admittedly I still speak Pennsylvania Dutch but It is different from the Pennsylvania Dutch spoken by your guest today. I am not doubting anything he said but we speak differently although I could easily understand everything he said. Very interesting show. Keep posting your style of material, Feli!
German language newspapers were prevalent throughout the US Midwestern states, up until WWI. I assume that many “Pennsylvania Dutch” words/phrases would be found in those papers made in Cincinnati, Chicago, Milwaukee, since those folks mostly traveled across the US through Pennsylvania.
Yeah. There were a lot of folks who fled after 1848 in Texas and the Plains which were there own thing though.
The language history is similar to how some Huguenot settlements in Germany kept up their (really old fashioned) French for many generations until the two world wars and they lost the French entirely. There is an old Huguenot settlement near my grandparent‘s place close to Frankfurt. In the 60s they started a town partnership with a town near Paris and the French were amazed at finding a few old people still speaking fluent 17th century French with a horrible Hessian accent and a few modernisms in German. But younger people didn‘t speak it. My grandmother remembers a phrase „il est defendu de schlitterer en bas la Obergass“ said in a strong southern Hessian dialect. The church also has a French inscription on the door.
Schwätzkaschde 😂 but it makes kind of sense, the radio talks to you. 👍
Gutes Interview! Ich freue mich, dass die Sprache noch am Leben ist (und wächst!).
This was really interesting, Feli. I have heard that many Europeans think that Americans are kind of weird for the way that we express out interest in our family histories. I get it; we do tend to go overboard with it sometimes - I think it’s an American “personality trait”, if you will.
But I think that we are such a young country, relative to European and other areas, and there does seem to be a strong desire from many people here to look for our “Old World” roots. And without getting too political about it, to understand why and how so many people picked up, left everything they knew behind, and came here (and why so many people still do so today).
No, we don’t think you interest is weird. Your labeling your self is weird. You are not English, German or French. You are of English, German or French heritage.
I'm absolutely amazed how Feli has learned to speak english with no German accent! She sounds like English was her native language. Absolutely amazing! Impressive young Lady!
She definitely has an accent
@@bennybooboo6789I can understand Feli much better than I can understand many British people. I understand their leaders like the king/queen or people in media or government, but I have to strain many times to understand understand ordinary British people. I'm amazed that it's so easy to understand Feli.
@@stephenkammerling9479 That doesn't change the fact she still has an accent, contrary to the comment above.
@@bennybooboo6789 I never said she didn't have an accent, but I've found Feli to be the easiest person to understand when English is their second language. The tone of your statement seemed rather argumentative.
@stephenkammerling9479 I didn't say you said it. But the OP did, which is what I was replying to originally. The reason you have an easier time understanding someone like Feli, or the king/queen/government people is probably because they speak a lot slower than your everyday person, their enunciation and elocution is precise and practiced compared to a random person on the street. Both times I've been to the US, as an Australian, I've had to make a conscious effort to slow my speech down a lot so people understand me, as well as making the conscious effort to not use slang in everyday speech like normal. Yet in the UK I didn't have to worry about doing either, because they speak just as fast with just as much slang.
I loved your 2 part interview with Doug. It's so interesting to me b/c I'm 1/2 Pennsylvania Dutch & 1/2 German, so I'm German !!! 🤣🤣I can trace my German roots back to 1838 when my 2x Grandfather came to the US when he was just 21 yrs old. He was from the Hesse region & settled in western PA,. I really enjoy your channel, so I can learn more about Germany. Danke !!
About dying dialects: I used to speak a lot of Berlin dialect. This was not considered good at the time. When I did an apprenticeship, I gave up the Berlin dialect. And unfortunately I mainly spoke High German with my children. I regret that today and my children also think it's a pity. They can hardly speak Berlin dialect. When someone asks them where they come from, it's hard to believe they're from Berlin.
in one way or another, its impossible to keep the local dialects if the setting has a big fluctuation of people from all over the world - which is the case in most modern/global cities, especially in world cities like Berlin. Berlin had btw. a Metrolect unlike most cities in the past but like Vienna, Cologne, London and Paris. A metrolect is itself a mix from all the migrants from nearby and distant regions which influences the surroundings. Munich and most cities in the past were influenced by the environment. They transported permanently the rural Bavarian into the city. Berlin on the other hand transported permanently 'Berlin Metrolect' to the rural areas due to its massive dominance but also due to the much more exchanging and fluctuating population. Nowadays you find more 'Berlinerisch' in the Brandenburg region than in Berlin. But in the 21. century all cities in the developed countries are influenced by different aspects: English as representant of the global world (to a much lower degree from some other languages, sometimes neighbor or cultural close ones) and the 'Standardized form' of the cultural language zone. Means: Germany, Austria, German-Switzerland are all homogenizing their German to a few variations of a kind of 'everyday Standard German', a result of the much higher exchange and fluctuation of people and modern media in the 21. century. To keep a dialect/language relatively static you need enough isolation (physically and/or ideologically).
Feli, this is one of your best videos yet.
Loved this exchange Feli & Doug!
My Grandparents were Italian, and Istrian Slovene. Sadly i never learned either.
Im now living near a Schwartzentruber community in Middle Tennessee; very different frim the Lancaster County and surrounding Pa folk.
Great video!
I had the opportunity to visit the village in Hesse that my 5th Grandfather left in 1775 this past summer. I had that same sensation--Hesse reminded me of my grandparents county in rural Ohio.
This is very similar to the Chinese diaspora in SE Asia, who still speak Cantonese and Hokkien with some influence from the local languages where they migrated to centuries ago, just like PA Dutch is a time capsule of that time
Lots of Hessians from Hesse stayed after the American revolution ,PA is a very interesting place very good video
My family is one of them... POW who stayed in NJ after the war was over in order to start over in a new land.
@TimothyEichman some of mine too settled in Browns mills nj
I recently found out my grandmother’s family, both sides started their roots in the U.S. from Hessians. Her surname was Sebastian.
This is great. Thanks for sharing this.
Great interview--that was fascinating!
GruB Gott! Ich bin Americanerin von Pennsylvania. I went to school in Rothenburg ODT in Bavaria 36years ago. Bavaria looked so much like PA, I never got homesick.
Thanks!
This was a great video!
Loved this video! This man is so interesting!😊❤
Great subject! Thanks.
All your programs are great.
What a great video! Thank you so much this was truly amazing! The educational and historical aspect is totally outstanding! Keep up the great work.
Love this! Growing up in Southeastern Pennsylvania I have had a lot of exposure to the Pennsylvania Dutch. I know about a lot of the festivals & areas he was mentioning. I Was really looking forward to this second part. Thanks to both of you.
My father's parents first language was PA Dutch. I have his mother's mother's fraktur (birth cert) on display within 20 feet of where I sit. My father didn't speak the language, but I think he understood a good bit of it. To support that my father insisted that I pronounce VW as 'Folks Vagen' (and I still do). I knew the word for 'five' by playing Parchisi with Grandma D.
Where I went to school there was (is) a small Mennonite community. Inbreeding was starting to show; a classmate had 11 fingers. I don't have personal experience, but I understand Maple syrup urine disease was becoming somewhat more common.
I love your content!!!!!!
Same
Same!!
Hello feli. I just started watching your your videos. I have gained more knowledge from your videos. Wish I had friends from other countries to learn even more. You are an inspiration for those who want to know about different cultures.
One of my favourite videos so far.
Thank you, Feli and Danke schön, Doug. I am from Northern Germany and we as a familiy also did not manage to continue our Plattdeutsch into my generation. I know some, but same as Feli, I kind of feel like an imposter, speaking Platt. So sad, I really miss it. When my father is gone, so is the language for me.
By accident, we landed in Lancanster County some years ago, when travelling the US. It was fascinating!
Ein Hammer-Video!!!
Thx 4 it!
It was sooo interesting to hear the facts where Pennsylvanian Dutch come from, the hole history and the propagation in the States.
Feli and Doug, thy again for this video
pls more, this is really fascinating and interesting.
This was a delightful subject and conversation ❤
This video was so interesting! It doesn’t relate to my family history at all but such a fascinating piece of American history I knew nothing about. Thank you!
I posted on your first video. I love these two videos. My paternal grandfather’s family grew up speaking PA Dutch in Pennsylvania. Great videos! I’m also in Berks County where Doug is from.
I hope you both continue doing videos together. I love both channels. Maybe a holiday Belsnickle video???
Erfrischend authentischer und fesselnder Austausch.
Love this!
Danke Feli für das Interview 😊
This is extremelyy fascinating for me as a Linguist. I'd love to see a crossover of Doug with Ecolinguist channel.
Agreed!
Hello from Canada. Thanks for the very nice Video.
You make the best and interesting content
WOW! How flippin cool is this episode?!?!
What usually happens is that a foreign language speaker will marry someone who does not speak that language. Many of my great grandparents were bilingual, but none married someone from that language group. So I have very little knowledge of Spanish, German, Czech, or Swedish.
This was awesome 😎
Feli and Doug, thanks so much for these great discussions! I have spent my life in southeastern PA, but closer to Phila. For our families, you could literally watch and hear the transformation away from the PA Dutch culture starting in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The language "moved west" to the rural counties, the barns and farms gave way to modern housing developments, and this area became "English". I also feel I am missing part of my heritage by not speaking the dialect.
Oh, and there is another "PA German" festival besides Kutztown - two days in August, you can visit the Goshenhoppen Folk Festival; which demonstrates and celebrates the folk culture and trades of the 18th and 19th century PA Dutch in a very authentic manner. 😀
I was just there for the first time, and brought my 92 year old Pennsylvania Dutch parents. It was great fun. I made a RUclips video about it!
I’m so happy to have found your channel! I’ve been having so much fun listening to you. My grandparents on my mother side were all Germans who migrated to Russia and then the US. My dads side of the family is Pennsylvania Dutch. It’s sad because my dads side barely spoke any of their native language but on my moms side German has been passed down but is slowly fading. However I’m not sure if you can answer this but my family spoke low German (what they had told me) but when my mom took German in school it was high German and there was a lot of difference in in words or how they formed sentences. Have you heard of the low and high German? If so do you mind explaining it to me. I wish my Ommie was still alive cause I’ve just recently started taking German to get in touch with my heritage and wanted to learn more about the differences. One phrase I know well is “Stubborn headed Russian” My Ommie called me that when I was in trouble lol.
My daughter is an American raised like most Americans only learning English in our home, but she now lives in Germany and is in medical school there. She is very fluent in Hoch Deutsch but she is in Mannheim now and their dialect is very different. She runs into people who may have learned German in school but never really spoke it and they can understand her but she can't understand most of what they say. When she lived in Cologne I don't remember her ever having that issue so it must be very regional as to how pervasive dialects are or how far from standard German they are. Thank you Feli for another informative topic. I always enjoy learning new things about both our countries.
The dialect in Mannheim is part of the Palatinate dialect.
This was so much fun! My uncle Lester grew up Pennsylvania Dutch. Instudied German in college so this was a great family reunion.
You should make a video speaking only German and PA Dutch
Any chance you'd look at the Donauschwäbisch dialect at some point? That's my grandparents' dialect, and I think there's some interesting vocabulary and differences between that and standard German. They're all people who came from northern Germany in the 1730s who settled in modern-day Romania, near Timisoara, who are culturally kind of interesting, with a mix of traditions from various countries
Most Interesting !!!
Love this video. My Grandparents called the car the machine as well.
Historically this is so interesting!
I love that Doug continues the family traditions and knows the language. I wish mine had done the same. I can go back 11 generations on my Lohr line (my maternal side) and my great grandfather was a Leiss. I have So many German ancestors. I am also trying to locate all of them and the towns in which they immigrated.
Wow, so many generations! That seems wonderful for me Doug! I'm a second generation Lutheran German Canadian.
Was für ein ganz besonders wertvolles Video. / Gespräch. Vielen lieben Dank. Liebe Grüße aus dem Sauerland North Rhine Westphalia - the Home of 🎄⛰️🎄
Thanks for sharing this, I remember my mother telling me that we had Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors but didn't really understand what it meant and glad to know now!
In our Mosel Franconian dialect here around Kobenz we also refer to Auto as „die Maschiiiin“ (with long iiiii)
Hinkel for chicken is pfälzisch/palatinian dialect, rather understandable when you know that many palatinians were among those who emigrated to the US back in the 19th century ...as did a certain Herr Trumpf from Kallstadt near Bad Dürkheim. So,not surprising that palatinian words can be found in the Pennslvaia Dutch dialect.
As a central Ohio native, and someone who has interacted with several Ohio Amish, this is a great video to see.
It would be interesting to make a contrast between Amish in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa vs. Pennsylvania.
I love this kind of content on your channel. The parallels (and differences) between Pennsylvania Dutch and my own Silesian heritage are fascinating to me. I don't even know if there's an expert on Doug's level, but could we get a similar deep dive on Texas German?
Some of my Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors were from Silesia, and there were waves of others like them who followed the religious teachings of Caspar Schwenckfeld. So Silesians do actually make up part of the PA Dutch culture and I feel are commonly left out of the discussion of “what is PA Dutch?” (same with Alsatians!). I wish I knew more about the dialect these Silesian immigrants would’ve spoken when they arrived in PA in the 1730s, but eventually they would’ve started speaking more and more like the other PA Germans, as the Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch language took shape. Mach’s gut!
@@ScottKinseyReagan Oh wow, didn't know that, thanks! It seems Caspar spent the latter part of his life in the region where I live now, which is hilarious to me. Another rabbit hole to explore...
Unfortunately, I'm not well versed in the dialect/language, especially not going back that far. Wish I could tell you more, sorry. Mach's besser! 😉
@@_prg jo, datt gebt's arig viel zu endecke! Des heesst, du wunscht bei Ulm? Bischt Deitschlenner odder Amerikaaner? -- ich kann's net erkenne!
Ich liebe deinen Kanal. Gibt mir ein gutes Gefühl, dass ein deutscher Mitbürger auf RUclips erfolgreich ist
Great video Feli! I live among the Amish in NY state. This group doesn’t use electric or drive cars. They first came here 15yrs ago and now they are everywhere. I had an exchange student from Maisach live with us for a year. She definitely didn’t expect Amish in NY. 😀
I love this time capsule .
I find this Dutch/Deutch quite fascinating and have heard quite a few people insist that it is actually Dutch and not German. We have driven through Lancaster county and saw shops with signs saying 'Real Dutch Souvenirs' ! I realised later that we should have stopped and gone in to see what they sold, wooden shoes and windmills? LOL!
Doug is so right about the two world wars. That is about the time that my Mennonite Community
in Northern New York State stopped using German in the Church Services. He is so right about the
1950's. English was hard to learn correctly in the government public schools.
Your big fan from Kenya... hope to meet you in person one day though i don't know how and when. Be blessed.
I've recently been digging into my own German past (which was Pennsylvanian, but originally from places like Hesse and Pfalz in Germany, though I don't know if they spoke in the PA Dutch dialect or other German, as I don't know that side of the family very well).
Honestly, I know more about my Italian family, but having been born in PA (the Lehigh Valley area), I do remember going to lots of German festivals as a kid when I'd go up to visit from Atlanta (where I grew up), so it's always left me curious about the culture of that side of the family.
Anyway, all that to say, I was super-into this video, so thanks!
P.S. Also, I TOTALLY get that sadness about wanting to speak the language of your ancestors and not feeling whole because of it. It's why I've recently started to learn Italian at 50. I want to connect back to those cultures in my family.
This happens with English too, where Americans will use archaic words or phrases that someone from Britain has never heard of today, yet was commonly spoken there 300 years ago.