Since Pennsylvania Dutch formed in the United States when our ancestors immigrated here from Europe, it has gotten a lot of hate for being a broken mishmash of German and English. Here’s an example from 1788 by a German, Johann David Schöpf, who traveled through North America: “The language used by our German-speaking countrymen [in Pennsylvania] is a pitifully broken mishmash of English and German with regard to words as well as their combination” (taken from Louden 2016: 1). I’m going to try to show you why this understanding of Pennsylvania Dutch is faulty.
People who study languages have learned some important things:
1. Any language that is alive changes over time just like our living bodies change as we grow and age. It’s not a sign that a language is being lost or used wrongly just because it is used a bit differently than it used to be.
2. Every language borrows words from other languages if it’s useful to do so. For example, for Pennsylvania Dutch it makes sense to borrow words like computer, cash register, and cell phone because those things did not exist when our ancestors left Germany and Switzerland, so we have no German/Pennsylvania Dutch words for those inventions. Even in modern German the word for computer is Computer. Did you know that around 80% of English words came into English from another language? Does that mean that English should not be considered a legitimate language?
3. Languages serve the needs of the speakers, and they do that in many different ways. If a language does not need a grammar feature that it used to have, it might just get rid of it. This is not due to laziness or ignorance on the part of the speakers. It’s just a natural part of the way languages change over time.
4. Languages are never broken. If they allow speakers to communicate successfully and bind people together (Pennsylvania Dutch does both!), they are serving their purposes well.
5. No language is more or less smart than any other language. All languages have complicated grammar rules that speakers have to follow to understand and be understood. How effortlessly we understand and use these complicated grammar rules (without being able explain them or knowing that we know them) demonstrates just how beautifully and wonderfully we are created. When linguists, people who study languages, talk about grammar rules they are not talking about the ones written down in rulebooks. They talk about the grammar rules every speaker has in their head and usually don’t even know they follow. For example, your English grammar rules tell you that brack could be an English word (we could use it as a name for a new invention or app, for example) but rback could not be because you can’t have the combination “rb” at the beginning of a word in English. That “br” is acceptable and “rb” is not is one example of an unwritten English grammar rule that every speaker of English knows implicitly (without knowing that they know it).
6. Most languages in the world are not written languages. They are still very real, fascinatingly complex, and astonishingly beautiful. The legitimacy of a language does not depend on whether or not it is written. Like with the “br” versus “rb” rule for English above, a rule does not need to be written in a rulebook or apply to written language in order to still be true for spoken language.
7. Speaking more than one language helps you see the world through more than one pair of eyes and belong to multiple groups and cultures. Many researchers say that it’s good for your brain’s development and longevity to speak more than one language.
In this little exercise, I’m going to try to show you why I think God made all languages – just like he made all people – equal. Pennsylvania Dutch has grammar rules that you, if you are a speaker, follow even if you could not have said what they were. You know them without being able to describe them. You know them without being aware of that knowledge. Isn’t that cool?!
Activity Number One:
How would you say the plural (more than one) for dog? Dogs, right? What about cat? Cats. How about horse? Horses. What is the grammar rule for making plurals in English? Add -s. Simple. How do we make nouns plural in Pennsylvania Dutch? What plural form(s) can you think of off the top of your head? Is there only one? Let’s play a game.
What is the plural form for each of these words? (Just write it the way it sounds to you.)
| Mick | ‘fly | ________________________ |
| Messer | ‘knife’ | ________________________ |
| Baam | ‘tree’ | ________________________ |
| Yaahr | ‘year’ | ________________________ |
| Meisli | ‘mouse’ | ________________________ |
| Rock | ‘dress’ | ________________________ |
| Haus | ‘house’ | ________________________ |
| Hiwwel | ‘hill’ | ______________________ |
| Draub | ‘grape’ | ______________________ |
| Kissi | ‘pillow’ | ______________________ |
| Pasching | ‘peach’ | ______________________ |
Activity Number 2:
Many languages have different endings for verbs depending on who is doing the action in the sentence. Spanish, for example, has different endings for the verb hablar “to speak” based on the subject of the sentence (yo hablo “I speak”, tu hablas “you speak”, nosotros hablamos “we speak”, etc.). In English there are only two possibilities, either no ending or -s (for example, I speak, you speak, we speak, they speak, he/she/it speaks.) The -s is used for third person singular (he/she/it) and no ending is used in all other contexts. But how is it in Pennsylvania Dutch?
lanne – ‘to learn’
| ich lann | mir lanne |
| du lannscht | dihr lannet |
| er/sie/s lannt | sie lanne |
| I learn | we learn |
| you learn | you learn |
| he/she/it learns | they learn |
Now you try….
esse – ‘to eat’
| ich | mir |
| du | dihr |
| er/sie/s | sie |
Here again, it’s obvious that Pennsylvania Dutch has more endings than English. While English only has two different kinds of the verb (learns and learn), Pennsylvania Dutch has 5 (lann, lannscht, lannt, lanne, and lannet). This is why you can say Wie bischt? ‘How are you?’ or Kannscht Deitsch? without having du there. The -scht tells you that it’s a du form.
What else is different about Pennsylvania Dutch and English here? You! In English we have no official way to say you to more than one person. This is why people say things like yous, you guys, or y’all. It’s actually really helpful to have a separate pronoun for the two kinds of you (1 person or a group of people) because it’s a difference that helps people communicate better. Because Pennsylvania Dutch has this form (dihr lannet “you guys learn”) it can do this easily.
So what is the takeaway here? The takeaway is that Pennsylvania Dutch is not a broken, unregulated, free- for-all mishmash. It is a German language with influence from English. It follows specific grammar rules (for example, if you are talking to a group of people you should use the pronoun dihr and the -et ending for the verb; dihr lannet “you guys learn”). Even if no one has written those rules in a rulebook, the rules exist in the minds of speakers. If they wouldn’t, the speakers would not be able to understand each other. They would just be speaking unintelligible gibberish and not able to communicate at all. By this understanding, Pennsylvania Dutch is a complete language that serves the needs of its speakers very well.