so when people hear Pennsylvania Dutch I
think a lot of people think Dutch as in
the Netherlands but that's not...no, myth..myth!
hey everybody! what's up it's Kelly again
welcome back to my channel I am sitting
with Doug Madenford and Misha my
boyfriend. Doug if you want to introduce
yourself a little bit. yeah I'm Doug
check out my youtube channel all about
Pennsylvania Dutch stuff language
culture history you name it it's there
and at Misha do you want to introduce
yourself. nah, I'm good.
Misha comes from the East Germany in Madenberg area so his dialect from there will
come into play as we go through this
video because today we're going to talk
about the Pennsylvania Dutch language
which is known as Pennsylvania Dutch and
Doug do you want to explain a little bit
about the origin? sure! so the language
itself was brought over to the colonies
in 16 late 1600s early 1700s by
immigrants coming from the
rhineland-palatinate the area of hessen
Baden-Württemberg... all along that Rhine
River Valley there and it was mainly
co  mprised of Pfaelzisch speakers who
brought this dialect here and when we
got here in that time period we kind of
set up a language island we we cut
ourselves off from the English that
were here and somehow by the grace of
God for 300 years our language... we kept
speaking it. I was talking to Kelly
earlier that you know most immigrant
groups when they come to the United
States first generation keeps the
language but then their children usually
don't learn it, assimilate... fully
assimilate with English, but for whatever
reason we stubborn Pennsylvania Dutch are like no, the language is important
we're gonna keep it and 300 plus years
later we're still speaking it so. so, when
people hear Pennsylvania Dutch, I think a
lot of people think Dutch as in the
Netherlands. that's not... no, myth myth! and it all has to do with what the word Dutch
meant in the early 1700s in English. this
is a big myth is that oh it's Deutsch
and the English people heard the word
Deutsch and they're like oh they must be
Dutch well that's not true.
so in 1700s era English the word Dutch
referred to any group
that came from Germanic speaking Europe.
there was no Germany in 1700 there was
all you know Holy Roman Empire all these
little kingdoms and dukedoms there was
no Germany and there really was no
Netherlands either yet there was you
know they were broken up between the
Spanish and and there was a whole you
know all that history there so there was
no term "Germans" so there was no reason
to call us that so but Dutch was what
the English called anybody from that
region of Europe it's stuck and that's
what we were called so we kept using
that term and now today of course while
there is a Germany and there's a
Netherlands and now that definition of
the word Dutch has changed in English
but we haven't changed it. it's.. that's
who we are. and I know when I talk to me shaaa
about the German language he always
tells me about how much it's evolved
over you know hundreds and hundreds of
years but even very recently there have
been a lot of you know changes in the
way that Germans speak or the terms they
use and so has Pennsylvania Dutch evolved? yes and no. languages are a living entity
they change. you know.. time, society,
history changes them but we've been kind
of a weird case because we were broken
off from where our mother language was
spoken so when we left the that 1600 era
German that we spoke is what we brought
and came to a country that not everybody
spoke that language so there wasn't an
influence you know as times change as
new things were invented...where back in
German, you know they came up with
German words for those things we didn't
because we were broken away from that.
so sometimes today when you hear people
speaking Pennsylvania Dutch you will hear a lot of English words mixed
in and mainly those are words that are
inventions post 1700. so the language
changes, and since there's no official
formal education in the language... also
grammar rules exist but people don't
follow them very well because there's
nobody really teaching them - oh, you got
to say it this way or you know it wasn't
it...it was never taught in school. it was
never taught in school, so a lot of
Pennsylvania Dutch speakers like my grandparents, they
can speak it fluently but they can't
read or write in it. okay. I mean it was
an oral language more than anything else.
the idea of literature in our language
didn't really happen until the late
1800s.
oh that recently? when people first started
writing it down. yeah. okay, Wow.
and earlier in the first video made we
made you mentioned that the Bible that
the Pennsylvania Dutch will use is
written in German and so they learn
German purely so that they can
understand the scripture. yeah, and like church
services throughout Pennsylvania up
until really World War I era, you still
could go to church and the service would
be in standard German even though you
had all these old Pennsylvania are
sitting there that necessarily couldn't
read or write in standard German but
that's how they use that for the liturgy
so the readings would come out of the
Luther Bible, the prayers would be done
in standard German. now that changed with the world wars which we can talk about I
guess if you want to later on but yeah
so that mean that's yeah bad ending
there but haha so they know some German for this purpose but for all you know
intents and purposes it's different from
Pennsylvania Dutch. absolutely! when a when a
German today comes to visit the
Pennsylvania Dutch here in Pennsylvania
and they speak German to them.. standard
German, most Pennsylvania Dutch will have a
really hard time understanding them. if
they come from that pocket of Germany
where we came from and they speak
dialect then it goes a lot easier but if
you have someone from the east coming...
my parents and grandparents
wouldn't understand what he had to say.
okay. they wouldn't, and reverse the same
you know which will test him here in a
couple minutes.
yeah so Doug knows that both German and
Pennsylvania Dutch obviously he knows
English as well ha! little bit. but I
brought Misha into this video because I
thought it would be really interesting
for you guys to see someone speaking
Pennsylvania Dutch to someone speaking
German and how much y'all can understand
each other. this is something I've been
really interested in knowing and months
ago when I was talking to Misha about you
know, the Amish, I brought up some
Pennsylvania Dutch words and their
translation to English and see if he could
understand some of the Pennsylvania
Dutch and there were some similarities
in the roots of the words that I
remember but yeah I think it would be
fun if maybe Doug says something in
Pennsylvania Dutch to Misha and see if
Misha can understand it and we'll
go from there.
so let's start with like some basic
elementary words. you ready? yeah
I'll say the words in Dutch and you give
the English how's that sound or give the
standard German for it.
alright oh I'll start off with a slow
pitch here. okay
"hund" yeah that's a dog. yeah. I even
knew that! "haus" yeah, that's a house.
"Scheier" ... Scheier huh... huh
sounds like the Shire from Tolkien. no, no.
no hobbits there? no no "Scheier"
oh I think so the standard German word
is "Scheune"  oh, yeah. that's a barn. 
one thing that so if you if you come
from the palatine this
will all make sense to you because their
dialect their makes that where a lot of
times this is a generalization but where
a lot of times in standard German you
have an e-u sound "Scheier" that got changed
to a e-i sound or that that was the sound
that they tended to use so that that's
the little side note. okay how about a
phrase? a phrase? yeah. you ready? shoot.
Mei Bruder schpringt schtarrick
okay my brother jumps... schtarrick is the word i have troubles with so I guess...
I don't know um I'm lost here.
yeah and here's a false cognates "springa"
in Pennsylvania Dutch means "to run"
not "to jump" so my Mei Bruder schpringt schtarrick
means my brother runs fast.
schtarrick is fast or strong. yeah I
was like going for going in that
direction but it wouldn't make any sense.
um yeah right oh yeah springa yeah
yeah that's a different the verb to jump
in Pennsylvania Dutch is chumpa. 
hmm so you can hear that English
influence a little bit. interesting.
so you're saying "stark" is
German for "strong" yeah and you're saying
schtarrick right? yeah. ready?
Mei Daadi hot ken Duwak meh. Mei Daadi hot ken
Duwack meh. uhhh yeah...I won't be able to help you with that one. I think that's "my daughter"...maybe? no
oh well then i'm completely lost.
so "Mei Daadi hot ken Duwak meh"..."Mein Vater hat kein mehr Tabak"
alright...my dad doesn't have any tobacco anymore.
yeah, yeah. so "Daadi" is dad? yeah, we do have the word "Vater" but a
lot of Pennsylvania Dutch will use the word
"Daadi". Mammi..."die Mammi un der Daadi"  oh that's
interesting. yeah it's closer to English then...well Vater I guess is pretty...like father.
remember English is a Germanic based
language. that's true. does that scare you when I
speak that dialect? no no I'm just
confused.
yeah. i'm like sitting here not quite understanding what you're saying. yeah sure. but uh yeah.
yeah I mean I've traveled through a lot
of regions of Germany. I've pretty much
been all over the country and I know
what regions I can safely speak in
dialect in and I
know people will understand me or at least
get most of it and then I know where
there's no chance...no snowball's chance
in hell if I use it. like if I travel to
the region where where you're from, I
know that it would be stupid for me to
try and speak dialect. then I just switch
in to Hochdeutsch and then I should be
usually I'm okay. well it's nice that you know both. it helps. it helps.
do you have any questions for Doug
regarding like how they have worked the
language or the differences between
German and Pennsylvania Dutch? so when I
was walking around...and we went to an
Amish grocery store, I heard some people
talking and it sounded to me Dutch so I
don't know any Dutch but I know the
sound of it so do you know any Dutch and
can you like, relate why those
two languages sound similar? well I think
part of it has to do with... sound similar?
I don't know. I guess we do share some
similarities and sound.
but I guess one reason could be that we
might have picked some of those sounds
up. all of us that left the Old World
eventually got on a boat in Amsterdam.
sometimes people had to spend a little
bit of time there until they can raise
enough money to make the trip across the
ocean. so there could be some influence
there. Most Pennsylvania Dutch
speakers though I don't think sound
Hollandisch or sound Dutch, really.
you know a lot of the Amish you
encountered some Amish they actually
speak more of a Swiss-style German. like
our Penn... their Pennsylvania Dutch... here let's get grammar nerd here or
linguistic nerd. so in standard German to
make something diminutive we add "-chen"
"Mädchen" and okay in non-Pennsylvania Dutch in non-Amish Pennsylvania Dutch, we put "-che"
on the end of a word so a cup in
Pennsylvania Dutch is a "Koppche"
but the Amish would say "Koppli" which in
Swiss German they tend to use "-Li" as
their diminutive form yeah so "Mäitli"
"Koppli" so that...they brought
with them as well, that linguistic
difference. I give if... an Amish... if I
speak to Amish I understand them they
understand me they might use a couple
words differently than what I would use
and vice versa but we're intelligible to
each other so that's one thing to keep
in mind but yeah it's not just... the
language is different from region to
region here in Pennsylvania just because
different regional groups came over and
as you know in Germany how many
different dialects are there still
spoken today. three. there's a lot more than three. three main ones maybe.
did you see...was there at was there a
regional dialect where you grew up?
yeah yeah I grew up in Magdeberg and
in Magdeberg it's people assume it's in
East Germany and they have like all this
eastern sound to it the whole language
is not... but the whole language is the
same thing, right? we have of course
there's a couple of special words that
are special to the region but in Magdeberg
actually we speak kind of like it it's
closer to Hochdeutsch than most people
would assume. yeah it probably has to do with how far how far is Magdeburg from the areas
where Luther did his stuff? like Wittenberg and Eisenach and all those places?
yeah I should totally know that but I mean it's not terribly far yeah you know because we've
got to remember that the standard
that the German standard was
based off a Luther's translation of the
Bible so the German that was was we know
with what Luther was speaking was much
cleaner quote-unquote than what was
being spoken in southwestern Germany
where a lot of my people came from but
if you travel into southwestern Germany
there are regional dialects from town to
town that are different to each other
and I think that you know plays a huge
role in it you know how these groups
came together and then the language kind
of meshed all these different little
dialects meshed into one here in here in
Pennsylvania. and I'm always hearing that
the Bavarian dialect is yes for example
or like Austrian German right yeah and
then even within Bavaria itself you have
Franconian you have upper Franconian and
you have lower Franconian then you have
you know Schwaebisch and Pfaelzisch
and Saarländisch. I mean within that
region of Germany alone there's dialects
every little town has their own dialect
and that's like I talked to Germans that
are there it might not be the case where
you're from but the big difference is
you know are younger Germans only
speaking Hochdeutsch? or are they
maintaining those old dialects and from
what I heard from a lot of people maybe
you you know you guys would agree out
there but the younger generations are kind of moving away
from the dialects it's everything
standard German oh that's old-fashioned
that's what my grandparents speak
there's no reason for me to learn that
that to me I think that's really sad.
speak your dialect! you know, learn German yeah,
that's fine but speak your dialects
that's it's a part of your history and
culture. right I mean, that's how I feel I
mean I'm speaking English...but whenever I
call my mom and have a conversation with
her and she'll use them some dialect for
lack of a better word yeah regional words...absolutely, you know I
get really excited to have this home,
folky language that I know. so I try
to use the words. it shows where you're from, right.
yeah I know some Germans aren't too
you know the idea of showing a lot of
national pride isn't that popular in
Germany and I understand why but I think
you know no one's around here waving
their Pennsylvania Dutch flag saying no
we're better than everybody else! but you
know showing those regional differences
set off who we are in a good way I think
we should be celebrating that you know.
the whole idea of a lot of people always
say America is the melting pot I don't
really like that term I prefer I'm gonna
use a good Pennsylvania Dutch thing I
like the term a quilt. we all have
different little squares and together we
get sewn into one big quilt but each
little square maintains its own identity
its own color its own you know pattern
so I think that's you know that's my
vision of America and why I keep
speaking the language that I do
I could have decided not to and I could
have decided when I had kids I'm not
gonna pass this on it's stupid it's old
but I think that's it's part of who I am
it's part of who my kids are um you know
that we've been speaking it for 300
years you know as my ninth
great-grandfather went off to fight the
American Revolution he went out speaking
Pennsylvania Dutch fighting for this new
country of his and when my seventh
great-grandfather fought in the Civil
War he fought speaking Pennsylvania
Dutch you know I just think that's part
of who I am the heritage that I came from.
it doesn't make me any less American I
think that's another misconception oh
you speak a foreign language you're not
American and blah blah and I just want
to slap those people I mean when they
speak like I've been here for 300 plus
years well my family's been here for 300
plus years they said we've we've helped
and you know every era of history and we
fought in her Wars and all that stuff to
make the country that it is. me speaking
a foreign language I don't think doesn't
make me any less of an American or make
me any less proud to be an American
either I think that's there's something
needs to be said about that so yeah how
do you feel about that from a German
perspective. you know
maintaining the regional dialect and
maintaining German you know you're
living over here and I know that you're
you know your accent is becoming more I
guess I could say your English is
becoming more American sounding. I would say that having a dialect a regional
dialect hmm is compared to...like having a lack of like a higher education oh and people always
feel like judging you for it
so of course there's like this desire to
retain it to keep a part of your
identity but there's also like the
desire to society's influence on it yeah
yeah I know Hochdeutsch. I know how to speak properly.
yeah yeah and this is a stigma that is
well present in Germany and I think it
is there present in the US as well. absolutely I mean we..the Pennsylvania Dutch were always
known by the outsiders as the dumb Dutch
because we weren't learning English
because our English when we spoke
English we had an accent you know and we
didn't sound educated well yeah I mean
that we fight that stigma too, to a certain
extent or we fought it I mean it's not
as bad as what it used to be because
there's fewer and fewer people outside
of our little region that you'll hear it
by so there's we've we've fought that
stigma though for years for absolute
years. yeah I mean I'll say even in my
YouTube videos if I'm speaking you know
and I'll say like a colloquial term or
something there will always be one
comment of someone calling me uneducated because of course saying the word you
know ground instead of floor or
something and it's like well I mean this
is kind of like a regional thing and
yeah context is a lot of English I think
oh I have German has a lot of these very
specific terms they have to refer to
certain things whereas I feel like with
English there's a lot of context that
you draw from sentences and going with
this uneducated thing though you know
I was I was talking to a friend the
other day about you know he had some he
teaches a swim team and they had some
foreign students on the swim team and he
was having to explain to some of his
colleagues you know just because they
don't speak English well doesn't mean they're dumb. of course they're they're
intelligent people they just don't speak
English well and so this this
misconception is is definitely present
you know just because I didn't speak
German hardly at all when I was living
in Germany didn't mean I was uneducated
or dumb it just meant I was suddenly
living in a country I never thought I
would be living in. yeah you got any more
thoughts on that? do you have anything? I
mean if you want to learn more about our
language there's tons of stuff out there
online right now. there's blogs written
in the language we have videos on my
youtube channel of course and there's
publications I've written a couple books
we have kids books in the language too
to help parents that maybe want to pass
it on in one way or another to their
children. so the language is alive I
think that's what I think most Germans
always find that pretty interesting that
this is still happening in you know the
United States 300 years later but it is
we're we're uh we're trucking on I think
you said earlier about five hundred
thousand people speak this language four
hundred thousand of which are the Amish and
old order Mennonite yeah but then
there's a fastest growing minority so I
mean the language your language isn't
going anywhere
as long as the Amish keep having kids
which they will the language will be
around would be okay and then there are
people like Doug who I mean maybe and
you know someone within the Amish
community wouldn't go outside of the
community to teach Pennsylvania Dutch
but someone like Doug is reaching out
and trying to you know bridge
those gaps and teach the language and I
think that's really, really special. I
appreciate that.
yeah so alright well that's all I've
got for you guys! Doug, thank you so much for sitting down with me.
we're fighting the sun right now so
sorry it got a little sunny out here. and
Misha as always thank you for dealing
with my YouTube adventures. Alright!
thank you so much guys for watching if
you liked the video give it a thumbs up!
please check out Doug's channel. I'm sure
it would be really interesting to a lot
of you guys. I'll link it in the
description below. thank you to all of my
patrons you guys are awesome for the
support you've given me and I'll see you
guys next time. byyyyyye!!
