Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language

Abstract

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization has identified language survival as a high priority. According to some estimates, the linguistic monopolies created by the expansion of English and other national languages will see more than half of the world's roughly seven thousand languages disappear this century—some predictions are as grim as 90 percent. And yet, Pennsylvania Dutch is alive and well, holding its own against English, one of the greatest linguistic bulldozers of all time. The story of this language must be told, and there is no better person to tell it than Mark L. Louden—a specialist in Germanic linguistics and fluent speaker of the language with many years experience in the speech community. Drawing on historical, anthropological, sociological, and linguistic scholarship, he helps readers navigate the complex maze of groups that make up the population of Pennsylvania Dutch speakers. As Louden documents, the language is most robustly maintained by the Amish and Mennonite sectarians. Basically, competence in Pennsylvania Dutch accords with the degree of religious conservatism—where the language-culture-religion network is tight, the language continues to flourish, even within those groups where some modernization has taken place.