The Gender of English Loan Words in Pennsylvania German

Abstract

N THE Curme Volume of Linguistic Studies (1931), Professor A. W. Aron presented a study entitled: 'The Gender of English Loan-Words in Colloquial American German.' He stated his aim as follows: 'The purpose of this article is a study of the English words in the colloquial American German of the Middle West' (p. 13). The work is based upon lists of over 3500 words from Iowa, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, and Illinois. By the nature of the words which he cites, we may safely assume that they represent mainly nonce loans. He says: 'I include only such words as I have actually heard or can easily imagine being used in an actual situation.' And he seems to have treated Middle Western German as if it were chiefly Standard German, since he found no traces of 'original dialect differences,' as he calls them, but only of 'American German' dialect deviations. The fact that the area studied includes speakers of the most diverse German dialects makes it surprising to see what positive results Professor Aron has obtained. Indeed, he has worked out a rather good analysis of the factors which suffice to account for the gender of English loan words in colloquial American German as it is spoken by the so-called 'second generation' in the Middle West. Using most of his classifications and some of his terminology, I now propose to apply such an analysis to Pennsylvania German. A number of field records, made by Dr. Lester Seifert and myself in the Pennsylvania German area during the summer of 1940, plainly indicate that the gender of English loan words in Pennsylvania German is determined by the same essential features which Professor Aron has outlined for Middle Western