|
Post by crefeldian on Sept 7, 2012 10:14:23 GMT -5
Hi folks, I just stepped in here on my way tracking historical routes from Crefeld, Germany to Germantown, Pennsylvania and as a side effect also to Pennsylvania Deitsch... But apparently the site is dead, as especially the Admin did not login since 2009. So what´s up here? My interests as an original german Crefeldian are finding similarities between the PD, the german langugage and especially the dialect of Crefeld. SO please let me know if this site comes back to life!
|
|
rmuss
New Member
Posts: 2
|
Post by rmuss on Jul 19, 2017 18:24:25 GMT -5
Well, I'm here half a decade later for what it's worth. You mean you are from Krefeld, Germany? Or are simply trying to learn more about the similarities between the Pennsylvania German dialect? Krefeld or Crefeld, NRW is in a formerly Low German speaking region; maybe you have a few speakers left here and there but probably pretty few. Pennsylvania German is a West Central German dialect most akin to Palatinate German or Pfaelzisch. The Germantown settlements are very early, there was even a village of Krefeld in the area of Germantown. These settlers probably had all directly met Penn when he was traveling up the Rhine. The later German settlers, who completely dwarfed the original families in Germantown were from areas generally further to the south and made up the bulk of who would later become the "Pennsylvania Dutch". Pennsylvania Dutch still has quite a large amount of inter-dialect influence outside of Pfaelzisch and differs from county to county and I couldn't tell you whether or not those original areas around Germantown spoke what we would recognize as Pennsylvania Dutch or something a bit more like Low German by the time of and after the Revolutionary War. But in using the actual vernacular conception of "Pennsylvania Dutch", it too could basically be considered Pennsylvania Dutch.
To sum it up, "Pennsylvania Dutch" as it is generally known and the native dialect of the region of Krefeld belong to two different dialect families. You may want to read about the Hutterites or "Russian" Mennonites both of whom speak Plautdietsch, Low German.
|
|
|
Post by Tim Conrad on May 22, 2018 16:55:37 GMT -5
Sorry, haven't been active here. There was very little activity here. We have had much more active participation on some Facebook groups devoted to the language, including research, Q&A and practice.
Since you brought up Krefeld, I'll weigh in a bit. I don't know much about Krefelders but I did notice that they tended to have Low German surnames. They seemed very unlike the latter immigrants from the Pfalz, Alsace, and even Baden and Switzerland. The dialect seems to have more influence from those areas, from what I can tell. I had guessed that the Krefelders would have had a Low German dialect. Notice that once here, the various Germans seemed to "mingle". There weren't separate areas for Swiss, Pfalz, etc, and I know that Germantown Reformed had the "new immigrants". I didn't do any specific research on the Krefelders, but my sense was that many of those earliest Germans settled in with the English, switched to English churches and probably learned English, rather than seeding PA Dutch/German areas. I'd be curious if others have found this to be the case.
|
|