German Reacts to Pennsylvania Dutch | Feli from Germany
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Over 300,000 people in the world speak Pennsylvania Dutch. But wait... does this mean they speak Dutch? Or German? And can a native German speaker understand this language at all? Let's find out! 😊
Also check out:
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Videos I reacted to:
WIKITONGUES: Dale speaking Pennsylvania German and English▸ • WIKITONGUES: Dale spea...
Patrick Donmoyer - Pennsylvania Dutch Phrases (The Philadelphia Inquirer)▸ • Patrick Donmoyer - Pen...
Germans Can’t Speak Pennsylvania Dutch on "Kelly does her thing"▸ • Germans Can’t Speak Pe...
Es Hinkelhaus - Douglas Madenford▸ • Es Hinkelhaus
Hiwwe wie Driwwe - Pennsylvanisch-Deitsch im Yahr 2015▸ • Hiwwe wie Driwwe: Penn...
Why do we say DEUTSCHLAND instead of GERMANY? ▸ • Why do we say DEUTSCHL...
German Reacts to Texas German ▸ • German Reacts to Texas...
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0:00 Intro
0:34 What is Pennsylvania Dutch?
5:07 Dale - Wikitongues
10:24 Patrick Donmeyer - The Philadelphia Inquirer
13:21 Get 15% off Raycon!
15:46 Kelly does her thing
19:59 Douglas Madenford
22:52 Hiwwe wie Driwwe
32:35 How much did I understand?
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ABOUT ME: Hallo, Servus, and welcome to my channel! My name is Felicia (Feli), I'm 28, and I'm a German living in the USA! I was born and raised in Munich, Germany but have been living in Cincinnati, Ohio off and on since 2016. I first came here for an exchange semester during my undergrad at LMU Munich, then I returned for an internship, and then I got my master's degree in Cincinnati. I was lucky enough to win the Green Card lottery and have been a permanent resident since 2019! In my videos, I talk about cultural differences between America and Germany, things I like and dislike about living here, and other topics I come across in my everyday life in the States. Let me know what YOU would like to hear about in the comments below. DANKE :)
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++Update: You guys requested it, so here is: German Reacts to Texas German ▸kzhead.info/sun/abOzhruXopyLp6M/bejne.html++ Did you guys understand anything? 😅
Hallo
Only some xD also Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater is a little tale we learned as children xD um I cannot tell you what it truly means. It's just like something children recited xD I will have to ask my mom what it is to mean. Also you were thinking of Outhouse for the outside toilet xD
I think he's reading Peter Peter pumpkin eater had a wife but couldn't keep her put her in a pumpkin shell and there he kept her very well But he read it a little different and I had only heard that first part not the other wife part
3:45 But they did differentiate between countries within the Holy Roman Empire (the German parts and Austria) and countries outside the Holy Roman Empire (like the Netherlands). The Ständeversammlung for example had representatives from all the different countries within the Empire - and also the danish king because while the kingdom of Denmark was not part of the Empire he was also duke of Schleswig and Holstein, and in that functionality the danish king was also a member of the Ständeversammlung of the Holy Roman Empire. It is true that no unified Germany existed, however the people inhabiting the various principalities of the Holy Roman Empire did think of themselves as members of not only their actual home principality but also the empire as a whole. 6:35 The reason for that might be that Pennsylvania Dutch is actually more closely related to Low German and not High German. As a Bavarian I think you're not familiar with Low German (correct me if I'm wrong). During the 16th-18th century most parts of the Empire and what is now Germany still spoke Low German. High German was mostly limited to what is now Switzerland (even though the modern swiss dialect is almost incomprehensible to Germans), Baden-Wurtemberg, Bavaria and Austria (yes I know it's an irony that the areas where High German originates are nowadays the areas that speak the least "pure" high German). Old English is actually the same language as Old Low German. It's the same language which means that English is closely related to Low German, Frisian, Dutch and the Jutic Dialects. If you read Low German texts it becomes even more obvious because many words are literally spelled the same and only the pronounciation differs (Water for example which is literally the same word in Low German and English). 11:40 Not in that context - but in a different context it would make sense - if the question would have been how good you are at doing something. 12:31 Some Low German dialects use the word dag (Tag); others say dach instead. What he said here is basically a specific pronounciation of dag (I would pronounce it differently, however I speak Schleswiger Platt while hat he said sounds more like a dialect from the west which can be very different). I have to say though that even though I do speak both High German (obviously) and Low German (in the Schleswiger dialect) It is hard to understand some of the words and phrases because what they say is different from both High and Low German.
Cript not crib
This is probably the original version of a nursery rhyme we learned as children. "Peter Peter pumpkin eater, had a wife and couldn't keep her. Put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well."
What was weird I was able to figure out what nursery rhythm this was even without understanding the German/ Dutch language. Something about the rhythm of it.
Yep, Peter Peter pumpkin eater. Pumpkin has to be weird word because there wouldn't be a german equivalent.
Yes i heard something like "Peter Peter Karrotts Fresser" which would be a very Denglisch way of saying Peter Peter Carrot Eater, implying that Peter is an animal.
@@MsFitz134 could it be cat? I think it slang word they used instead of pumpkin.
That’s a hell of a concept to a child.
As a Québécois, I am thrilled by how respectful you are to the Pennsylvania Dutch community. I have seen too many KZheadrs from Europe listening to Canadian and Louisiana French as if it's just hilarious and as if modern European French is "better," rather than respecting communities who have defended our French for centuries.
There is probably a difference in culture since there is standard german, but a huge diversity of local accents and idioms, basically evey valley or region can have its accepted variant. In France the approach has been very different, attempting to eliminate everything but Parisian (I think?) French. They are also much harsher in excluding English vocabulary than the Germans are, and not especially friendly towards local languages such as Occitan (which used to be much more prominent in the south). I think Feli reflects this more language diversity accepting approach very well.
@ - I found the phrase you used, "Parisian French" to be interesting. When I lived in Louisiana 30 years ago, the french speakers would always speak of their dialect being different from "Parisian" French. I found that phrase curious, and wondered why it was so specific, and they did not just differentiate theirs from the French of France as a whole. I don't know what it is like now, but there was a surprising amount of the French language in common, everyday usage by everyone back then.
@@debrawhited3035 probably you find this wikipedia article interesting. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langues_d%27o%C3%AFl Personally I disliked dialects when I grew up in Austria. But the historical roots made me change my mind, i.e. dialects are usually not just slur/imprecise degradation of a language, but reflect migrations, pre-existing substrates, geography of vowel shifts, etc. They really tell a lot of history, and as I have been told good knowledge of regional dialects can greatly benefit the reading of old/medieval documents because of vocabulary not used in standardized language anymore. Provided a very different view on language and cultural diversity, for me.
@@debrawhited3035 The French Revolution basically tried to reset France to a standard universal values that weren't related to the old regime. Replacing Catholic cathedrals with temples of reason, replacing the calendar with a new 10 month calendar, and destroying every dialect that's not Parisien.
Me quite the opposite, I find it original and gives some spices to the pretty monotonous Metropolitan French. And it is also a great way for me to learn about our distant cousins from Quebec and Cajun.
This is a variation of a English nursery rhym. The way that I learned it was, "Perer Peter pumpkin eater had a wife and couldn't keep her, put her in a pumpkin shell and there he kept her very well". I find this interesting. I spent two years in Germany fifty years ago. I used to understand the German dialect which was spoken around Bitburg. I have forgotten most of it. I can understand some of what they are saying, but it is not easy for me.
Interesting. I was stationed in Bitburg about 33 years ago. My landlord was Indian, and his German wife & children enjoyed practicing their English with me, so I never picked up very much German, despite having taken about 1.5 years of it in H.S. The main thing I remember learning that I'd never heard in school was "Tschüß", or today, apparently...it's "Tschüss".
Funny because I (guessing many Americans) immediately recognized what the elderly gentleman in the first video was saying because of the the rhythm and rhyme of the poem that we all heard as children.
Yes
Yes. Peter Peter pumpkin eater.
I'm Swiss and lived in Erie, PA for three years. When I encountered the Amish in the city and heard them speak I immediately recognized it as an older dialect of Swiss German. I was confused because I had been told by the locals that the Amish were of Dutch origin. My online research of course revealed very quickly that the word 'Deutsch' / German was confused with 'Dutch' over time. I even discovered that a lot of the Amish in Pennsylvania are immigrants from the Swiss Kanton of Aargau, which is where I am from. It shares its Northern border with Germany, the Swabian area to be more precise.
It also seems like it evolved a bit from different languages. Like luxembourgish, sometimes it's more German, sometimes it's more dutch, and then they throw in random french words. In swiss German, a lot of sounds are still similar as they are in dutch, some vowels are more pronounced than in modern high German.
I thought the Amish originated in the Kanton Bern idk.
@@VenuZz Kanton Bern and Aargau are neighboring Kantons. In fact, the Kanton of Aargau was formed from several 'Gemeine Herrschaften' and some formerly Habsburg possessions in Switzerland in 1803. The South of Aargau is still called Bern-Aargau today. Switzerland is a small country with an insane diversity packed into just a few thousand square kilometers. Aarau, the captial of Aargau is only 50 miles from Bern. And Baden, Aargau's most significant city, is only 65 miles from Bern and 12 miles from Zurich. There were a lot of immigrants to the US from all those areas.
@@rontgenstein6659 fellow Argovia person here 😃
In the past Dutch in English meant the same as we use German now. The was no distinction between low and high German. She explains this clearly.
as a southern german i understand every word since they 100 percent speak my local dialect with no difference at all
so interesting. thanks for sharing that.
That strongly depends on where in Southern Germany you are from. I'm from Eastern Wuerttemberg, and I understand them better than Feli does, but not by much. However, I assume that the closer you are to Rheinland-Pfalz, the better you'll understand them. Most of it sounds pretty much like Pfälzisch to me.
@@theol1044i think if you are generally fro maround here you can interpret most of it even if you dont know wach word
@@tavish4699 ajo, des is vorderpälzisch un a e bissje westpälzisch. ich sah mo grob Ecke Landau middeme radius von 50km...
@@WeaponX2007A immerhin mehr als die meisten deutschen :D
This put a huge smile on my face. It is a poem from my young childhood over seventy years ago. I have tears of joy in my eyes! Thank you so very much!
A "crib" is a place where various hard or dried vegetables were kept... a corn crib is an example... a kind of tall, well-vetilated cage.
I found the video quite by accident. I am 78 years old and the third generation from immigrants who came to Texas between 1845 and 1855. I am the last generation to speak the language fluently. My father in law was third generation Ostfriesen and his dialect was very similar to the Pennsylvania Dutch so I understood them better than younger people from Germany would. I was born and live in Fredericksburg, Texas which was named for Frederick the Great. I attended Lutheran church German until 1957 with my oma who was born in 1878 and never learned English. German services were discontinued shortly after she died. We spoke nothing but German at home. I learned English in School. Each small community around Fredericksburg had their own dialect which came from their region of Germany. My generation went to school together and learned each other's dialect words. I started visiting Germany once or twice a year 30 years and have added a lot of new words to my vocabulary. Our Texas dialect sort of Germanized nouns that did not exist when our ancestors settled here 170 years ago. When I speak German, I think in German and can spend hours speaking to people in Germany without having to stress my brain. I speak to a lot of older German people in Germany and they are astounded to hear me use that their oma used. But our language is dying. My daughter was too stubborn to learn our language because it was too old fashioned. She then learned German in high school and college. She was an exchange student in Germany in 1992, fell in love with a Swiss guy and married. After living in Germany and Switzerland for 15 years they are back in Texas. Her profession is translating for Swiss and German banks and lawyers. She speaks perfect high German, but she has trouble understanding our Fredericksburg dialect.
Well, howdy, Kenneth! My grandfather's family from New Braunfels was the last of my ancestors to speak German, but it was a Texas German dialect that they spoke. Family reunions were a mishmash of a German that hadn't added new words since the boat left Bremerhaven for Galveston in 1860. I've since learned some modern German, but wish I could go back in time and hear him talk again! This was a great video, enjoyed watching!
@@hollerinwoman 3/4 of my wife's ancestors settled in New Braunfels. All of her mothers ancestor's were from New Braunfels. Her paternal grandmother also was from New Braunfels. Her father's people settled in Quihi which is near Hondo, TX. Her mother and her grandmother both spoke New Braunfels German which rather pure high German with very little dialect. Her father spoke Ostfriesen which is very close to Dutch. He was an airplane mechanic at the Hondo air base during WWII and he was criticized for being German. He did not want his kids to have a German accent so they spoke English at home. I was born in 1943 in Fredericksburg and have the newspaper clipping of my birth in the old German print. We spoke German and both of my parents spoke Yiddish at home. I did not learn English until I entered public school in 1950. No one has ever accused me of having a German accent and most people are astounded to hear me speak German. We visited Germany last month and we have tickets to go again next month. I enjoy visiting with people over there, But I avoid politics.
Wow! This is so fascinating! My great grandmother’s father (so great-great grandfather) emigrated to America from Germany and settled in Texas, I just didn’t realize it sounds like large migrations of Germans to Texas, I’m going to have to research this more… I’ve traced her back to her ancestors in German using the Ancestry website, he was Dietrich Bultmeyer born in Oldenbrok, Niedersachsen in 1843, died in Dallas Texas in 1892, interestingly… my great grandmother Johanna’s ancestors all converted to Mormonism (LDS) so I have a lot of distant cousins who are Mormon I think… I don’t really know any of them, LOL
@@kennethcrenwelge4971 It's really not "old fashioned". It's your culture and heritage. You should keep your dialect
Howdy, I married into a Wendish family from Serbin, TX (outside Giddings). Most of the services at St. Paul's Lutheran during the holidays were in German. Both of my wife's parents spoke German, but none of the kids did.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina we had Mennonite and Amish teams from Lancaster PA helping with recovery in Pass Christian, Ms. They based themselves out of our church which almost survived the hurricane. I was working at a table in our social hall and the Amish women and girls were talking in their dialect about dinner preparations for about 25 of their crew. Someone asked what time the teams would be back to eat, none of them knew, but I did. Since I worked for about 6 months in Oberbayern I understood them. When I answered in Bayerisches Deutsch they were flabbergasted. They thought I had no clue, I even knew what was going to be served for dinner.
Great. 😆
That’s heartwarming to hear about those groups coming to help during that horrific hurricane.
Great story.
Haha, I bet they were. Amish regularly talk behind your back right in front of you because they assume you don’t know the language. So it really throws them for a loop when a non Amish understands Pennsylvania Dutch.
Thanks for sharing
Really great vid. My family came from the Palentine in 1755, and settled in Bucks County. The were Old Order Mennonite until the late 18th century. I am proud of my German heritage, and both of my daughters graduated from Milwaukee's German Immersion School.
I grew up in a small village in Palatinate about 10km from Ramstein Airbase. My Grandmother and even my parents spoke this dialect and I like it to this day. I can nearly understand everything they say, thats very interesting. For example "Nummidaa" or "Nummidaag" for "Nachmittag" (afternoon) is very common here. Also "Scheier" for "Scheune" (Barn). "Hinkel" (Chicken) or "springe" for "laufen" (to run) is used here. I find it realy funny how they mixed US English with my home dialect.
"Peter, Peter Pumpkin-Eater / Had a wife but couldn't keep her. / He put her in a pumpkin shell / And there he kept her very well." It's an old English nursery rhyme. I recognized it sounded a little like "Kürbis-fresser" & Dale spoke about having "eine Frau" (a wife).
Dang, I don't speak either language but I got this rhyme immediately like you did.
It’s kind of neat how though cultural knowledge we knew what he was saying without knowing the language, yet a German speaker without that context has much more difficulty.
Yes, that's what I understood the poem was, though I don't speak a lick of German, lol. She said "Peter" and I heard the rhythm and the line lengths and it just came to my mind.
I grew up in the 1960s in Michigan and this little rhyme was a very familiar one at the time. My grandma used to quote it to me, for some reason--probably just to make me smile!
@@Myrdden71 Exactly this for me too. As soon as she said "Peter" it clicked and I could hear the rhyme. Kind of interesting that I don't speak any German but still understood what the poem was but she struggled to get it. I guess they don't have this nursery rhyme in Germany.
Hey. I am living in Baden-Württemberg in Germany near Karlsruhe and Heidelberg. The most Pennsylvania Dutch words you seemed to struggle with are actually VERY close to the old dialect which was spoken here and also towards the Black Forest region. For example 'Hinkel' was the usual word my grandma used for 'chicken' and even today most people talking in dialect around here refer to a barn as 'Scheier' or 'Scheuer' instead of 'Scheune'. The same is true for the word 'springen' - older folks use it still in the meaning of 'running' = 'rennen' here in my region. That fits together very well with your explanation from where the Amish and Mennonite emigrated to America - because that is actually exactly the region I am living in.
Same here 😃🤙🏼
@HappyAsAHippo! That is where my ancestors lived!! Close to the REAL ‘Brother’s Grimm’ Black Forest!
In Hesse near Pfalz we say hinkel and scheuer too.
@@sven1975 I was told the Hinkler meant "lives in the chicken house" or "son of Henry" depending on which syllable gets the accent
That's really interesting, because in Swedish, "springa" means "run" as well.
My husband is 93 (born 1930) and 100% PA Dutch, speaking the language until he went to school and his parents were told he had to speak English at school, which they complied, but the grandparents cried. But he remained bi-lingual for quite awhile. Anyway, for awhile there we were working on his ancestry and we got to the 1740’s, (before the Continental Congress was formed, and when the United States was in its infancy), and we were only 20 minutes south of where we live! I was so amazed! We were told that we would have to hire an interpreter because the records would be in German from Doylestown to Philadelphia. Our objective was to find the boat, and then the area his family came from in Germany.
Great introduction to Pennsylvania Dutch , I have been in Lancaster County for the pass two year and never consider speaking German but this was a super fun video and you've truly earn a new subscribe , great content !
oh god I've been working with the Amish guys to long... I don't speak German or Dutch or Pennsylvania Dutch and was never taught but still understood everything he said. I also live in Ohio and work with them up by Kenton or the community just north of Marysville Ohio. I've helped build barns and plant fields. They also help me build stuff from time to time. We almost never take money from each other its more like a favor for a favor kinda deal.
Gotta love farmers and other rural people. We let our neighbor run cattle on our land. It helps him keep his feed cost/cash rent costs down and helps us keep down the weeds. He mows and takes our hay and gives us back when we need them during the winter. He also keeps us in hamburger. More people need to live like country folk.
I thought it was hilarious that there's a Pennsylvania Dutch version of "Peter, Peter Pumkin Eater," which is actually a very common nursery rhyme, in English! "Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, had a wife but couldn't keep her. Put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well. Had another but didn't love her. Peter learned to read and spell, and then he loved her very well." The fact that it's about infidelity goes right over little kids' heads, but at least when I was growing up over half a century ago, most children in America did learn it.
Oh God that's so twisted!
@@dennis-qu7bs a lot of nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and the like for children were darker, the idea of having to "protect" children is a relatively recent concept. Especially with the lower classes, who tended to live in more cramped places, children quickly learned about the likes of death and sexual shenanigans. The original version of Snow White had attempted cannibalism (the queen eating the heart that was supposedly from Snow White, except that it was a boar's heart substituted by the huntsman), the original version of Sleeping Beauty had the princess (originally named Talia, "Aurora" was invented by Disney) sexually assaulted while she was asleep, and she gave birth to two children who were named Sun and Moon and raised by faeries (because she still hadn't woken up). Some versions of Cinderella entailed the stepsisters mutilating their feet to make them fit.
It's not very common now-a-days. I heard it from my grandmother, but never anywhere else. My grandma is the only reason I recognized the poem. 😅
I thought it sounded like "Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater" right off the bat, because of the name Peter (repeated), and the rhythm, and then caught the word "fresser," which I'm pretty sure means "eater" in Yiddish, which pretty well confirmed it. But I don't actually speak German, so other than that, I didn't understand a bit of it!
I am Anglo Australian 61 years and I recognised Peter Pumkin from the melody.
My mother was one of the last children taught old German during the late 30's early 40's in Germany. She could talk perfectly with the omish. Old German or sometime called low Deutch. She translated many sayings on old glass steins at the c Corning glass museum.
Excellent presentation -- much needed.
My wife is swiss and from what I understand the Amish speak an old Bern dialect. We were at a Amish bakery and she asked to speak to the girls and they were floored The girls asked how do you know penn-dutch in which she told them you are speaking old swiss
Generally there is a very distinct subset of German dialects called Alemannic. It is spoken in Switzerland, Alsace/Elsass (France), Baden-Württemberg and in the western part of Bavaria (Schwaben). Since the Pennsylvania Dutch came from that region, but Feli is from Bavaria proper, she's going to have much more trouble understanding them than a Swiss. For example "tschumpe" that Feli falsely identifies as English influence would be "gumpe" in Alemannic, while "springe" means running in Alemannic.
As an examish person that's interesting i didn't know that thanks for the education
@@andreasferenczi7613 learned Alsace French which has more German influence than French. Found this out in a class and was told that it was not proper French
The Amish in some areas are more heavily Swiss than German - I know that there's at least one community in northeast Indiana that emigrated from Switzerland in the early- to mid-1800s that speaks more Swiss, and it sounds rather different than the Pennsylvania Dutch spoken in Lancaster County.
@@kennethflores93 "Alsace French" is not really a thing. They speak German...
Your American accent when speaking English is one of the best that I have ever heard from a native German speaker. Interesting video too.
Yes I agree with you, the younger you are when you start with another language, less accent. I wish I would meet sometime Americans who claim to have lived in Germany for years can't even put a centence together & yet they have the nerve to tell others to speak English actually go overthere and say to service personnel " speak English "
Yeah, I can definitely hear an accent in there but it’s easily the best one I’ve come across on youtube and irl.
When I was stationed in Germany with the Army, I learned if a German learned English in America they would say vacation. If they learned English, English a "holiday" was when you took off work for a few days
Feli speaking English with an American accent shows ft no trace ( to my American ears) that German is her 1st language. I met a few new medical residents and gave them our tour of the ICUs units at my hospital in Chicago. I had no idea they where German is their primary language. It's is really amazing how German people can speak American English flawlessly 👍😊 . It is a shame that American kids , don't speak or learn a 2nd language, while Germans learn English starting in grammar school. I grew up in Czech 🇨🇿 speaking household most of my life . US kids were forbidden 🚫 to learn Czech 🇨🇿 language. We were told that we are Americans , and my Czech 🇨🇿 immigrants grandparents and great grandparents where looked frowned upon , as most the same for Italian immigrants, polish and the Irish. I took 6 yrsa in French in high school and college, 30yrs ago , forgot most of it 💔. However when I Mexicans in USA speak Spanish, my old French language Brain 🧠, flips the Spanish words and simple conversations back into French and then scrambles back into English ! I find it very crazy my brain 🧠 does this . I love the French language and have brought some French language books to relearn French again . And with past few Czech words being buried in my brain 🧠 , I can understand some Ukrainian s , the Slavic languages are so similar!!!
At one point I heard a word that sounded like „Grundsautag“ to me, a compound consisting of three words: „Grund“, „Sau“, „Tag“ (which, translate to ground hog day). Groundhog Day („Murmeltiertag“ in German). In Pennsylvania Dutch it‘s spelled “Grundsaudaag”. Il looked it up on Wikipedia. For those who are interested, there is a text written in Pennsylvania Dutch that is spoken during the ceremony waiting to be translated into English or German. Another word that came up early on in the video was “Steihaus” which, I’m pretty sure, means “Steinhaus” (stone house).
sehr interessant - vielen Dank für dieses Video!
I understood almost as much as you did. But my wife could understand almost everything. She’s originally from Rhineland Palatinate and this is almost the dialect they still speak today. It was very funny watching this video together. It was for me like listening to her grandma telling jokes and laughing at them even I didn’t even understand the halft of them 😅 And btw. They still say Hinkelhaus.
Bis aus dem Hunsrück. Mein Mann versteht mehr Deutsch als er zugibt, aber wenn ich mit meiner Mutter I'm Hunsrücker Platt rede, gibt er es auf.
I am of pure PA Dutch heritage, Pennsylvania (Lehigh County) born and raised. My grandparents could speak the dialect but my parents didn’t. Now in my 70’s I wish I could speak it. We are Moravian. My ancestors were from Germany and Switzerland and came over in the very early 1700’s.
Hey, there's no time like the present, for learning! 🙂
@@adreabrooks11 I’ve picked up a few words and phrases over the years..enough to get me into trouble,probably! LOL
My Czech half of my family comes from Moravia!
Berks county Deitschman here. Same thing happened to my family. Grandparents spoke the dialect. WWII forced many to not speak it to their children. I learned Hoch Deutsch. But I can get the jist of whats being said if it's written down.
nice! And you can still learn (: and let me guess, westfalia/westphalia? :p
As a American born to German immigrant parents this was a fun video to watch. My moms from Bremen and my dads from Völklingen, in the Saarland. I learned both Hoch Deutsch and platt as a kid. The word “schwätzen” made me laugh because that’s a platt word. I understood much of the speakers in the clips. Keep it up Feli, this was super fun to watch!
"schwätzen" is a high German dialect word. In standard German: "schwatzen". Platt is, or better was, spoken in the north of Germany, eg. in Bremen....There "schwätzen" is "praten", "proten", "pratten"... (cf. english: to prate)
@gregkunkel708 schwätzen isn't a platt word. Nor in Bremen neither anywhere. In Platt they say "schnakken"!
That was so much fun! Please do more of these. It’s so interesting to hear how many German sounds exist in English. I never understood that English was a Germanic language until I studied in Paris. One day at a cafe I heard some Germans speaking and as I approached their table to say “hi,” suddenly realized that I didn’t understand what they were saying, and that they weren’t American. Close call, and a lesson about language that I’ve never forgotten.
Very interesting video Feli. I'm from Switzerland, and was able to understand almost everything. The most intresting thing for me was, that quite many words and phrases, that you thought maybe came from the English language and adapted, were very similar to Swissgerman. For example "springt" in Pens. Dutch means running just as in Switzerland where we say "springe". The word "chumpe" that probably comes from the word to jump in English, could just as well be an adaptation of the Swissgerman word "gumpe" which means to jump. Or the word "scheier" for Scheune, here we say "Schüür". "Eppis" translates right to "öppis" in Switzerland. Thank you very much for this great video, it was very cool to see the dialects of german in Dutch, and ask myself if it was an adaptation from English or just the original words from Schwäbisch and Swissgerman. Wish you a great summer from the Swiss Alps🤗
It's "springen" (or even sauen) in Swabia too! I guess it's the Alemannic language that applies to both our areas :) Also the soft consonants, the dark vowels and the "sch" in "Wie isch du?" sound super-alemannic :D We also call a shed a "Scheuer".
Ich bin ebenfalls Schweizerin und hatte die gleichen Gedanken während dem Video :) zur Ergänzung, "eppis" / "öppis" bedeutet "etwas"
Hi I always wanted to come to Switzerland I'm a wood Carver and an artist I also make walking canes and puppets on a string and dummys do they make chocolate out there I ate chocolate from Switzerland I had it when I was a teenager. Very good chocolate. We have a place called Hershey chocolate they order cocoa beans from over seas and make it here in United states. I seen a movie called the sounds of music from over there.will nice talking to you and God bless all of yous over there by
The Amish originally came from Switzerland before moving to the Rhine areas of the Palatinate and tghen on to the USA . So it makes sense that you can understand them . Ask any Amish person and they will tell their Swiss . She is wrong concerning the Mennonites , they originally came from the Frisia area of North Germany near the Holland border. From there they moved to Poland near Danzig / Gdansk because of religion , and then moved on to Russia, many of them on the Volga River .
KS your English is excellent. I live in America, and on occasion in with my job had to talk with people from the Netherlands, they always had the best diction. I always felt that their English was better then most American's English. And they hardly had any accent.
"Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater" is a well known Mother Goose rhyme in English, but don't feel bad if you couldn't make sense of it, because a lot of Mother Goose rhymes have obscure meanings if you start to analyze them. It is thought that a lot of them, composed hundreds of years ago, were meant to be cryptic as they were conveying gossip or subversive messages about royalty or the lords & ladies. Mary Mary Quite Contrary, for example, is thought to refer to Queen Mary, Elizabeth I's sister, who was not very popular with some of her subjects.
That was a version of Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater I have never heard before. Also in other rhymes and limericks Jack Sprat likely had to do with King Charles I and his wife Henrietta Maria dissolving parliament so they could tax how ever they wanted and spend what ever they wanted. Ring around the Rosy has to do with the bubonic plague the list goes on.
This is similar to slaves hiding voodoo teachings coded into cooking recipes, to hide it from the christians.
I know a miniscule amount of German but I knew right away it was Peter, Peter, Pumpkin eater. It does seem to be a more adult version of the English nursery rhyme than I have ever heard.
Thank you for that info! Great explanation! She was saying "poem", and you clarified and defined "nursery rhyme", and gave examples of their origins and what they allude to.
Excellent reel Feli -- vielen Dank!! Your channel is super-interesting!! 👏👏🇩🇪🇺🇸🇬🇧
Your enthusiasm is infectious
As someone who was born and raised in Lancaster County this really hit home. My grandfather spoke Pennsylvania Dutch pretty frequently in his house and when he met other Deitsch speakers. This was a welcome reminder of a man who had a great influence in my life. Thank you!
Me too. My grandparents lived in Trevorton. My dad grew up speaking Pennsylvania Dutch, as that's primarily what they spoke at home. He left home at 15 to join the Navy at the start of WW II. Afterwards, he stopped speaking Pennsylvania Dutch and lost it unless he was cursing. That was ALWAYS in Pennsylvania Dutch. My understanding is that this dialect is not written; it's entirely spoken
@@LostBeagle But, when the Amish sing (in church), don't they have hymnals (hymn books) to sing out of?
@@ahashdahnagila6884 in Standard German they might, but typically written Pa Dutch was the domain of say letters or other colloquial forms rather than books or newspapers. Pa Dutch wasn't written until recently and even then it's nonstandardised
I am from York County and this brought back so many memories of my grandma. You can really tell a lot of the folks in the video were not 'native' speakers. The hinklehaus guy was probably to closest to what I remember.
Its interesting as a Swiss I have to say that some of those words arent understandable in german but work perfectly (for understanding) in swiss german.
Well many Pennsylvania Dutch speakers are swiss german. So it's not really surprising.
I, Brittas boyfriend, am Swabian and was rather surprised, when i was mistaken for a Swiss in Vienna.
@@brittakriep2938 Swiss German is like Swabian an Alemanic dialect and thus may sound similar to speakers of other dialect groups, like the Bavarian dialect spoken in Vienna.
@@IngTomT : Speaking with swabian persons is usually no problem for me, but ( born 1965), when elderly people from another region speak, they sometimes use for me unknown words. Speaking with persons from Black Forrest, Allgäu or Vorarlberg , they use a ,between dialect' between Swabian and Swiss German is also no to great problem for me. Understanding watered down Swiss German/ Swiss version of Standard German, i sometimes hear on TV, understandable. But Swiss German used in rural alpine regions, i can' t understand.
@@brittakriep2938 Alemannic dialects can be distinguishd between Swabian, Low Alemanic (which includes Upper Rhine Alemanic and Lake Constance Alemanic) and High and Highest Alemanic (which include Swiss German). So it makes totally sense that the dialects spoken in Black Forrest, Allgäu or Vorarlberg are in between Swabian and Swiss German
Sehr schön. Das gefällt. Bei dem ersten Reim da wußte ich auch nicht direkt was da los war. hahaha
I loved this video!! I am a German teacher in Pennsylvania. My grandmother's first language was Pennsylvani Deitsch. When I began studying German in school we had a wonderful time trying to talk to one another! My mother had never learned the language, as the older people didn't always teach the kids so that they could talk about things without them understanding. My grandmother and I were very close. This was so much fun to listen to! I was able to understand a lot of it. And from what I know, this was definitely a dialect of German not Dutch. The English people here mispronounced "Deutsch." Thank you for making this video!!
As someone who lives right in its backyard, I would love to see your take on Texas German. That would be best if you included the history of Germans in Texas.
How about "Ja wohl, ya'll"?
I was going to ask about this… Mike, what part of Texas did your family end up in?
@@jody6851 The most common use is propably when your boss asks you to do something and you go "jawohl" it just means "sure". "Ja" is "yes" and "wohl" in this context translates to something like "no doubt".
Many of the Germans in Texas came from Russia. They had moved to Russia in the late1700s early 1800 s , and fled Russia during the communist revolution in that country . Many of the Germans in Russia fled east to the Harbin area of China to get away from the Communists . From there they left and went to South America where they were wating to get into America . Some got passports and came to Texas , others stayed in South America.
At times, this guy seems to have a Southern accent as he speaks PA Dutch. I've heard TX German on another YT vid. It's fascinating! My only experience with TX is clinching I-10. No clue if that crosses through that linguistic area.
Quite a while ago, I was invited to the wedding of a South African /Australian couple in San Francisco. The South African groom was Jewish and I knew that his family had fled Germany in the 1930s because of the Nazis. I met his grandma, who grew up in Tilsit (now part of the Russian Kaliningrad enclave, but then part of Germany). She told me that she hadn't spoken German in quite a while, and was delighted to speak to me and my husband. Her German was flawless and without accent. Now and then she used terms and grammar that weren't used in Germany anymore, and it was such a privileged experience for me, because speaking to her was a bit like travelling in time. I have visited Tilsit. Most Germans know the town because of Tilsit cheese, but I doubt that a lot of people know were the town is actually located. The entire Kaliningrad enclave is a testament to the best and worst of German and European history. Now with Russia having invaded Ukraine, I am glad that I visited when I had the chance.
In South Africa we have a large German farming community who live in an area where most of the towns have German names such as Wartburg, Harburg, Hermannsburg, New Hannover etc. These guys have been farming in SA since the 1850's and speak a now defunct German dialect which I believe sounds like Shakespearian English would sound to English speakers?
Soo...I thought for a moment I was crazy. I always thought Tilsit is a swiss cheese. Had to look it up. A swiss family immigrated to Prussia, invented the cheese and now switzerland has "reimported" the recipe. How ever the german also have now a Holsteiner variation. Thats some history.
Your videos are most always interesting and entertaining always with that chipper smile along with your great voice making it easy to understand with older ears.
As a Dutchman that is fluent in German it is funny to hear and watch. I hear different tongues somethimes even close to Frysian or some Dutch dialects (which I am more familiar with as German dialects). But most of the vocabulary is certainly most akin to the German languages. I have to concentrate more as when listening to Afrikaans that is closer to the Dutch language.
I had a very similar experience as an Afrikaans speaker when visiting the Netherlands a few years back. The language was familiar enough to get more or less what the conversation was about and yet foreign enough to be unable to participate in it properly. Its a strange place to find oneself in, you sort of get it but cant be in it. Kinda like some weird twilight zone ;)
Have you ever been to the Flanders part of Belgium? Also what about Suriname? Or any of the ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao) off the coast of Suriname, which still are Dutch colonies today?
Yay! I was curious about Afrikaans speakers in the Netherlands. You satisfied my curiosity.
@@trentpettit6336 One day hopefully :)
Aren’t there multiple regional languages in Netherlands that are being forgotten. Maybe one of these would be more similar to Afrikaans.
Years ago had a visitor from Netherlands he spoke Dutch i spoke Afrikaans we had a conversation that we understand each other.
When you grow up in the southwest of Germany around Mannheim and Heidelberg, you won't have much problems understanding most of this dialect, it's more or less very old Kurpfälzisch, the dialect of this region, pronounced and mixed with English. Quite sure Feli could understand much more if she could read the words, the English pronunciation of the German words/dialect is very confusing for a German.
Yes. To my three-years-of-high-school-German ear, it sounded like he was speaking German-ish with an American English accent.
To my ears it also sounds Kurpfälzisch. Especially the Hiwwie wie Driwwe part was very much that dialect. I felt like being home :)
Or Kalsruhe. Scheuer, Schopf (barn), springe (run), Hinkel (Chicken), Bibbele (Chick). That's the way we talk here . I sag nur: Hebe, net lupfe.
I agree with Hermann, most of those words seem to be closly related more to the german dialects spoken in the southwestern part of Germany (Like the Pfalz, Saarland (Hiwwe wie driwwe) or even Hessen (ebbes=etwas=something). As I grew up in this regions I had far less difficulties understanding the spoken expamples. Listening to this was a lot of fun.
Lancaster has a town Manheim
Love the video! I always wondered how close German was to Pennsylvania dutch when speaking!
Great enthusiasm! Btw, the house was the first one in Lancaster County built of stone. Nice video. A lot of my exposure to German was to Pfälzisch and Badensisch, so Pa Dutch is quite understandable to me.
As someone from hesse, whose grandfather speaks dialect and mumbles it was sometimes much easier to understand. For example scheier in our dialect is a barn, like he said in the video. I also was very sure about the Hinkelhaus, because Hinkel is a chicken, where I come from. It certainly makes a difference where in Germany you grew up to understand this language.
Correct! Hinkel is the word for a chicken or chick in Palatinate and Rhein-Main. It comes from the Middle High German word hünkel (chicken). It’s also a fairly common German surname.
I think you're right. As someone from Saxony it's actually really hard to understand...
Yes. I am also from Hessen. Hinkel was my grandmothers Standard word for chicken. And a barn was a scheuer. So quite similar
Same here, bin aus der Region Kassel, und manches klang bekannt!
@@aliciag.7777 Scheuer is mir als Schwob ebenfalls wohlbekannt.
It would be interesting to have a video about the (dying) German dialect from Texas, as Texas was a stronghold for German emigration, especially down in San Antonio area. I read an NPR article few years ago, and talked to colleagues from German descendants that lived in Texas, and hear how German was part of their daily lives was heartwarming.
I stopped at a cafe once in the Texas hill country and was amazed that everyone was speaking German. This was 30+ years ago - I took German in high school and understood just enough to recognize it as German. I think "Texas German" is closer to that spoken in Germany since the settlers came to American in the early 1800s. My mother's side of the family is descendant from these people but no one has spoken German in our family for several generations.
@@BossNerd I think this is the right area (counties stretching from Austin to San Antonio). This German dialect is on my ears very easy to understand (much much better than the Dutch of the video). For those interested (and since I cannot share URL) the NPR article is "Remembering The Long Lost Germans Of Texas", published 8 years ago.
I would also like to see Feli visit the German region of Texas. Mennonites from the Pennsylvania Dutch have been buying farrmland in Hill County, and their German is definitely different from Texas German. One Mennonite family owns the Olde Country Store in Itasca, which is meant to bring their culture to the Hill county locals. Many of these Mennonites are totally unaware of the Texas German dialect or region.
@@et76039 Yeah! Me I have to visit Castroville, because of my Alsatian heritage. Story goes this was a village founded by Alsatian in the 19th century. Problem is a good 8 hours drive down to San Antonio. With the current gas price? Fetomi! it gonna cost me an arm and a leg to drive there this summer.
@@abooogeek, that's also my understanding of Castroville's origin. BTW, it was my great grandmother's family that still owns the place that has the historical marker for the German-Comanche Treaty. But since we were neither German nor Comanche, it didn't apply to us, so we had a trading relationship with the Comanche.
Awesome. Platanian German rocks the world - from Transylvania to Pennsylvania. Although my ancestors migrated to Transylvania (Siebenbürgen) in the 12. Century, I’m speaking a dialect that’s pretty close to the Pennsylvania Deitsch. Hinkel are baby chicken in our dialect and the barn ist still the Scheier. Greetings from Westphalia.
My father spoke Swabian German that he learned from kids in Hungarian Transylvania (Temesvar) in 1900 -1916 .
As a (modern) Dutch person. It was quite easy for me to understand. I learned the basics of German pretty young, but I'm used to listening for clues from context. Also, my local Dutch dialect uses for example 'zwetsen' for talking/babbling
I am a language nerd, the other cool thing about large immigrant waves of any group is that you capture the vocabulary of that time and it persists in isolation. I saw a French reaction video to Cajun (Louisiana) French and they said "these are words my grandmother from the country side used when I was a kid in the 70s"
Exactly. Québec is a snapshot of royal French before 1763 and certainly before the beheading of Louis XVI and the French revolution
Yes! My family was from germany and came to canada in the 50s, when people come from germany now they say my older family still speaks like in the 50s.
Do you happen to have a link handy for that video? I’d love to watch that one too!
American English does this with retaining the r sound where the British accent now drops it.
Indeed, the scholars often travel to isolated little hamlets in the USA to gain insight on how English, German, etc., WAS spoken centuries ago. Immigrants from various parts of Europe holed up in little hamlets with little interaction with outside areas because of geography, and continued speaking the language the way it WAS spoken..
Feli, I love this video! As a Swiss, it was pretty easy to understand most of the sentences. We actually use "springen" for "running" as well, and the German "laufen" for us means to "walk", which lead to confusion with my son's elementary school teacher. He's originally from Germany, and at the gym he told the kids "lauft drei Runden", so the children began to casually stroll 😂 There's an Amish custom, btw, it's called "Rumspringe", and it means, as soon you're 18 years old, you're allowed to "run off" and explore the outside world. Some enjoy it so much that they never return to their community, and others have a huge cultural shock and can't wait to get back for good. We visited an Amish community in PA a couple of years ago, and we came across it by coincidence, so we weren't prepared. We were standing there, explaining to our 4 yo son that the Amish don't use modern technology, that's why they get places with their horse drawn carriages, and they bake the yummy bread in a wood fired oven. A local lady approached us and said "I can't tell exactly where you guys are from, Southern Germany or Switzerland, what I CAN tell you though it that I understand every word you're saying!" That's when we learned about Pennsylvania Dutch.
Similar thing happens with laufen's cognate in Pa Dutch, 'laafe' which means to walk ich bin deheem am Laafe
Holy crap I never made the connection that “rumspringe” is “to run off”. Makes perfect sense now.
Please don't lump all Amish people together. "Rumpringe":is certainly not a universal practice among the Amish! It was difinitely not that way in the Amish church I grew up in.
Yes. Being fluent in German helps a LOT in understanding Pennsylvania Deutsch. US-English helps somewhat regarding the PD-speakers living there. NL-Dutch helps very little. Any Scandinavian language also helps. Thank you for making the start of my day awesome!
I agree, as a native Dutch speaker with a Western-Frys dialect and fluent in German and English. A lot of words i picked up are still common in the Swabian dialect spoken in southwest Germany.
I found this to be somewhat untrue, as in whenever the Germans have no clue it is modern Dutch like “sterk” pronounced similarly as “ster-rick” meaning strong. “Vreter” is also a very common expression here, so I understood that part of the poem. “Zwetsen” also means a type of talking in Dutch... And “gebied” (“gebot” in Pennsylvanian Dutch it would appear or at least I would guess) means area or region.... The part around 23:20 that she didn’t catch.. I would assume it means that it snows in the whole (alle) area (gebot). And I think the man then explains it was the first house being built with stone (steen in Dutch), since most of the houses in those areas were made of wood I assume, which is still most common in that region from what I have seen. Something she also seemed to have missed?
@@hisxxx2 Ik kom ook uit West-Friesland, maar mijn West-Fries is vrij beperkt helaas. Wel eens een poging gedaan het te leren, maar dat is me nooit helemaal gelukt.
@@pyruvicac.id_ My *personal* experience has mostly been that languages that are very-similar to each other are more-difficult for me to learn/distinguish when compared to the (relative) ease with which I can understand highly *different* languages. I can understand Belgian-Dutch more-easily than some Netherlands-Dutch dialects... German is for *me* too-close to Dutch to learn easily, whereas the Latinate languages are a relative breeze. Anyway, I was surprised at being able to "decode" (part of the) Pennsylvania Dutch more-easily than I thought I would, given its high resemblance to both Dutch & English.
@@pyruvicac.id_ Dus je zult minder moeite hebben gehad dan de gemiddelde NLer... En *zeker* minder moeite dan de gemiddelde Duitser...
Your energy is infectious.
You probably already know this, but German/Deutsch was the second most spoken language in the United States and Western Territories until the late 1800s. I'm from the South, and there are still several older people that still speak Americanized German.
My father's family went to German-language public schools in Baltimore (there were at least three German Elementary schools in Baltimore). During World War I, however, these schools were forced to switch to English.
@@joebombero1 There are parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Arkansas where you can find people in there late 60s that speak German, because a lot of small towns in those states were settled by German immigrants in the late 1800s. Just look at Memphis, Tennessee, you have Germantown, and that's not by accident.
I am german, and Brittas boyfriend, i only use her Computer. May be 15 to 20 years ago, i visited a public health bath ( Thermalbad) next to my homevillage. In those days not common, i heared an old couple speaking in english about the ruins of a fortress , you can see there. As history intessted person, i told the couple, what i know about the fortress. This had been US tourists . The man told me, that his father a short time before or after wwl emigrated to USA from my homeregion, i know the village. He could speak only few words of german language, because it was unwanted when he was a child. But in correct swabian dialect he spoke the word ,Backhäusle'/ little baking house, because his father often told him about this, slowly coming out of use, public baking houses, and he was happy, that now as an old man, he could see this.
Right down the road from me in Texas is a small town named Westfalia. There is a world class butcher shop and meat market named Rabrokers. They are part of a large Mennonite community.
from the south also, my grandmother had this old decoration thing that said "ve gets too soon oldt und too late schmardt"
I first learned of pennsylvania dutch a few years ago when I met someone from the USA. We got to talk a while and during that, I had to answer a phone call from my mother, whith whom i spoke in a palatinate dialect on the phone. After that, the guy asked why I didn't say I was from the US too and he continued talking in, what I then lerned, was pennsylvania dutch. He could understand my regional dialect for the most part, as well as could I understand his. It was kind of cool that he had used many very old palatinate words, i otherwise was only used to hear from my grand - and great grandmother. Also those english - german mixwords that sounded like my dad trying to speak english :D In any case, its pretty cool that those dialects are still around. Same with other german dialects that almost got lost, but start to be revived again.
When we visited Lancaster , I could understand a lot, definitely could understand some children's books in Pennsylvanian Dutch. I can read a lot of Yiddish also if it's in the English alphabet, instead of the Hebrew letters.
Love your videos. I took 3yrs of German in high school. Even though I got good grades I can't carry on a conversation, but I could survive. I could find a hotel, restaurant, bathroom and order a beer. When I'm around people speaking German or Dutch I can usually get the gist of what the conversation is. My wife's first language was Dutch since the majority of her family is Amish. (We live near Middlebury Indiana which is Amish country.)
As a Canadian, as a child this is a poem we said over and over many times in my younger years. It was also in many children's books back in the day, albeit now that I'm an older senior, I can't say I've heard it in decades. As for understanding specific languages, my background, going back to when I was a young lad, with having a Welsh background, I had an uncle that had come over from the old country (Wales) and I couldn't understand a single word he was saying, so obviously he had a dialect as well. New subscriber, as well as owner of some new Raycons, thanks!
This is so easy to understand for me. Palatine dialect and Pennsylvania Dutch are almost identical. Having a conversation with a Pennsylvania Dutch speaker is as easy as having a conversation with my parents.
From Switzerland: we also use "springe" for "run" and "gumpe" for "jump". I think it's not a influence from English but an old word that both languages still use and Standard German not.
An online dictionary said of the etymology the English verb jump, "probably akin to Low German gumpen to jump." It's therefore fascinating to me that it's used in High German dialects yet not Standard.
A lot of PA Dutch came from Switzerland.
@@ricardogardel2470 Yes. I understand almost everything.
As Ricardo Gardel states, a lot of the PA Dutch came from Switzerland. In fact, Jakob Amman (from whom the Amish or Ammanisch derive their name) was an itinerant preacher of Swiss origin. My last name is, from what I am told, a very common Swiss surname, though spelled slightly differently across the Pond. (I am PA Dutch in my ancestry). The Mennonites derive their name from Menno Simons who was an actual Dutch (ie, Niederlander) clergyman who converted to Anabaptism. (Most PA Dutch religious sects are Anabaptist, which is why they were persecuted in Europe)
Indeed. There are so many words that exist in some variation in swiss dialects.
Your English is amazing. Just listening to you, I would never have guessed that you were a non-native English speaker.
I was born in Germany, lived there (NRW) and also in the Netherlands (Amsterdam and near), although I am English ... I found a lot of that Pennsylvania Dutch to be quite understandable - Fascinating, even the slang - I understand the runs hard straight away, but I think the Netherlands Dutch influence helped! The old woman was saying it was nice to talk Pd in the shops, but you clipped her last word which made more sense of it. Love the video!
My paternal grandfather's side of the family is Pennsylvania Dutch. They came to America in 1727, from Germany, via Switzerland. Bits of the language continued through to me, from my dad. I was the only 6 year old, in my Philadelphia neighborhood, that asked for "schweizer cheese" at the grocery store, or when I would get angry, I'd call the other kids "dummkopf" and "schweinhund". Lol.
I grew up with those words too, as well as many others.
@Lisa Heisey. Sounds cool!
My Opa grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania and spoke Pennsylvania Dutch as his first language. He ended up joining the army during ww2 and was captured. He was very well liked by the prison guards and often traded his cigarettes for food since he could communicate with them.
He was probably a Menonite because I think Amish do not go to the army
@@EHonda-ds6ve he was actually neither back then before the war it wasn’t just the Mennonites and the Amish who spoke Pennsylvania Dutch a lot of people did in those rural Pennsylvania areas.
I also knew a man who spoke Pennsylvania Dutch and was captured during WWII. He told me that he could communicate with the German guards. He said some of them found his speech hilarious and were amazed at how bad he could screw up the Greman langage, and some gave him cigarettes just to hear him speak.
@@EHonda-ds6ve there are a lot of not religous backtground pa dutch
That is probably what kept him alive during his incarceration. Good , so that he could be around for you to meet him..... I couldn't imagine my life without my grandparents - i miss them very much.......
Pennsylvania woman here. Born and raised. We have a very large Amish community where I’m from. I’ve had quite a lot of friends from the community and we also know several small talk type phrases in this area. It does help that my in laws are also Pennsylvania Dutchies…from the Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania. So there’s family that speak fully Pennsylvania Deutsch. I loved this video and knew the first gent was reading Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater. 😂 I grew up with that rhyme. ✌🏻😊🥰 P.S. I know rumspringa for the PA Dutch is running around or to run away, so knew that it was “my brother runs”…but I wasn’t sure about the last…”fast” either. 😂
I grew up in Central Pennsylvania hearing this a fair amount. A lot of the people who speak it the best don't believe in being recorded or even having their picture taken. To me Douglas Madenford is the closest in these clips to how these people sound.
I’m Swiss and the word for jumping is ‘gumpe’. Sounds very similar to the Pennsylvania Dutch. And also, ‘springe’ is used by older people for running. I can clearly see/hear where these words are coming from.
The Amish were founded by "Jakob Ammann" (hence Amish) who was born in Ehrlenbach BE. The Amish speak many different dialects amount the different settlements. Many of them are similar to Swiss German.
I thought it was interesting, because 'to spring' in English can mean to both suddenly run or jump, so I didn't find it that weird with my meagre German skills to understand. The Duwak one though, I have no idea how they got to that from tabac or tobacco.
@@Vespasian705 What I found interesting about the Duwak sentence was that I wondered if "doesn't have tobacco" was an idiom for "stopped smoking."
@@trishoconnor2169 Yeah I wondered that too, did his dad just run out of tobacco, or does he no longer use tobacco
@@Vespasian705 'Mein Vater hat keinen Tabak mehr' would be the high german version of that sentence. That translate to 'My dad hasn't any tobacco left'. For Duwak you probably have to trace from Tabak via Tubak/Dubak to Duwak.
Feli one thing to remember Modern German is a living language, a lot of the dialects of German spoken in the United States are just as they were when the original immigrants came here from the various areas of Germany.
That's true but there's also a lot of influence from English.
Especially the immigrants used Lower German. Beside Fries (spoken in Netherland and Germany), it even was the root language for Dutch, including some influence on English, since the Anglo Saxons entered Great Brittain.
I disagree - any spoken language changes constantly. So no, the dialects in the US are not the same as back then - languages not used by a community just die within 3-5 generations usually (parents speak it as natives, children learn it from their parents when they're young and grandkids have one parent with the language and often one parent who doesn't know that language, so the great-grandchild doesn't speak the language at home - they might learn quite a bit, but not use it in day to day life. At this point a language starts dying because people are not speaking the language regularly anymore. Now if such a person has kids - will they teach the child a language they're not that good at and have never found much use for? In an active community the language lives - and keeps changing.
@@Katharina-rp7iq a great example of how languages evolve actually is the difference between Dutch and German. Originating from the same family, at some point German took a different route than Dutch and today Germans will understand written Dutch for the most part, many words used seem vastly outdated if you would use the German counter part.
@@Katharina-rp7iq Within reason, normally yes. But remember you're dealing with a couple of things here. The amish and mennonite communities specifically are examples of fairly closeted communities for YEARS. Decades even. I was born in 1980 and even my early experiences both being of PA Dutch descent (though not amish or mennonite), growing up literally 20 miles from lancaster county (in the southern central PA town of Glen Rock or thereabouts right on the mason dixon line with MD), was that they were very insular. You're either part of their community or you're not, back then. Nowadays, that has changed, and in the last 10 years or so, we've seen the community open up to both ideas and people. For example, the old order mennonites and amish were incredibly against the use of technology and modern implements as part of their beliefs and religion. They considered any technology that might adversely affect their community as evil or rejected (think like in terms of the internet today and how social media has affected us all... not exactly unreasonable in some ways, no?). This, and their customs such as Rumshpringa kind of tell the tale of why a lot of this language and culture has remained for the last couple centuries. Delve into that term, and you find a community that 'allows' its young to go out and explore the non-amish world. After which period they're expected to come home and go through their adult version of baptism, and become members of adult society. The popular notions of this are a little off, but reasonably close to reality. Either way, it showcases how closed off their society was, and how that's changed in the last few decades or so, with most of the communities now accepting at least some nods to current technology, insofar as electricity, farming implements, and other such developments. PA law has started to more heavily affect the amish communities in recent years as well, with the pandemic and VERY RECENT (read: just last week and in recent months)events including some amish farmers being affected by severe penalties due to USDA food requirements, and one I believe who was amish being subject to the ATF seizing firearms he apparently was selling from his private collection to other amish. (the big issue here is amish refused to be photographed and due to this can't be photo identified... i.e. licenses and such. Therefore they can't LEGALLY purchase firearms per the ATF rules.). Previously a LOT of laws that apply to most residents have previously been 'handwaved' or 'looked the other way' about in regards to the amish population. I suspect with these changes in recent years, you're going to see a lot more of the old ways and the culture and tenets as well as the old PA Dutch language kind of fade into southern pennsylvania culture pretty quickly and homogenize like you're saying. The TL;DR here is: Normally you'd be right, but in this case there are reasons that hasn't happened thus far, but IS now, and probably will fairly quickly. I'll be surprised if much of that culture exists by the time I'm 80 in another 38 years.
You nailed the pronunciation of Lancaster. I'm from South Central Pa and that makes me excited.
Funny - the guy that does all those interviews - I don’t think he’s speaking Pennsylvania Dutch - he’s just speaking Pfälzisch. He’s likely from the Pfalz in Germany and checking out the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect and showing it to his viewers in the Pfalz.
I'm born in the Palatinate and it seems that I have some advantage in understanding Pennsylvanian Dutch. I know most of the Phrases used in the videos from my dialect, so it is easy to understand them, even the ones Feli didn't get. It's fascinating to see how close this language is to its origins after all these years. And in Pennsylvania they still know the Belznickel, some kind of Santa Claus or St Nicholas known in our region.
I'm an expat from there and honestly I can understand them better than I can understand my grandma's family/generation when they go hard dialect.
Belsnickel is more like a monster that brings bad things to bad kids or does bad things to them. There is an equivalent of Santa that brings presents to the good kids.
Volle Zustimmung. Ich bin zwar in Worms aufgewachsen, also "nicht ganz" Pfalz, aber erstaunlich hohe Ähnlichkeit und Begriffe.
@@tohellwithgoogle4261 de belznickel is de belzebub, eher de knecht rupprecht odder sowas, der kummt mit de rut...
Admirable or Impish? A famous American TV show set in Pennsylvania The Office (US) has a Pennsylvania Dutch character who dressed as Belznickel for a Xmas episode. They ask 'naughty' or 'nice' but instead, it's Admirable or Impish. Then they hit their co-worker with a wooden switch.
Feli , I am 61 now , lets say one generation above you . It is astonishing how many words from ancient german I grasped at the first glance from hearing it , when you had much more struggle to get the meanings straight. I am living now the last 31 years in Spain , and I can tell you that when I hear german teenagers (tourists) speaking with each other I have sometimes a hard time to battle my brain through all that modern anglicisms and slang they use nowadays.
its horrible in my opinion. german is such a beautiful language and it is a shame to me that it gets butchered this way.
The same is true of my brother's wife. She is from Bavaria. Her mother can mostly understand my mom if she speaks PA Dutch, but my SIL struggles.
I found you by accident, but started listening because I'm living in Spain and dating a woman from Germany -- then when I found out we're fellow Cincinnatians I listen quite often. Nice videos!
You speak English amazingly well. I have been in the country for over sixty years and still have an accent. That has helped me a lot when looking for a job. Except in Quebec, no one new what I was trying to say.
I'm born and grown in Palatinate, and I can confirm that this sounds all much like the Palatinean dialect. In fact you could enclose it further to the north of Platinate. I assume that a lot of Americans have heard of Ramstein or Kaiserslautern, and a lot of words are still used in that area and north of them. Some examples out of the video: Mei - Mein/meine - my Scheier - Scheune - barn Springe - rennen - to run Duwwak - Tabak - tobaco meh - mehr - no more Hinkel - Hühner (not "Hähnchen") - chicken weescht -weißt - you know sel - jenes/dieses - this one uffmache - aufmachen - to open es schneet - es schneit - it's snowing Speaking dialect is still strong in that region and all of these words are still in daily use by a lot of people Interesting/ a hint for Feli: "schick Dich" is no English/German mix, it's actually still used (but more the north, Mosel/Eifel-region) and means exactly "behave you(-rselve)", used also for "stay gold" and a sort of "goodby". Great video!
Ramstein yes even if they don’t remember where. Kaiserslautern is going to be pretty obscure unless the person was in the military or worked with them for a time.
I’m from Pennsylvania and I have family that lives in Kaiserslautern and they tell me to visit but never have .
I've been to both Ramstein and Kaiserslautern, but, didn't spend a lot of time there. Because Fili is Bavarian I understand her better. I lived in Ansbach for two years so?
I grew up in Pennsylvania so it's very funny to hear these phrases and remember hearing them as a child. My father is Pennsylvania Dutch and my mother's family came from Sicily.
@@darrenjones2933 Wow, I've been to both also. I agree 100% that the Bavarian region and the Salzkammergut region of Austria are beyond gorgeous. When we were in England, we went there a lot because it's just over a hour on the ferry, then driving over. I love mountains and snow.
Hey, I come from Kasierslautern/ Germany. I almost understand every word and a lot of it sounds just like my dialect. I would be very interesting how much those people would understand of me talking my dialect.
ich glab ach das hert sich ver mich bei manche äfach nohm Saar-Pälzische dialekt a Gruß aus Kusel
Hi. I am a Pennsylvania Deutsch Muttersprachler. Ich bin amish geboren und erzogen worden. Mir würde es interessieren wie deiner Dialekt klingt.
@@superaids666Grüeß vu Colmer em Elsass, das Versteht'mr ganz güet.......
jedes wort
Love these educational videos....
Hab mir gerade dein video angesehen und viele Worte klingen ehr wie unser unbeliebter fränkische dialekt, wie das springen das sagt man auch oft tu kleinen Kindern z.b. spring net so schnell oder tur Scheune sagen wir auch Scheiern😊
German-speaking europeans could take an active hand in preserving this language by visiting these areas and establishing cultural and economic links. That would be fascinating to see the historic link between the two communities revived.
There are tours of both Amish going to the old country and people from the old country coming here.
I doubt the Amish would go for that. They believe anyone who isn’t Amish is going to burn in Hell. They really don’t want to socialize with non Amish. They certainly aren’t the only Christian sect that. A lot of Evangelical Christians believe if don’t practice their brand of Christianity; you’ll burn in Hell too.
"Peter Peter Pumpkin-eater" is a nursery rhyme in the Midwest too, specifically Missouri which has a sizable German population. Obviously the English version is slightly different to maintain the rhyme. My guess is that since pumpkins are native to the Americas, this rhyme was created among the Pennsylvania Dutch and other German Americans brought it west and eventually their English translations wound up in children's books and the public school curriculum.
It's really funny because both of my kids had Mr. Hollenbach as a teacher at Fleetwood. Very "Dutchie" area around Fleetwood and Berks County. My grandparents used to speak fluent Pennsylvania Dutch and my dad had taken a night course at the local VoTech to learn it. It was funny when I would listen to my grandmother gossip on the phone in Pa Dutch and every now and then she would use an English word when it was for something that was newer and there wasn't an Pa Dutch word for it. I always knew when she was gossiping because she would talk in Pa Dutch. Was really funny. She was a great lady.
you did wel ,this was interessing how you explained it from the begining and you did it with much enthousiasm. ✋♥️🗺️🕊️
Hey, somebody from the Saarland here. So we speak also a very similar dialect of rhine-franconian and musel-franconian variety. For people from the south-west of Germany it is much easier than for you, as words like Hinkel, Scheier, schwätze, driwwe, etc are what we use in the dialect. Btw ebbes is simply etwas. 🙂 "Dat is ebbes" = Das ist schon mal was = that is (at least) something. Interesting: he uses "dat". There is the das-dat-Linie running through Palatine and the Saarland cutting the rhine-franconian (das) and the musel-franconian (dat) apart. Some of the words in the video remind me also rather of luxemburgish (which is language, which is extreml, close to musel-franconian dialects; some argue that is itself only a dialect) I guess that you would have the same difficulties when you would meet a german/french speaking in their palatine/saarlandish/lorraine/alsace dialect. :-) What is funny for me: it sounds similar to my dialect, but some of the speakers have an american accent/tone 🙂 Also worth noting: your channel is about the US, but there is a group with a similar situation: the Siebenbürger Sachsen in Romania. Despite the name Sachsen, this group came also from the south-west, but rather the area close to Luxembourg. They have also kept their german language.
My in laws were Americans living in Saarland for nearly a decade. When I went with my wife to visit them once I got stopped by customs in Frankfurt asking where in Germany I wanted to go. When I said "Saarland", the German customs agent got visibly upset with me that I had flown from America to go to Saarland. "Saarland!? Why do you want to go to Saarland!? Go to Munich! Or Berlin! Why Saarland!?" He was clearly at least slightly offended. My wife explained that her parents lived there and slipped in that she spoke conversational German, the customs guy got a lot less hostile after that. But he was still clearly bothered. My wife explained it would be like someone flying to America to go to West Virginia. Just something that would be unexpected and unusual for a tourist. I loved it though. So pretty, and everyone was so nice.
Wir als Schwaben...nicht dat is ebbes...des isch ebbes
I grew in up as a farm boy in Hessia, Germany and we had chicken, in our local dialect referred to as Hinkel, so that makes perfect sense to me (for a change).
Woihinkelche heisst coq aux vin mit Weiswein bei uns in Hessen:)
Great video ! As a german and english speaking french interested in frankish and allemanish regional language, war es sehr interessant ! Danke schön ! Keep going, tchüss !
Raycon are THE best earbuds! Highly recommended. Great video. I just subscribed.
I grew up in a village in Baden close to the Palatinate. Our local dialect was heavily infused with Badisch, Pfälzisch , Alemannisch (Elsäsisch) und Fränkisch. Although am living since the Seventies in Canada and rarely speak my childhood dialect, I had no difficulty understanding the Pennsylvania Dutch. Ebbes, Scheier, Hinkel… brought back sweet memories of the language of my childhood.
Hello Feli, just came over your video. I am from Palatinate Germany an I can tell you everything that is spoken in pensilvania dutch is totally understandable in Palatinate. Some terms are quite old school „pfälzisch“ (we say pälzisch) but other terms are existing in nowadays pfälzisch and are quite common. Än schäne Gruß aus de Palz😊
Grüße aus zweebrigge
ok im german and didn’t understand a word lol
I can hear a difference between the people immersed in the Pennsylvania Dutch culture, and the people who were just learning. The man with the chicken house sounded more like he grew up speaking PD than the rest of them. The others had heavier American accents. I appreciate your videos! As an American trying to learn German, I'm trying to remove my American accent, but I don't know how. I translate using Google and repeat. Sometimes I record myself attempting to speak German. I thought I was mimicking perfectly, but when I listen back to the recording, I hear my American accent. Do you have tips on getting rid of the American accent?
cool video! I grew up in the Palatinate and have been living for several years in southern Baden-Württemberg where a very strong Swabian Alemannic dialect is spoken. I'm surprised that I understand almost everything. "Hiwwe and driwwe", "a Hinkel" and "ebbes" are typically Palatinate. Very interesting!
Texas has a German speaking group mostly stopped speaking German in the last few generations. My father in law was a translator in world war 2. My mother in law did not speak English until 4th grade because she lived in Fredericksburg and went to private school which was taught in German.
was he from New Braunfels area ?
German-speaking public schools were quite common throughout the United States. My father's family went through German-language public schools in Baltimore until World War I, when they were required to change to all-English curriculum.
I visited Fredericksburg approx 5-10 years ago. To see/read the German inscription in the buildings was amazing; however, when spending a few evenings there, it was sad to find no one who spoke German. I asked for any “reden„ group. I was answered as if they were supposed to speak only English and Spanish. Sad.
@@DannyBear70 No one will, maybe a few older people in town who know a few words or accents, but everyone today speaks something else, there have been no fresh German immigrants in that town since I don't know when.
A relative of mine was in a German prison of war camp. His served as the translator using his old 1700's Pennsylvania Dutch dialect which was spoken by his family in Lincoln Nebraska. The German guards had a lot of fun listening to his dialect.
As a Dutch (Niederlandisch) person this was fascinating to listen to! To me Pensylvanian Dutch sounds a bit like an English person speaking (old) German with a heavy accent and some mixed in Dutch words. I liked your video! Edit: There is also a lot of similarities between Pensylvanian Dutch and the local Dutch dialect I grew up with in the east of The Netherlands (Neder Duits).
Curious what makes English speakers sound Dutch when speaking German, I'd assume it's the r sound and the umlauted vowles cause that was where I struggled especially since I'm an American that speaks some Russian as well. The r sound is so different in those languages and sounds like ы are hard to pronounce.
Because none of these examples are native speakers, they are all actually English speakers!
@@ManifoldSky Many of the Amish and Mennonite children learn to speak English in school. I learned to speak English at 8 years old.
@@rafaelramos441 That has nothing to do with this particular video.
to me as a native speaker of german , pennsylvanian dutch sounds like a drunk mix between german and dutch😂
This is the first time that I came across your channel. This is the first time I seen anyone do this. I came from a family that spoke Dutch but I never really mastered it and now that my parents are gone I don’t have any interaction with anyone. My mother had to learn English and most of her brothers and sisters. One other interesting thing that I was brought up around was the New Year wish. My uncle would go from home to home of people he knew and give them a blessing or prayer in German and then shoot off old muskets to chase out the old and bring in the new. I still have a copy of it but I can’t read it. I was just wondering if you ever heard anything about it.
You at least got the gist of the nursery rhyme or poem that he was reciting. That was commendable 😀
As a 13th generation Lancastrian of PA Dutch stock, I’d like to extend my sincere compliments on your video (…not least of which for pronouncing Lancaster correctly)! I can understand a decent amount of the dialect, but really wish I’d have had my grandmother teach me more while she was alive. Having lived in Niedersachsen and picked up a second degree in German, I enjoy all of your videos… but this one was especially touching. Thanks!
Yes, pronouncing Lancaster correctly is a major plus for us, isn't it? 🙂
Lancaster? That's a city in England. I'm English, so I was pretty sure, but my Geography is bad enough that I Googled it to be sure. So are you in England, or is this another Lancaster? And if so, is it pronounced the same or differently?
@@conlon4332 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancaster,_Pennsylvania
@@conlon4332 kzhead.info/sun/e8qIpaqoo6p9pGw/bejne.html
@@conlon4332there was a trend right after the conclusion of the French and Indian war that many towns in central Pennsylvania were named after English towns. So you will find a Lancaster, a York and a Reading, all named after their respective English towns. I know it’s hard to fathom in our modern times, but the Susquehanna river was the frontier at that time all lands west of it were wild territories of the Native American tribes. The English victory in the F&I war truly change the whole geography of the North American. It moved the original frontier much farther west into Ohio.
I find it quite impressive that after 300+ years being separated from their "home" language that you can mostly understand what they are saying. I'm sure given a few weeks immersed in the language you'd be speaking to them completely fluently.
You may even be able to make out what they're saying in England, notwithstanding those years.
@@HunterShows Looking forward to the conclusion of Metal Gear!
@@Darlene312 :) Sorry, I'm slow.
When I visited Peru I was fascinated how many villages only spoke Quechua and didn't know any Spanish. That's of course a bit different. But I thought it was so cool that they could preserve their culture and language even though they were conquered by Spain.
Same as with Dutch and Afrikaans. Although Afrikaans speakers usually don't understand Dutch, but I guess that would also be the case with Pensylvanian Dutch speakers.
We used to drive through Lancaster en route to my grandmother's house and I remember some of the sayings in Denglish. My favourites: 'The hurrier I go, the behinder I get' and 'Throw the horse over the fence some hay'.
Very nice video. I was raised very close to Lancaster County, and Pennsylvania Dutch farmers work a stones throw away from where my mom lives. My grandmother had Pa. Dutch blood, but unfortunately never learned anything about the language or culture. Your explanations sort of remind me of one of the rural indigenous places where I live here in Mexico. Two towns nearby speak the same Amuzgo language, but with two distinct dialects, that can make it difficult for an indigenous from one town to understand everything the indigenous from the other town is saying( or so I have been told.). It makes me also wonder if the Amish in Ohio can understand everything the Amish in Pennsylvania are saying( when they speak Dutch).
I really like this video, especially the „hiwwe wie driwwe“ part, because it‘s amazing how very close the language still is to the original dialect. I‘m from the Palatinate and it‘s really easy to understand for the most part, including all the special words. Hiwwe wie driwwe meaning „hüben wie drüben“, so „here and there“ by the way 🙂
hiwwe wie driwwe & nuff en nunner :) i am born and raised in baden württemberg, now living in bavaria and some parts were really difficult to understand, others were pretty difficult for me.
Yes and also here in "Hessen", where I live, in the "Wetterau" and spoken by native speakers in Frankfurt. I was very surprised that words, like Hinkel, hiwwe und niwwe or driwwe are also spoken in the "Pfalz"
@@brigittefranz4889 in Hessen I know it has „hibbe und dribbe“. Thats even the name of a hessian Asterix book
@@Halfdome05 Oh yes, I know... 😂 There are also some more Asterix in german dialects, and even some more in "frankforderisch" , as we call the dialekt spoken around of Frankfurt on the Main But of course I love the Asterix storys I have some in french, in latin and of course "hibbe un dribbe" and it is so so funny
@@brigittefranz4889 I have one for schwäbisch ... Asterix schwätzt schwäbisch, Asterix em Morgaländle. 😂
In English as I remember the nursery rhyme, it starts. "Peter, Peter pumpkin eater, had a wife but couldn't keep her. He put her in a pumpkin shell, And there he kept her very well." Outhouse, chicken coop, is the English you are looking for. Fun video Feli, thanks for walking us through this. Auf weidersehen. LOLI had to look up how to spell, Tschüss. PS- I've been needing some earbuds and also took you up on the raycons. Thanks.
You got it. The English influence is cultural, not just linguistic. Feli mistook the poem as complicated, when it's more simple nonsense for children. The PA Germans took the tune of "Home on the Range" but sing words about Die Alt Bauerei - The Old Farm.
Yes, quite recognizable nursery rhyme to most Americans. Interesting that when he said it in English, it was different from what we learned, and didn't rhyme properly? I think he learned it originally in PA Dutch and then translated it to English.
That's the version I remember from the 1960's and 70's.
There are other, darker versions, one where a second wife is pushed up a chimney, another where she is put in a well to be eaten be mice. The version above is standard nowadays having been sanitized.
@@derekmills5394 Agreed Derek. I've read early versions of Snow White and the 7 Dwarves that were sexually explicit and extremely violent. Sanitized, definitely.
When I was on the fire department part of our coverage area contained a portion of a large Amish community. One of the coolest parts of that job was getting language and cultural education about them so we could all interact together and do what's necessary in an emergency. Our communities didn't really interact very much outside of trading/commerce (EVERYONE bought Amish food and goods/services like carpentry), but we had a lot of mutual respect for each other and it was overall a pretty great experience.