Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V. LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND EDUCATION. Among the many interesting phenomena connected with the Pennsylvania Germans none is more striking than their persistence in clinging to their dialect. Here we have a group of people living in the very heart of the United States, surrounded on all sides by English-speaking people, almost every family having some of its branches thoroughly mixed by intermarriage with these people, yet still after the lapse of nearly two hundred years retaining to a considerable degree the language of their ancestors. Even in large and flourishing cities like Allentown, Reading, and Bethlehem much of the intercourse in business and home-life is carried on in this patois. This persistence of language is one of the strongest evidences of the conservative spirit so characteristic of the Pennsylvania-German farmer. This love for their language, which to-day may be regarded as a really striking phenomenon, was only natural one hundred and fifty years ago. us The country was then new, the Germans formed a compact mass by themselves, the means of communication with their English neighbors were rare; it would have been surprising if they had not clung to the language of their fathers. It was precisely this same love for the mother tongue which led the Puritans to leave Holland, where they were in many respects comfortable enough.1 And yet this very natural desire was regarded by some at least as evidence of a stubborn and ignorant nature.2 The very efforts made by the English--the motives of many of whom were more or less mixed--to do away with the use of German only tended to strengthen the stubborn love for their language in which their Bible and hymn-books were written and in which their services were held....