The peculiar language of the Amish
The Amish of America speak a hybrid dialect called Pennsylvania Dutch or Pennsylvania German. It is a Germanic language with a good amount of English mixed in.
If you sit and listen to two Amish speaking, you may be surprised that what seems like every fifth or tenth or twentieth word is actually English. Occasionally you find you can sort of follow along as they speak.
PA Dutch is a largely unwritten language. When the Amish write notes and letters to one another, they usually use English.
But the typical Amish child will not speak much or any English until he or she reaches school age. PA Dutch is the first language they learn as toddlers, and the language that most Amish are most comfortable conversing in. Once in school, the teacher, who is almost always Amish, teaches the children English, and all lessons are held using English as a base language.
In fact, many if not most Amish are actually trilingual, because in addition to English and ‘Dutch’, they speak and understand High German, which is the language their Bibles are written in and the language typically used in their church services.
The Amish are not the only ones who have been known to speak PA German, though they are the largest group. Speakers of the dialect, including Mennonites and non-Amish, have been found historically in the southeastern region of Pennsylvania, as well as in the Shenandoah valley region stretching south through Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina.
Following this Amish language , to listen to a sample recording of Pennsylvania Dutch. Follow this Amish language and culture at the Amish America blog to read more.
Tags: Amish language
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May 26, 2007at 9:06 am
Softer than German, little like Jewish, short words. Interesting.
October 3, 2007at 12:32 pm
The amish language is a beautiful lnaguage. My family is amish and I know bits and pieces of it. It is so easy to catch on to and understand.
November 1, 2007at 2:35 pm
I want to learn Amish can I? Which is the eastiest way? I do not know any Amish. I want to become Amish if possible. Do Amish still let teens have an running wild teen year? I would go to live with Amish and have a English running wild teen year. I’m 14. Gut.(I know just two words they speak gut for good and jah for yeah or yes.)
November 12, 2007at 9:42 am
I grew up in Southern Germany and I could understand quite a lot of what the Amish lady was talking about in the listening sample. It’s more German than Dutch so why is it called Pennsylvania Dutch? It’s a very interesting language with a very interesting history.
November 12, 2007at 2:54 pm
@ Kerstin: Your right it is closer to German than Dutch; however, the confusion started when English speakers started to say ‘Deutsch’, which means German of course in German, and to English speakers it was transformed to the word ‘Dutch’. My friend Eric is one of the world experts on the Amish and his site is above.
January 2, 2008at 7:14 pm
I am doing a book report on a book written by Beverly Lewis called The Parting. So far it is really good. I know some PA dutch and can understand it for the most part. I love learning about their culture!!!: )
January 23, 2008at 8:14 am
Is there a CD or tape to learn Pa Dutch. My husband is Pa. Dutch and can speak but, I would like to learn. He is not a good teacher.
January 23, 2008at 8:48 am
@Bridget I have not herd of any Amish language CDs. However, I am sure there are some Amish language resources. And I teach languages, its very hard sometimes for a husband or wife to teach their other half a language, for various reasons. However, I was thinking of making one. I think if you can use a digital recorder, record and learn about 2000 Amish words. Or even just make flashcards, a low tech but effective way.
January 28, 2008at 4:08 pm
I just started dating a man who grew up Amish. He and his cusion are always speaking in the Amish language and won’t tell anyone what they are saying. I would like to learn so I can suprise them and just jump in the conversation! Can you help me? Thanks a million!
February 28, 2008at 12:25 pm
The Lancaster County Mennonite Historical Society has PA Dutch Language Books and tapes. Unfortunately, they do not accept mail orders. Their library and bookstore are located on Route 30 east of Lancaster.
By the way, the term Pennsylvania Dutch comes from the term that was used by the English colonial government of Pennsylvania in the 1700s, not the fact that they spoke Deitsch. The English divided the inhabitants of the Rhein into two categories - the low Dutch (primarily today’s Hollanders) and the high Dutch (primarily the Germans of today.) Germany didn’t exist in the 1700s - it was a collection of over 400 independent states of various sizes - and the English used the term “high Dutch” to describe this collection of states.
May 17, 2008at 11:55 am
i would like to learn how to speak pa dutch, i have friends who are amish and would like to beable to speak in pa dutch when i talk to them although they speak english well i would like to learn how to have a conversation with them in pa dutch
May 17, 2008at 11:56 am
my question was is there a book or something out there to help you learn i have picked up a few words listening to them talk and asking questions but i want to learn more.
May 27, 2008at 7:22 pm
I also would like to learn amish. I will move to amish country soon, and would like to understand what they say.
May 30, 2008at 10:50 am
I have many people interested in the Amish language. I have though of creating a program for the Amish language like I am doing with other languages, either a visual association software program or and mp3 language program. I am doing both with other languages, so the code and structure could be adapted to Amish. But this is just a far off dream at this juncture. What you need to do is get a word list. Maybe the 2-3 thousand most common words and the most important 300 verbs as verbs are the soul of any language. And you need to learn your first thousand or so words in Amish like I did with the Polish language. Then things will get easy as you can understand and piece things together, even with little grammar. Do it the Amish way, with flashcards or translating the bible. There is an Amish family in Poland that learned Polish mostly with the bible. Its a universally available book with all the words you will ever need to function in the world, except words like palmtop or cell phone, but I do not think you will find too many of those things in Amish land anyway.
June 14, 2008at 5:21 pm
I lived in germany for a few years and I’ve always found dutch verry simmilar to german and seem to understand the gist of a conversation in duch.
I think if you learned duch you would have a reasonable understanding of Amish.
July 14, 2008at 7:57 am
I would like to learn amish but i am i suppost to do that if i have no clue where to find a book or cd or whatever?
July 14, 2008at 11:41 am
@Brad I have thought of creating a program for Amish but until that far flung time I would recommend start with flashcards or an Amish Bible. Many people have learned languages with the Bible when there was nothing else available. In fact there is an Amish family here in Poland and they learned Polish this way.
July 19, 2008at 7:42 pm
I am originally from Rüdesheim, Germany. I have heard “Pennsylvania Dutch” and i have been able to understand it, it’s just got a strange pronunciation. I also speak fluent Dutch, and “Pennsylvania Dutch” is more German than Dutch. I think it’s an interesting dialect, and i too would love to learn it =)
Gruß/Groetje
James
July 20, 2008at 5:41 am
@ James Your right the Amish language is more German than Dutch, its because the Americans originally confused “Deutsch” with Dutch so “Pennsylvania Dutch” is more a German language.
August 18, 2008at 8:52 pm
Mark Biernat: I rarely respond to open threads on the internet, but cannot simply let this fly. No no no… PA Dutch is not from “Deutsch” — not only was there no “Deutsch” or “Deutschland” at the time the immigrants came over, but “Dutch” was the common word for anyone coming from middle Europe in the 18th century. Check out the FIRST entry in the Oxford English Dictionary under “Dutch”.
The language is not more German than Dutch, as it pre-dates what we would consider a modern, standard German language.
Also, there are many many resources for learning PA Dutch. The Lancaster County Mennonite Historical Society has some, but so does Masthof Publishing As a language teacher and researcher, I highly doubt the effectiveness of simply using flashcards.
August 19, 2008at 12:54 am
@John Thank you for the reply. You have a point. That is one theory about the origin of Amish language. But consider John Hostetler Hostetler, (1993), Amish Society, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, p. 241(1993) he gives the origin of “Dutch” as a corruption or a “folk-rendering” of the term “Deitsch”. So there are theories not facts about this. But basically the Amish were and are speakers of Pennsylvania German and are Germans. It is a German language. About language learning with Flashcards. I used this method mostly to learn Polish which is 10 times harder than German. I think every method is good when you are involved in it. But flashcards are one of the best because it is systematic, gives feedback, tests and retests your memory as most memory problems are recall not storage. There are many ways to learn a language. You have to find what works for you. I have taught languages for years in Europe and flashcards work.
August 19, 2008at 1:35 pm
Mark, thanks for the reply. Remember, though, that Hostetler was a sociologist / anthropologist and NOT a linguist. Refer to the work of Lois Huffines and Mark Louden for more clearer pictures on the languages of the Anabaptists. Also, Hostetler’s point is actually pointed out as incorrect in the critical collection of essays written by him — “Writing the Amish: The Worlds of John Hostetler” edited by David Weaver-Zercher (2005: footnote i. on page 194).
August 19, 2008at 3:05 pm
John, I will have to consult an expert on the Amish I know, he runs this blog http://amishamerica.typepad.com/ I will let you know what he says, he is very objective.
August 23, 2008at 4:50 pm
I’m Dutch, lived most of my life in the Netherlands and am also fluent in German. Listening to the fragment of the female speaker interviewed by Wolfgang W. Moelleken I must say that there is a lot of resemblance with the German language. Since the German and Dutch languages are related it is obvious that Amish language will resemble the Dutch language a very little bit, but when I hear this fragment there’s not one Dutch word in it and - say - 90 per cent of present day German.
Hartelijke groeten (Dutch), herzliche Gruesse (German) Jeroen
August 23, 2008at 6:07 pm
I’m so amazed that my reaction doesn’t show - was it an inconvenient truth to the webmaster ?
Jeroen
August 23, 2008at 6:15 pm
I’m really sorry about the latter comment: in the meantime it shows and I’m so curious to know what linguists have to say. I think that in order to judge influences you have to know both Dutch and German (yes, Deutsch !) very well . Is it possible that the Amish language isn’t just one language and that local influences of Dutch or German may vary ? Of is the audio fragment really rerpresentative of all spoken Amish ?
Jeroen
August 27, 2008at 11:45 am
Please reference the work of Louden — the foremost expert on PA Dutch language and Germanic linguist at UW-Madison:
August 27, 2008at 12:35 pm
John My friend writes: He (that is you john) may have a point on the central Euro immigrants at the time all being called Dutch, but Nolt, who wrote what has been considered the definitive Amish history (A History of the Amish p 72) here only mentions Germans:
‘While some Germans who rode this immigrant wave had no religious affiliation, the vast majority were Lutheran or Reformed, with smaller numbers of Catholics, Moravians, and various Pietist and Anabaptist groups. English onlookers quickly labeled all these German newcomers “Pennsylvania Dutch”
“These Pennsylvania Dutch (or Pennsylvania German) settlers soon developed a common dialect-also known as Pennsylvania Dutch-which along with their other customs…”
Note on the same page also talks about ‘70,000 German-speaking immigrants came through the port of Philadelphia’
the Amish themselves nowadays call their language ‘Deitsch’. Kraybill and Nolt I believe more commonly refer to the language as ‘Pennsylvania German’ So is it German or isn’t it? Was the term Dutch as used by people naming the newcomers ‘Dutch’ meant to refer to them as ‘Dutch’ as in people from Holland? Or was it their corruption of Deutsch that became the name of the people, and then the dialect? I dunno. Whatever it is, I think it’s safe to say that the dialect is more German than anything else.
As for the term Pennsylvania ‘Dutch’ being a corruption of Deitsch, if that idea has been definitively proven wrong, it is still being propagated to some degree by scholars even in recent times, including in Messiah College professor Richard A. Stevick in 2007’s Growing up Amish: The Teenage Years, where he refers to it in the text: ‘All wear plain clothes…and speak in ‘Dutch’; and in the footnotes connected to the word ‘Dutch’ thus: ‘Dutch’ is a corruption of the word Deutsch, the German word for German. Their spoken dialect should actually be called Pennsylvania German’
So Stevick also seems to favor PA German rather than PA Dutch, but he seems to give the same explanation for the word Dutch being a corruption of Deutsch.
Stevick however is a psychology prof and not a linguist.
August 27, 2008at 12:36 pm
futher… just spoke with Stephen Scott here at the center, he is a researcher who has written about 5 books on the Amish. He says there is some controversy over the origin. He showed me a religious book from 1756 here at the center that prominently uses the words ‘High Dutch’ on the title page and he said that they definitely mean High German. I don’t know how that fits in with the discussion. He also mentioned an article where it was discussed, called Rainbow I believe, a Pennsylvania German society publication. I am not totally familiar with it. But it sounds like there is some controversy surrounding it from what Steve said and I simply don’t know if that has been put to rest.
August 28, 2008at 8:17 am
thanks Mark for your thorough research… I’m afraid some confusion may have entered the argument, though. I am not claiming that PA Dutch is closer to Dutch than German and I am not claiming that the immigrants were from the Netherlands.
That PA Dutch is a German-related language is NOT disputed… of course it’s a language formed from a levelling of several southwestern GERMAN dialects in colonial America in the 18th century. It has many characteristics of those dialects including diminutive formation, lack of front rounded vowels, etc.
The origin of the word “Dutch” to apply to these people and their language is clear to me — from the original usage of the word “Dutch” — I’m afraid that plenty have been subjugated to the touristy publications attempting to make sense of the PA Dutch vs. PA German confusion.
many thanks again.
August 28, 2008at 9:50 am
John, Again thanks for your comments but you wrote “The language is not more German than Dutch”.
However, I still think it is more German than Dutch…”So Stevick also seems to favor PA German rather than PA Dutch, but he seems to give the same explanation for the word Dutch being a corruption of Deutsch.
The reference above is one man’s view in, if you have read my above posts there is no exact agreement with all the experts.
August 29, 2008at 12:06 pm
right… but that’s not where my comment stops. I am referring to the idea that it’s somehow a “German dialect” — PA Dutch predates any notion of a “Standard German” in the modern usage. A comparison between the Standard German or Standard Dutch just seems fruitless… as the language has developed in a different direction from standard German.
September 1, 2008at 1:12 am
@John White, again great comment on the Amish language, I am going to have to go back and research this some more. I personally have thought of extending my software to include the Amish language, and if I ever did I would have to do I would have to do a greater etymology of the Amish language, as I am doing with Slavic languages. Your comments are great.
October 15, 2008at 1:17 pm
my dads ,dad grew up amish and he got out of the tradition at 18 and he has over 1/2 of the population in iowa that are amish and i am related but the never talk to us because they do not consider us our are family amish any more and they fell they have no reason to either.
December 12, 2008at 12:35 pm
I grew up in a part of Germany that is called Saarland. The Amish speak mostly like we do. It is a dialect nobody else in Germany really understands, mostly the people who grew up there or lived there for a long time. My grandparents sounded even more like the amish, just without the english influence naturally. Since then our dialect has changed somewhat. It is fun for me to go there, because it is the only opportunity for me to hear the language I grew up with outside of my home. My husband and I still speak our dialect.
December 30, 2008at 9:18 am
I think there is a lot that can be learned through the Amish and their way of living; which is why I would like to live with an Amish family for four months. Would I be welcomed into their culture? How could I go about this, if it is even possible? Any recommendations?
December 31, 2008at 1:27 am
You want to go to Amish land. I would recommend it. I would write the the Author of this blog. He is a friend of mine and has spend a lot of time in Amish land and writing a book on the Amish. Amish America -> http://amishamerica.typepad.com/