While most world languages spoken by minority populations are in serious danger of becoming extinct, Pennsylvania Dutch is thriving. In fact, the number of Pennsylvania Dutch speakers is growing exponentially, although it is spoken by less than one-tenth of one percent of the United States population and has remained for the most part an oral vernacular without official recognition or support. A true sociolinguistic wonder, Pennsylvania Dutch has been spoken continuously since the late eighteenth century despite having never been ""refreshed"" by later waves of immigration from abroad.
In this probing study, Mark L. Louden, himself a fluent speaker of Pennsylvania Dutch, provides readers with a close look at the place of the language in the life and culture of two major subgroups of speakers: the ""Fancy Dutch,"" whose ancestors were affiliated mainly with Lutheran and German Reformed churches, and traditional Anabaptist sectarians known as the ""Plain people""'the Old Order Amish and Mennonites.
Drawing on scholarly literature, three decades of fieldwork, and ample historical documents'most of which have never before been made accessible to English-speaking readers'this is the first book to offer a comprehensive look at this unlikely linguistic success story.
Preface Acknowledgments 1. What Is Pennsylvania Dutch? 2. Early History of Pennsylvania Dutch 3. Pennsylvania Dutch, 18001860 4. Profiles in Pennsylvania Dutch Literature 5. Pennsylvania Dutch in the Public Eye 6. Pennsylvania Dutch and the Amish and Mennonites 7. An American Story Notes Bibliography Index
""Mark L. Louden's landmark new book, Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language... represents a major achievement of linguistic, historical, and anthropological scholarship, and it will be of great use to scholars from across the disciplines who share interests in the United States's diverse linguistic and cultural heritage... The success of Pennsylvania Dutch rests in its author's ability to present detail-oriented, specialist knowledge of linguistic patterns in German and Pennsylvania Dutch in accessible and meaningful ways to scholars from across the disciplines'as well as members of the public, for whom this book offers a scholarly yet approachable introduction to the topic... Pennsylvania Dutch is both a fitting testament to the analytical power of interdisciplinary folklife studies and also a major step forward for several interrelated fields of scholarship.""
