<continued Hijack>
It seems fairly widely accepted that the “dutch” comes from an english corruption of deutsch.
Actually, the Amish and other followers of Menno Simons only make up a fraction of the total Pennsylvania Dutch population. They are just a very visible part.
There are kinds of different religions amonst the PA dutch. Most of the PA dutch arrived here in the 18th century, and included Mennonite (and related sects), Catholic, Lutheren, Schwankfelder, a variety of smaller sects, and a reasonably large number of agnostics and Deists. The Rhine valley (where most of the original PA dutch settlers came from) was pretty diverse religously at the time, and the religous freedom offered by the coloney of PA under William Penn attracted many groups.
My understanding (based on the Pennsylvania German Heritige Society stuff I’ve read) is that today’s Pennsylvania “dutch” or Pennsylvania Germans are the decendents of the german settlers who came to the area in the 18th century at the invitation of William Penn (Penn traveled to the Rhine valley, which apparently had rather a lot of unrest at the time, specifically to bring back more settlers for his colony). PA Germans retain specific cultural traditions, and many still have at least some knowledge of the PA dutch dialect. The Amish and the mennonites are indeed PA Germans, but they are not the majority of PA germans. They are just quaint and well suited to cheesy marketing gimicks for recruiting tourists. My family is PA german, we speak Pa dutch as do many other people in rural parts of PA (in fact, my granfather did not speak english very well at all, and managed quite well untill he died in 1996), but we aren’t Amish or Mennonite and never have been.
As for the PA dutch language, it may be called “dutch” traditionally, but it has no real relationship to Dutch at all. It’s basically a mixture of English and low German. (Sort of like much of Yiddish is a mixture of Hebrew and low German). I learned English as a primary language, High German in school, and PA dutch at home from older family members. The best description I can give of PA dutch is take German, remove all of the grammer, and tenses but keep the German word order, and add about 25% english or modified english words (especially for any modern inventions).
I’m sorry, I’m rambling… and totally hijacking the thread.
My apologies to the OP.
-Pandora
(who is not a historian, but does work for a local historic site, and has absorbed much knowledge from those wiser then she.)
