Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language - Young Centre Books in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies

The fascinating story of America's oldest thriving heritage language.Winner of the Dale W. Brown Book Award by the Young Center for Anabaptists and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown CollegeWhile 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people"-the Old Order Amish and Mennonites.Drawing on scholarly literature, three decades of fieldwork, and ample historical documents-most of which have never before been made accessible to English-speaking readers-this is the first book to offer a comprehensive look at this unlikely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.

ISBN:	9781421428970
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Imprint:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Published date:	26 Mar 2019
DEWEY:	437.9748
DEWEY edition:	23
Language:	English
Number of pages:	504
Weight:	682g
Height:	156mm
Width:	228mm
Spine width:	34mm

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