PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH:
A DIALECT OF SOUTH GERMAN WITH AN
INFUSION OF ENGLISH.
BY
S. S. HALDEMAN, A.M.
PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA,
PHILADELPHIA.
LONDON:
TRÜBNER & CO., 8 AND 60, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1872.
All Rights reserved.
HERTFORD:
PRINTED BY STEPHEN AUSTIN AND SONS.
While I was engaged with the third part of my EarlyEnglish Pronunciation, Prof. Haldeman sent me a reprintof some humorous letters by Rauch, entitled PennsylvanishDeitsh. De Campain Breefa fum Pit Schwefflebrenner un deBevvy, si alty, gepublished olly woch in "Father Abraham."Perceiving at once the analogy between this debased Germanwith English intermixture, and Chaucer's debased Anglo-saxonwith Norman intermixture, I requested and obtainedsuch further information as enabled me to give an accountof this singular modern reproduction of the manner in whichour English language itself was built up, and insert it inthe introduction to my chapter on Chaucer's pronunciation,Early English Pronunciation, pp. 652-663. But I felt itwould be a loss to Philology if this curious living exampleof a mixture of languages were dismissed with such acursory notice, and I therefore requested Prof. Haldeman,who by birth and residence, philological and phoneticknowledge, was so well fitted for the task, to draw up amore extended notice, as a paper to be read before thePhilological Society of London. Hence arose the followinglittle treatise, of which I, for my own part, can onlyregret the brevity. But the Philological Society, havingrecently exhausted most of its resources by undertaking thepublication of several extra volumes, was unable to issueanother of such length, and hence the present Essay appearsindependently. Owing to his absence from England andmy own connexion with the paper, which I communicatedand read to the Philological Society, on 3 June, 1870, Prof. [p. vi]Haldeman requested me to superintend the printing of hisessay, and add anything that might occur to me. This willaccount for a few footnotes signed with my name. TheProfessor was fortunately able to examine one revise himself,so that, though I am mainly responsible for the presswork, I hope that the errors may be very slight.
Sufficient importance does not seem to have been hithertoattached to watching the growth and change of living languages.We have devoted our philological energies to thestudy of dead tongues which we could not pronounce, andhave therefore been compelled to compare by letters ratherthan by sounds, and which we know only in the form impressedupon them by scholars of various times. The formin which they were originally written is for