GERMAN SPEAKERS: Do you understand Pennsylvania Dutch?

[Bobby Martnen]

[Teutone]

he has troubles pronouncing some words but I undestood it completly.

[Ouistreham]

Thanks! This is really fascinating.

Fairly easy to understand. About 80% as far as I'm concerned (I'm not a native German speaker) — at any rate much more than if it were Swiss German.

But the text is a well-known psalm in Martin Luther's translation, only with some verbs being replaced with idiomatic expressions, so it's relatively familiar.

All in all it's reminiscent of German dialects as spoken in Saarland and Eastern Lorraine (Lothringer Platt). Rhine-Franconian basis with some unexpected Allemanic influences.

The rolled r's deliver a strong Old Europe vibe. It's amazing there is no sizeable influence from English phonetics (expect maybe the fact that non-Anglo umlauted sounds (ö, ü) have gone lost).

I assume that in real life present-day Amish people use a much more Anglified version of their "Dutch".

[Óttar]

I could understand more than half, perhaps tending toward 66%. When I read the Brothers Grimms' fairy tales in a German dialect I would become disheartened because I thought my German was getting rusty, but then when I read one in Hochdeutsch I would breathe a sigh of relief.

[Óttar]

All in all it's reminiscent of German dialects as spoken in Saarland and Eastern Lorraine (Lothringer Platt). Rhine-Franconian basis with some unexpected Allemanic influences.

My paternal great-grandparents were Volksdeutsche from Elsass.

I assume that in real life present-day Amish people use a much more Anglified version of their "Dutch".

I was watching a documentary about the Rumspringa, the coming-of-age where Amish young men and women are allowed to spend time among the "English" i.e. non-Amish to see if they want to remain in the Amish community, and one of the young men called his father and said, "Ich bin alright (pron. al-righ-yut)", so in this instance you can see the influence of English syntax and vocabulary.