Dr. Mike Putnam is Professor of German and Linguistics and Program Director of the Linguistics Program at Penn State
| Mike Putnam, PhD |
| Interviewed by Catherine Pham |
In your research, you have studied a language called Pennsylvania Dutch. Could you explain for our readers what that is, and why it’s so interesting?
Pennsylvania Dutch is a German-based language that was once spoken exclusively in southeastern Pennsylvania, but is now spoken throughout the Midwest, in Canada, and beyond. Although Pennsylvania Dutch was originally spoken by only a few thousand speakers, this number is expected to approach 500,000 within the coming decade. Pennsylvania Dutch speakers can primarily be separated into two groups: ‘sectarians’, typically associated with groups such as the Old Order Amish, and ‘non-sectarians’. Sectarian speakers are the ones who continue to pass the language onto their children.
My relationship with Pennsylvania Dutch is personal: I grew up in rural east central Ohio, home to the second-largest community of Old Order Amish in the world. My father worked in the lumber industry, and many of our family friends are native Pennsylvania Dutch speakers. As a teenager, I had many opportunities to work with Amish peers, learn Pennsylvania Dutch, and build lasting friendships that have continued to this day. What makes Pennsylvania Dutch so interesting for research is that many of the changes we see occurring in the language today aren’t simply due to contact between Pennsylvania Dutch and English. Rather, many of the sounds, words, and structural aspects of the language are a complex mixture of innovation and overextension of German sounds, words, and structures.
What is one thing you have learned in your research on Pennsylvania Dutch that you would like our readers to know about?
That’s a challenging question! I think there are two important things for readers to know about research on Pennsylvania Dutch. First, the process of what happens when two languages come into contact, as was the case with German and English in the emergence of Pennsylvania Dutch, is extremely complex. For a researcher to draw conclusions about how the grammar of Pennsylvania Dutch works, they have to have a good understanding of the grammars of English and German, knowledge of the different varieties or dialects of both languages used by the speakers involved, and a more general understanding of the kinds of things that can happen in situations of language contact. This is really challenging, and it’s important to be careful. Second, the number of Pennsylvania Dutch speakers is actually increasing throughout the United States and beyond. This means that speakers are probably using the language differently depending on where they live, what social group they belong to (e.g., sectarian or non- sectarian), and lots of other factors that we know can shape language use. I’m hoping future research will be able to explore this kind of linguistic diversity within Pennsylvania Dutch.
Pennsylvania Dutch is spoken in regions where the majority of the population speaks English. What are some ways in which Pennsylvania Dutch and English have influenced or shaped each other in these regions?
This may come as a surprise, but as far as we know there are actually no exclusively monolingual speakers of Pennsylvania Dutch. This means that all Pennsylvania Dutch speakers also speak another language, most typically English. It’s also very common for Pennsylvania Dutch-speaking communities to interact with non- Pennsylvania Dutch speakers, particularly in areas of farming, commerce, and business, so there are lots of opportunities for these two languages to influence one another. The most obvious area where we see evidence of this influence is with the words people use: English words are borrowed and eventually integrated into Pennsylvania Dutch. But it’s not the case that just any word can be borrowed. Interestingly, the words that get borrowed are typically nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and you don’t see more functional words like prepositions being borrowed. Grammatical structures can also be adopted from one language into the other. For example, my grandmother, to this day, uses expressions like “Pull the door to”, mirroring the structure of the German phrasing “Mach die Tür zu”, which means “Close the door”. This expression is commonly used by my grandparents’ generation in east central Ohio, where I grew up. And the coolest part is, neither of my grandparents speak German or Pennsylvania Dutch; this is simply the result of language contact between Pennsylvania Dutch and English!
Pennsylvania Dutch has been around of hundreds of years. Why do you think it has thrived for so long in an English-speaking society?
Pennsylvania Dutch is an amazing success story, and several factors have contributed to this. First, sectarian speakers of Pennsylvania Dutch are typically native speakers who learn the language as children, and they don’t really start learning English until they begin formal schooling. This means that for a big part of their lives, kids are speaking only Pennsylvania Dutch, which really helps them to maintain it. Second, speakers of Pennsylvania Dutch generally don’t have negative attitudes toward the language. We know that attitude plays an important role in language learning and use, so this is also an important factor. Lastly, sectarian communities have a really well-defined set of contexts in which they use Pennsylvania Dutch (e.g., at home, at church) and English (e.g., at school, when doing business). Pennsylvania Dutch serves as a kind of identity marker, where just by virtue of speaking the language people are marking themselves as part of a particular community. Unfortunately, the situation is a bit different for non-sectarian speakers, who will likely stop passing the language down to future generations at some point in the next 20–30 years. Sadly, once this happens, non-sectarian Pennsylvania Dutch will eventually die out.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers about Pennsylvania Dutch or about language preservation more generally?
Pennsylvania Dutch is a fascinating success story of not only language preservation, but also of language innovation. Pennsylvania Dutch is one of three groups of German-based languages that are closely tied to the Anabaptist faith tradition. The other two, Mennonite Low German and Hutterite German, continue to thrive as well. In my own research, I’m curious to see how the structure of words, phrases, and sentences in these German-based languages develop over time, and what this can tell us more generally about how languages change over time. I think languages like Pennsylvania Dutch, as well as these other heritage varieties of German spoken throughout the world, provide essential clues into the boundaries and limits of language variation.