Local dialect
Celebrating the area’s rich Pennsylvania Dutch heritage
KITCHENER — It was a regular afternoon of “schwetzing” (visiting) at Schneider Haus Wednesday, as people gathered in the sitting room of the historic house to sip lemonade and enjoy homemade pies and cookies.
The occasion was a chance for visitors to the National Historic Site to hear people speaking Pennsylvania Dutch, the dialect of the first settlers in Waterloo County.
“It’s unique to the culture, and it’s part of Waterloo Region’s history,” said Christy Hoffman, one of the organizers of the Wednesday event.
Although she herself doesn’t speak the language, Hoffman, who grew up in Floradale, said it’s always been part of her life. “If you step outside of the city, in the ElmiraLinwood-Heidelberg area, definitely you could enter some of the smaller stores and hear it being spoken.”
Schneider Haus has been hosting such events for at least five years, Hoffman said.
Pennsylvania Dutch (or Pennsylvania German as it’s sometimes called) is the language brought to this area by early settlers from Pennsylvania, who themselves had come from southwestern Germany and Switzerland between the mid-1700s and 1815. It has been spoken continuously ever since, despite never having been reinvigorated by later waves of immigration.
It’s unusual because it’s largely an oral language passed down from generation to generation, taught at home rather than at school (although you can study the language at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania).
“It’s definitely one way that has preserved the culture,” Hoffman said.
Indeed, the conversation on Wednesday gave a real glimpse into some aspects of Mennonite culture, with plenty of references to food, and to working on the farm. Lori Bauman of Elmira recalled that as a girl, her job on washing day was to fill the big bowl on the family’s kettle stove so that there’d be plenty of very hot water for her mother to wash the sheets and other linens.
Violet Gingrich recalled that pronunciation for everyday words like pea or bean could vary, even between families living on neighbouring farms. “I think if you were a little plainer, or more humble, you would say it one way,” she said.
None of the four speakers of Pennsylvania Dutch could think of a name for spanking. “They’d just say, ‘If so-and-so ever knew that you did that, we would be ashamed. You should have known better,’” said Gingrich.
Pennsylvania Dutch is also unusual because, unlike most minority languages, it’s not at risk of disappearing. That’s because, as the main language of Old Order and Conservative Mennonites, who often have large families, it’s faithfully passed on to the next generation, according to Mark Louden, author of “Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language.”
It’s not clear how many people locally still speak the language. A 1982 Record article estimated that at the end of the Second World War, as many as 50,000 people in Waterloo County and the adjacent parts of Oxford and Perth counties either spoke or understood the language. Del Gingrich of The Mennonite Story, the Mennonite information centre in St. Jacobs, offers a rough estimate that there may be 4,000 to 5,000 speakers in the region today.
Paul Martin said he and his wife were both fluent, but they always spoke English to each other. Bauman agreed. “We speak English at home, too, unless I just say a funny line in German once in a while.”
But her mother-in-law not only spoke it regularly, she thought in Pennsylvania Dutch, Bauman said. She recalls her mother-in-law scandalizing her son when she bought a birthday card for her six-year-old grandson. “It said “Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex all over the card,” and she had thought it was a perfect card for the lad, since “sex” is how to say the number “six” in Pennsylvania Dutch.
Although she no longer speaks the language regularly, Gingrich said she’s proud of her heritage, and said the values of her culture are deeply embedded: values like a strong work ethic, honesty and the importance of keeping one’s word.