A way to reconnect
Berks County classes on Pennsylvania Dutch are taking off
Bradley Smith expected only a dozen or so people to sign up for his inaugural Pennsylvania Dutch class at the Berks History Center, so he was taken aback when he ended up with 40 students eager to learn a language known to most auslanders — outsiders — mainly through snippets on Amish country menus.
Most participants in the 2022 class were there because Pennsylvania Dutch, the variety of German so common in this part of the state from the late 1700s until well into the 20th century, was one of the languages of their childhood — the one that parents and grandparents spoke, especially when they didn’t want the children to know what they were saying.
Pennsylvania Dutch, of course, isn’t the kind of Dutch spoken in the Netherlands. The word is a corruption of Deutsch, the German word for the German language.
“For me, my grandparents spoke it,” said Dave Heilman, an Allentown native who is among the students in Smith’s weekly intermediate class. “It’s a very common tale that the grandparents spoke it, the parents spoke it less.”
Common, too, that parents who wanted their children to succeed in an increasingly assimilated culture didn’t pass the language along.
Pennsylvania Dutch, however, is hanging on, an evocative language markedly different from the standardized German of Germany, despite sharing words and grammatical elements.
“If I speak it with a German speaker, we can get by but it’s a struggle,” said Smith, the center’s archivist and assistant director, whose own Dutch roots are in Lebanon County.
It’s a mischievous language, prone to changes even over small geographic areas — some words and phrases differ even between Lehigh and Berks counties. Lancaster, Lebanon and Dauphin counties and other regions where Dutch took root developed their own quirks.
Proper Dutch, it seems, is defined by the one speaking it, just as a proper fastnacht — square? round? — is defined by the one cooking it.
This happens in English too, of course. It’s the nature of dialects.
“In Pittsburgh, you drink pop, not soda,” Smith pointed out.
The Dutch language program grew dramatically. At one point, Smith was juggling nine classes, so the center hired more teachers. Classes are held in person and online and 280 people have taken at least one, he said. They have ranged in age from 13 to almost 90.
It’s not just Pennsylvanians. The Dutch diaspora is broad, and the student body has included people from California and Massachusetts, among other distant spots.
Heilman learned about the program when he came across a YouTube video of one of the classes. He lives in Chester County, so he attends in person.
He’s found it to be much more than a way to learn the language.
“For me, it’s reconnecting with my roots and heritage,” he said, noting that his family line goes back to the first wave of German immigration in the 18th century.
The intermediate class has about 10 students. They have been learning vocabulary and conversational Dutch and are starting a deeper dive into grammar.
A visitor to a recent class was mostly at sea, not only because Smith uses as much Dutch as possible but because the lessons began to touch on dative and accusative cases and other such concepts confusing enough in English.
Listening, though, was a delight. Dutch is full of words to raise a smile: distelfink (the stylized goldfinch used in Dutch art); bobbli (baby); groossmammi (grandmother).
Sometimes, the phrases recited by the students sounded familiar enough to be decipherable even by an amateur: “Der Bu guckt fer der Beesballe.” The boy looks for the baseball.
The discussion took some side roads. Student Chris Witmer noted the textbook’s use of the word “hadye” for goodbye. He’d always known the word as adye. It was another example of a Dutch word differing even across a couple of counties.
Smith said adye appears to be the favored version in the southern tier of Dutch country, where his own roots lie. Another wrinkle: the etymology of the word is the French “adieu.”
The classes last eight weeks. Smith said students tend to develop a fellowship over that time, bonding especially over memories of family Dutch speakers.
“It’s more than a hobby,” he said. “It’s a way to connect to the loved ones they miss.”