Chapter V
§ 1 The English Infusion
Pennsylvania German has long been recognised as a dialect with certain English words, which are sometimes inflected in the German manner. Sportive examples were quoted in the last century, and one is occasionally cited as characteristic, which occurs in Joh. Dav. Schöpf’s Travels (1783-4) published at Erlangen, in 1788, and thus quoted by Radlof,29 but in German characters:—
“Mein Stallion ist über die Fehnsz getscheumpt, und hat dem Nachbor sein whiet abscheulich gedämatscht.” (My stallion jumped over the fence and horribly damaged my neighbor’s wheat.)
This example is probably spurious and a joke, because PG. ‘hengscht’ and ‘weetsǝ’ (instead of stallion and wheat) are in common use—for the Pennsylvania farmer uses German terms for introduced European objects, and if he calls rye ‘karn’ (G. korn), instead of roggen, this itself is a German name for what is in some localities regarded as corn by excellence. Another example of Schöpf has ‘geklaret land’ (cleared land), and ‘barghen’ (bargain), which are correct.
The German brings with him a vocabulary which is not quite adapted to the objects around him, and he improves his language by dropping such of his words as have an indefinite meaning, replacing them with terms which have an exact and scientific value, where High German is weak and indefinite—having failed to Latinise its vocabulary at the revival of learning. The Pennsylvanian uses ‘fenss’ or ‘fents’ (not “fehnsz”) for the English fence, because the German zaun is equally a hedge; he uses ‘flaur’ (or ‘flauer’ Eng. flour) as well as the German mehl, because the latter is equivalent to English meal; he seizes upon bargain as better than anything in his vernacular; and he restricts G. wagen (with the sound of ‘waghǝ’) to wagon, adopting a variation like “bändwagen” for a vehicle used by a musical band, using ‘kerritsch’ (“carriagemacher”) for the English carriage, altho ‘kutsch’ (G. kutsche) is also in use. He adopts English expressions for clearing land and speaks of a clearing (which he makes feminine) because the destruction of forests by chopping and burning is not a European practice. Railroads were probably built in America before they were in use in Germany, and in Pennsylvania, our English name was imitated in ‘reelroot’ (‘Plankenroad’ is in print) or, as in many other cases, the word was translated into “riegelweg.” At a later date the foreign name “eisenbahn” was brought in by later immigrants—and “riegel-bahn” is in use.