That stuck out to me because it’s absolutely untrue. Deitsch/Pennsylvania Dutch has “liiwe/liwe/liewe” (there is no standard written orthography for the language) which is precisely “lieben” in standard German. The author absolutely knows this despite her implicit claim that it’s a loanword rather than part of the vocabulary (which it absolutely is, even if her community is sparing in how they use it in Deitsch).
It’s certainly true that Amish much less the small and peculiar Libby community (which isn’t representative of wider Amish culture although part of it) have different ways of expressing feelings just as Germans are different from Americans and have very different ways of relating.
Bear in mind that she went from a remote group of emergent Amish to UC Berkeley, she is a fairly young writer and obviously still processing her background.
> The contours of Pennsylvania Dutch words are harder and sharper than English ones. It’s hard to ask for a soft favor. Difficult to communicate affection, impossible to say the word love. We have no distinct word for it. One must use the standard German liebe, obtuse and antiquated in our mouths, or succumb to English, a concession. It is a tongue of commands and directives, probing questions about family relations, occupation in the most literal sense, and of following rules.
It might then have been more correct to specify that in the author's regional dialect this is the case but not in Deitsch generally.
To me as a native dutch speaker and a non-native Platt (Dutch Low German) and Frisian speaker it leaves me with a couple of questions:
If liiwe/liwe/liewe is used in at least some variants of Deitsch; does it's meaning (originally) als mean to convey interpersonal affection?
Is liwwe/liwe/liewe still used in the infinitive or even as a noun?
As you pointed out it is not common to express feelings so explicitly in the culture/language; so does liiwe/liwe/liewe still have the meaning of showing affection if there was no use for it or did it (re)gain the meaning of the word later on?
If some dialects of Deitsch lose some of the gramatical forms of the word liwwe/liwe/liewe or completely stop using is, would it not make sense to use the SHG or English words in it's stead to signify a non-native meaning?
I know only palatinate concept of "lieben" (that i would pronounce it "liewe") and the only distinction i can think off is the same problem chinese learners have with 爱 and 喜欢[https://mandarinbean.com/ai-xihuan/].
It is hard to describe, but I share the same feelings of the author when it comes to expressing love, affection or sadness. It's strange and hard to describe, even though we also use the SHG "lieben", but it still doesn't feel right if we are trying to speak in "Pfälzisch" about it.
Not only that, but it's odd, and it looks like they took and maintained the same sentiments we had 150 years ago and still use and share today.
Oh, that's interesting. The same thing happens in Spanish, where "amar" is used exclusively for romantic relationships, while "querer" is used for everything else (e.g. the love between family members, between an owner and his pet, etc.), and "encantar" is used for intense liking of things and activities ("me encantan los mariscos" -> "I love shellfish").
I wonder if there's an equivalent for 喜欢 in Japanese.
The general sense of “liking” something is usually 好き (suki) in Japanese, AFAIK. Depending on the context (romantic, etc.), “love” could be 愛, 恋愛, 大好き, and probably others.
I've often read on church in Flander "onze lieve vrouw", but I had read that there is no word in Dutch for love. Instead, one would say "ik hou van jouw" which I translate as "I'm attached to you". Could it be in Pennsylvania Dutch a similar situation, due to some lineage between the languages?
Pennsylvania German/Deitsch comes from Pfälzisch and as spoken by plain people mostly branched off in the 18th and 19th centuries but influence from other German speakers and especially English didn’t stop in time then.
It is much closer to standard German than any dialect of Dutch. Amish read the Luther Bible (mostly 1912 edition these days) in German and sing the Ausbund in German but don’t otherwise use “Hochdeutsch” in everyday life, and they exclusively use English for reading and writing outside of church.
It’s also very important not to confuse the Amish and their language from other plain Mennonites and Anabaptists who speak Plautdietsch which is a completely different low German language and not intelligible with Pennsylvania German or standard German at all. Many of them came from Germanic peoples who were settled in Poland, Ukraine, Russia etc.
There is a word for "love" in dutch; it's the noun "liefde" (of which lieve is an adjective).
However you cannot use "liefde" as a verb, hence my question if this is the case in Deitsch as they are related languages within the Germanic language family.
Usually in dutch we use
"houden van" -> To hold (dearly).
But with our grammar the word "houden" may also literally mean to hold. "Ik hou een hamer vast (in mijn hand)." -> "I hold a hammer (fastened in my hand)".
In dutch this is considered a different word though, as vast + houden even when written apart in a sentence is considered a compound verb vasthouden.
(Like how babysitting in English is not the same verb as sitting).
In German you use the word Lieben as a verb and a noun, so in German you can say Ich liebe dich (I love you) but also like a noun "Die Liebe" (lit: the love)
In Dutch you cannot say: Ik liefde jou, in the same way in English you cannot say: I feelings you.
But you can if use the word Liefde as a noun or adjective to make it something like:
- Mijn liefde is alleen voor jou. (lit: My love is only for you). (romantic)
- Jij bent mijn ware liefde (lit: You are my true love). (romantic)
- Mijn lieve vriend (lit: My lovely friend) (platonic or romantic)
- Onze lieve vrouw (lit: Our lovely lady) (exclusively used in reference to Maria AFAIK)
- Dat was lief van hem (lit: That was lovely of him). (platonic)
In contemporary Dutch, people use a lot of code switching with English words, so you could hear someone say "love you" romantically, or even just the word "love" mixed in dutch like this:
- Love you, schat (I love you honey) (lit: Love you, treasure)
- Ik ben in love (I am in love)
Language purist and language prescriptive Dutch teachers do not like this and would not consider it to be correct dutch. (Which personally I think is absolutely hilarious, as dutch to me is very much a "bastard language" and the notion that we should cling prescriptively to the current version of our language as some sort of canonical form is absurd).
But that's also why I was wondering if _that_ is why the author in the original article was using Liebe instead of Liewe, as code switching with a cognate might allow the loanword to be used as a "verb" while the original word cannot be as it is in contemporary dutch with Liefde/Love. (And I doubt the author would not be aware that Liebe could become something like Liewe in Deitsch as the B in standard high German words when near the end of a word often shifts in dialects and related languages).
I’m Eythana, the author. That German loanword isn’t used at all, I could say virtually to be safe, but it’s really not used anywhere among the Amish. No one in my community ever did, and the same goes for communities in Ohio where I have many relatives. But besides my anecdotes, Rose Fisher, a linguist at Michigan State who works on the language, has validated this claim, and so has Mark Louden, the foremost PD historian, who I quote extensively. They both reviewed the piece. I could believe that a century or two ago, it was in usage, perhaps, but it isn’t anymore. To say we have no “distinct” word isn’t an exaggeration. We have to borrow directly from German or English as no one uses the loanword version. I’m open to seeing evidence to the contrary. I should say it’s possible that non-sectarian (non-Amish or otherwise historically religious) speakers of PD, of which there aren’t many anymore, may use that? If so, I could have clarified with a caveat, but since the Amish are the primary speakers of PD today, and where my experience comes, it wasn’t something I broached. And also, there was an editorial decision about not discussing non-sectarians in general for the same reasons.
Don't you use the word in expressions like "ihr liewe Leit" (we usually use it as an expression of astonishment, seldomly to address a group of people) or "es lieb Mädsche" (the /nice/lovley girl)?
It certainly doesn't say that there is any less love among members of that community.
It would be more correct to say that there is no direct translation for the English word "love". Lots of languages fall in that category. Languages are complicated.
As one of the commentators above mentioned: This might be the literal translation, but the dialect and especially the people from the region this came from don't really use it this way. The "Pfälzische Wörterbuch" (Which also includes some Pennsylvanian Dutch words) has an entry for "lieben" [https://woerterbuchnetz.de/?sigle=PfWB&lemid=L01838], but also notes in the first sentence that it is not used generally.
The love concept for people from the Pfalz is expressed differently for this dialect specially. We would say "ich hann dich gern" or "ich hann dich lieb", but never "ich lieb dich".
There is even an informal joke from my area, that we are incapable of expressing this feeling properly. Given that most Amish are from here, i can understand what she is referring to, but it seems misplaced for the article specially.
This is flatly untrue; the language has a word for love, or people just use the High German or English term for it, along with colloquial expressions (like calling someone sweet).
A statement like this makes the author lose all credibility:
Neither our language nor our culture invites dwelling in the complexities of grief and loss.
The language certainly can express grief and loss, and people from that culture seem to have no trouble at all in conversations I’ve had with them about such topics. When someone is ill, they conduct fundraisers (I participated in one once, which meant going door to door selling frozen pizzas and then talking to each person with tidbits about the situation), meals are arranged / delivered… if there’s a funeral it goes on for days, many people show up.
This is a common attitude I’ve seen, though, of people who leave the culture / language - a certain type of sneering contempt for how uneducated and culturally poor the group they left is: “Their language is so poor they can’t say the word love or express grief or loss.” It is interesting she claims to want to try to “preserve the language” whilst having a very poor understanding of it.
I’m Eythana, the article’s author. I’ve made no claims about this group being uneducated or unable to express themselves in general. There are certain limitations in the scope of the language’s vocabulary, which you would know if you spoke it. No one who’s familiar will deny this. This doesn’t mean they are unable to talk about certain topics, but when using Pennsylvania Dutch, it is simply the case that one must use more English words, choose from a much smaller pool of descriptors, or perhaps skim over it or avoid the subject altogether. All of these happen frequently.
I have no contempt for the culture or language as you stated, but I do find it unfortunate when I see vocabulary being disregarded as speakers continued to use more English in the midst of Pennsylvania Dutch, which I described. This is a very well documented phenomenon and my bringing it up is completely neutral. If anything, I champion the use of PD as much as possible while many Amish people I know and encounter are less interested in that.
If you have any actual evidence to contradict my these points besides your impression from a few conversations (assumably in English), I’d be happy to see it.
And 0% of human systematic research considers "anecdotal" of any value at all lol. What is your overall point? That personal experiences you had are more important than rigorous scientific research? Lol
It’s certainly true that Amish much less the small and peculiar Libby community (which isn’t representative of wider Amish culture although part of it) have different ways of expressing feelings just as Germans are different from Americans and have very different ways of relating.
Bear in mind that she went from a remote group of emergent Amish to UC Berkeley, she is a fairly young writer and obviously still processing her background.