[panative]

I don’t know what you are nitpicking and we don’t have the prompt or output, but from first-hand knowledge that was basically correct.

“hooche Leit” is PA dialect for standard German “hohe Leute,” literally “high people” in the sense of “fancy” people as opposed to plain people, as there used to be “plain Dutch” and “fancy Dutch” to refer to plain (Anabaptist) Pennsylvania Germans as opposed to other (now basically assimilated) German people in Pennsylvania. Commonly what her community and many other Deitsch-speaking communities call “hooche Leit” in Deitsch, they will often simply call “English” in English. From her description that’s probably fallen mostly out of use in her Libby community given their religious abandonment of the Ordnung.

[lproven]

> the Ordnung

What does that mean?

(This entire thread is very hard for this Brit to follow. So many unknown words and whole concepts.)

[pantalaimon]

the Order, as in community sharing/following a set of rules

[panative]

As in understand it, the Ordnung are the rules themselves, but the rules are what create the community. They aren’t written down but they are collectively decided and determined and known within an individual district. Districts normally split due to growth rather than disagreements about the Ordnung but both can happen, and the Ordnung can develop differently from one district to another. An individual or family openly rejecting some aspect of the Ordnung can result in shunning/excommunication (though the intent is supposed to be for them to come back fully to the community, doesn’t have to be permanent, and it doesn’t always mean they are completely estranged).

[lproven]

Thank you!

[eythana]

Hi! I'm Eythana, the author. We do also use "English" very often to describe non-Amish people. They're used interchangeably. I wanted to include it but my editors preferred to stick with one term to keep things simpler.