[DiogenesKynikos]

> Louden points out, for example, that Swedish and Norwegian are highly mutually intelligible, but neither is considered a dialect of the other, or of a parent language, primarily because each is associated with a separate nation-state.

This reminds me of the famous saying, "A language is a dialect with an army and navy."

It was also originally uttered in a German-adjacent language, Yiddish: "a shprakh iz a dyalekt mit an armey un flot."

I wonder whether locals in the German Palatinate region can still understand Pennsylvania Dutch, given that it supposedly originates from their dialect.

[avyeed_desa]

We can understand them! Especially if you are ready and used being hit with interjected English words. It is hard to get used to it the first few minutes (i speak two other languages, language switching is always hard for me), but once you know what to look out for we could be talking interchangeably.

My teacher in high school went there over 40 years ago, and he said, he never had any trouble. Listening on youtube to some samples i still can, and it sounds just like older people from my village, which younger people often can't understand, especially as these older people tend to mumble and speak faster a lot. Pennsylvanian Dutch sound just like this.

Keep in mind though: The region Amish people came from, the Palatinate, was historically a highly fractured region with lots of mini-kingdoms and small administrative clusters. While mostly Protestant, there are villages solely catholic, which were often trying to not mingle with the next villagers. (even it there was a mix of Catholics, Protestant and Jews)

This is mirrored in highly fractured words that are often different from village to village, even if they are just 5 kilometers away. (e.g. the word for soap or apple is pronounced totally different in the next village). This lead to some secludedness and distance which is mirrored in the article and why i think Amish were trying to maintain their distance from the local english population (if you discount the religious component of that population)

Funny sidenote: The highest rate of foreign migrants into the palatinate region --- where the amish came from --- is now from US citizens [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Karte_Kr...]

[sReinwald]

I'm from a region bordering the palatinate region and I'll absolutely back you up on being able to understand them pretty well. There's an amish guy who sometimes pops up on my TikTok feed, and it's always fascinating to me how the language, while it has obviously drifted away over hundreds of years, is still fairly intelligible for me. The comparison to older people from your local village is pretty apt.

> Funny sidenote: The highest rate of foreign migrants into the palatinate region --- where the amish came from --- is now from US citizens

For anyone wondering whether this reflects some strange Amish return migration: almost certainly not. It’s overwhelmingly the result of the enormous US military presence around Ramstein, Landstuhl, and Kaiserslautern. It's also not exactly a recent development.

[eythana]

Hi, I’m the author. I’ve never met someone from the region so I haven’t been able to test this but I’d love to at some point. Thanks for sharing.

[avyeed_desa]

If you ever plan to visit this region for research, try to get to Kaiserslautern, less than an hour southwest of Frankfurt.

I don't know where exactly (which village) your ancestors started from here, but this will be the town where you will have no trouble getting started as everyone here is able to speak English and a lot of US citizens living here (due to the Ramstein AFB 5 minutes away).

And if you want to practice standard german, this will be the perfect middle ground to get to know dialect speakers who also are able to communicate in standard high german and are comfortable with english.

[quickthrowman]

Wow, aside from ‘shprakh’ that is easily understood as an English speaker.

‘Is a dialect with (an) army and flotilla/navy’

[DiogenesKynikos]

This is when you realize that English is a Germanic language.

"Shprakh" is from the same root as "speak," so the literal, word-for-word translation is, "A speak is a dialect with an army and flotilla."