[panative]

Hasidim go to school in Yiddish for up to 12 hours a day through 12 grade and their secular and English education ends in 8th grade and is afterward taught exclusively in Yiddish with a side of Hebrew. After 12th grade many men continue to study Torah and Talmud all day for many years with rabbis doing so all their lives. The Talmud is in Aramaic and Hebrew but instruction, conversation and writing about it is conducted in Yiddish rather than English. Yiddish has orthographies in both the standard Hebrew script where it has a vast literature and is intelligibly romanized in Latin script with good concordance.

By contrast Pennsylvania German has never even had a standard orthography much less a literature. In the past fancy Dutch would read and write in Hochdeutsch (the standard literary German, for their times). Old order Amish education is exclusively in English and they are taught to read and write only in English except for reading the German Luther bible for church (as well as they can; typically most do better with the English side in the King James) and singing the Ausbund in German. Education ends altogether in 8th grade. Days are consumed with farmwork or trade work, chores, family life. Other than the Bible and the Ausbund (which is just a songbook) their religious texts are in English. There are some well-regarded old order Amish authors and journalist's who write books and periodicals in English. Many publications used by the Amish aren’t written by old order Amish but other Amish, Mennonites, and others.

In short there is no opening whatsoever for Pennsylvania German to become a written living literary language. There is a translation of the Bible into Deitsch done by outsiders that pretty much no one asked for and no one uses.

[skissane]

> In short there is no opening whatsoever for Pennsylvania German to become a written living literary language.

I wasn’t talking about it becoming a “literary” language

Consider this website - https://www.ujcbg.org/ - it is in Yiddish, but there is nothing “literary” about it, it is simply a news source for the Hasidic community of South Blooming Grove (village next door to Kiryas Joel). It contains articles on topics such as Sabbath rules for property developers and the volunteer fire department.

There’s no great barrier to Amish people using Deitsch for those kinds of purely practical communication purposes. It doesn’t require any advanced education or a standardised orthography. Historically speaking, a “standardised orthography” is something most languages didn’t have (prior to the influence of the printing press/etc)

A starting point could be as simple as one of the English language Amish newspapers deciding to include a section in Deitsch

[eythana]

I'm the author of the article. I also disagree there's "no opening" for it to become written. "literary" is indeed maybe a step further than I'm looking right now, but I'm involved in efforts to spread the word about the standard orthographies that do exist but have just been siloed in random dusty academic places. Just because there hasn't been extensive writing so far does not mean it can't happen. It may be difficult and I don't have my hopes up that it will be ubiquitous or fast, but I think change is certainly possible here.