[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.