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Our Amish Language

thedial.world

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Re: Our Amish Language

#51

Post by avyeed_desa »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #49

> 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…

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...]

Re: Our Amish Language

#52

Post by avyeed_desa »

swongel wrote: post #40
panative wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’…

From the article; > 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…

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.

Re: Our Amish Language

#53

Post by em-bee »

unkeen wrote: post #3
schoen wrote: post #2

I asked an LLM to help me find the standard German equivalent for "hooche Leit", and it said "hohe Leute" 'high people' (here in the sense of 'fancy people'), which of course doesn't have the same connotation, but that's the etymological sense.

That would be "Höhergestellte" nowadays.

"höhergestellte" are "superiors". "hohe leute" is more like "upper class people"

Re: Our Amish Language

#54

Post by cpburns2009 »

krapp wrote: post #41
williamdclt wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to gemini, "Total Fertility Rate" ("average number of children a woman would have over her lifetime if she experienced the current age-specific fertility rates of her society"). This HN thing of casually using acronyms without defining them is baffling to me

>This HN thing of casually using acronyms without defining them is baffling to me You have a whole internet at your fingertips with which to look up terms you don't understand without diluting the thread, but if you need at all to do that you should consider that you might not have anything relevant to add to the conversation to begin with. Hacker News is supposed to be a forum of educated professionals and domain ex…

The problem with looking up acronyms is it's usually from a domain you're unfamiliar with, so you don't know which definition to pick from.

Re: Our Amish Language

#55

Post by watwut »

krapp wrote: post #45
watwut wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One must be really deep in some fertility obsessed subculture to think that TFR acronym should be instantly recognized when placed in tech forum discussion about minority language. Otherwise said, using full expression is not "diluting the thread".

Asking pointless questions that can be answered with a simple Google search and complaining about other people's use of language do dilute the thread. It's explicitly in the guidelines that we don't complain about voting because it "makes for boring reading." Complaining about acronyms has the same effect.

Having to google obscure acronyms and having to guess which interpretation author meant makes for super boring reading.

It is way better when you see a question and answer just below. And bonus point, question and answer teaches others to not use all acronyms they learned in all the random subcultures.

Re: Our Amish Language

#56

Post by dang »

skissane wrote: post #50
williamdclt wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to gemini, "Total Fertility Rate" ("average number of children a woman would have over her lifetime if she experienced the current age-specific fertility rates of her society"). This HN thing of casually using acronyms without defining them is baffling to me

> This HN thing of casually using acronyms without defining them is baffling to me It's called, I forgot. Next time I will try to remember.

I've taken the liberty of adding a macroexpansion to your post above, and detaching this off topic subthread. I hpoe that's ok!

Re: Our Amish Language

#58

Post by orangelimesoda »

beacon294 wrote: post #48
trollbridge wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

It's completely plausible the author's experience is a valid projection of the people they were surrounded by and also valid.

"anecdote" is the word you are looking for - which means based only on personal stories and not systematic research.

Re: Our Amish Language

#59

Post by skissane »

dang wrote: post #56
skissane wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This HN thing of casually using acronyms without defining them is baffling to me It's called, I forgot. Next time I will try to remember.

I've taken the liberty of adding a macroexpansion to your post above, and detaching this off topic subthread. I hpoe that's ok!

Thank you

Re: Our Amish Language

#60

Post by moomoo11 »

kzrdude wrote: post #32

I didn't know that Amish thought so lowly of their own language, I think that's just sad. It's their own language and there's no reason to measure it against others.

these are amish in a state with low amish presence and super liberal.

in the ohio/penn area there are tons of amish who are thriving.

i think its cool that in america people can do their own thing and make it work.

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