Such forms as nestes for nests, postes for posts, holp for help and effen for if may be heard in the ordinary speech.… The pupils in rural schools carry their lunch in a poke and sometimes tote their drinking water also. A pencil-sharpener is a pencil-trimmer, a library table is a stand-table. You all for you, hit for it are common expressions.… To feel dauncy is to feel dizzy, to jeppo means to cook for a crew of workmen.6 In the Spring the chillun roam the hills in search of wooly breeches for greens, or scour the woods for wood-fish, mushrooms. A gap is a gate, and cowbrutes are cattle.… A ferrididdle is a chipmunk, and a varmint may be any wild creature from a mouse to a cougar or bear.
Miss Hausen reports a number of borrowings from the argot of the cattlemen, e.g., pino, a pony; buckaroo, a rider of wild horses; to wrangle, to round up cattle, and bascal, a Spanish cowhand.1
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania, as a whole, belongs to the domain of General American, but its speech shows many peculiarities, not only in vocabulary and pronunciation but also in intonation, and in the Pennsylvania German area there is a dialect that has influenced not only the speech of the whole State, but also that of other States. The home territory of this dialect is coterminous with that of Pennsylvania German itself – a region described by Marcus Bachman Lambert as embracing 17,500 square miles, “or considerably more than twice the area of the State of Massachusetts.”2 Its base runs a little south of the Mason and Dixon line from the Delaware river to the longitude of Altoona and it extends northward to the vicinity of Williamsport on the west branch of the Susquehanna.3 Its influence upon the local English has been heavy in vocabulary, but even heavier in intonation and syntax.4 The early German settlers, when they began to acquire English, translated their native idioms, and in many cases those translations survive, and have been picked up by non-German natives, though not infrequently they do violence to accepted English usages, especially in the matter of prepositions. A familiar example is provided by the use of all in such phrases as “The soup is all (Ger. alle) – a form that, like smear case, has been carried by Pennsylvania German immigrants, as we have seen, to many other States. Another is to be found in the substitution of dare for may, as in “Dare I go out?,” which was obviously suggested by the German darf, of Somewhat similar sound. A third lies in the redundant use of once, as in “Come here once,” which parallels the German use of einmal. I take the following additional examples from Tucker and Kurath, from papers on the subject by William Prettyman,1 W. H. Allen,2 B. A. Heydrick,3 L. Sprague de Camp,4 E. K. Maxfield5 and Claude M. Newlin,6 and from reports by various correspondents:
Against, as in “These shoes look new against yours” (Ger. gegen).
Already, as in “I had algebra already in my freshman year” (Ger. schon).
Doppich. Awkward (Ger. täppisch).
Dress around, v. To change one’s attire (Ger. umkleiden).
Dress out, v. To undress (Ger. auskleiden).
Get, v., as in “We are getting company” (Ger. Wir bekormnen besuch) and to get awake (Ger. wach werden).
Grex, v. To complain (Ger. krächzen).
Have, v. Used in place of to be, as in “He has homesick” (Ger. Er hat heimweh).
It has, as in “It has fellows like me” (Ger. es gibt).
Leaven. Past tense of to leave, used in place of to let, as in “Why don’t you leaven him go?” (Ger. lassen).
Let, v., as in “I let the book lying on the table” (Ger. lassen).7
Need, v., used without the infinitive, as in “The wine needs cooled” (Ger. “Der wein gehört gekühlt”).
On, used in place of in or at, as in “He sings on the choir” (Ger. an), and “Paw’s on the table” (Ger. am).
Outen, v. To extinguish. Maybe influenced by the -en ending of German verbs.8
Should, used in place of is said, as in “He should have said that,” i.e., “He is said to have said that” (Ger. Er sollte gesagt haben”).
Spritz, v. To sprinkle or squirt (Ger. spritzen).
Struwwely. Unkempt, used of the hair (Ger. struwwel).
Till, used in place of by, by the time that, before, as in “I must get my shoes till Sunday” (Ger. bis).
Towards, used, like against, in place of in contrast to, in comparison with (Ger. gegen).
What for, as in “What for a man is he?” (Ger. was für).
Wonder, as in “It wonders me” (Ger. mich wundert).
Vet, used in place of too, as in “Do you want to be fanned yet?” (Ger. noch). Also used in place of still, as in “When we lived in the country yet.” Also as a general intensive, as in “And he’s a preacher yet” (Ger. doch).
In the predominantly German areas, radiating out from Lancaster and York, this list might be considerably prolonged, and there are signs of German influence almost everywhere in the State. The speech of Philadelphia, investigated by Tucker, is essentially a variety of General American, but it shows both German and Scotch-Irish traces. In it, he says,1 “final and preconsonantal r is rather generally pronounced, though not with so much emphasis as in upstate New York and the Middle West.” He goes on:
In initial wh the aspirate is lost, so that wheel is pronounced like weal, which like witch, where like wear, etc.… All the diphthongs and long vowels … tend to be overlong, [which] gives an effect of slow speech, of drawling, a little unusual in urban dialects.… There is an unusually strong tendency to omit a following unaccented vowel, so that mayor is pronounced mare.… Short o [as in God, dog] remains fairly short and is pronounced ah in most positions, but before f and ng, and before g, s and th [as in tooth] when final or followed by another consonant, also in the word on, it is prolonged, tense and rounded. The same sound appears in such words as awful, talk and thought. In oi, oy the first element is long and close: bo:i.… Long vowels are usually pronounced as diphthongs. These diphthongs are greatly exaggerated in Philadelphia. It is [the sound of o] in old, go, more than any other, that makes Philadelphia speech seem affected or sissified to other Americans.
Tucker notes only a few peculiarities of vocabulary, e.g., square for a city block, in the road for in the way, this after for this afternoon, spigot for faucet, to serve for to carry or deliver, well? for what? in asking for the repetition of a remark or question, and any more in the sense of now, as in “Mary goes to high-school any more.”2 He notes that some of the local terms are shared by New York City; he might have added Baltimore for others, e.g., square and spigot. Rejecting the usual assumption that any more shows German influence, he suggests that it may have a Welsh source. Also, he points out importations from the Southern Piedmont. “Rather odd,” he says, “is the intonation in short sentences beginning with yes and no, where there is a rising and falling pitch accent, in addition to special stress, on the last word: ‘Yes it îs,’ ‘No we hâven’t.’ ” This Philadelphia dialect extends into the three adjoining Pennsylvania counties, into northern Delaware (including Wilmington), and into New Jersey (including the shore resorts from Cape May to Atlantic City).
The speech of southwestern Pennsylvania, below the Allegheny river, has been studied by Maxfield.1 This region was once a part of Virginia, and traces of Southern influence are still visible in its dialect. There is also a considerable sediment of German expressions. But the Scotch-Irish influence is predominant. The local speech-tune “is characterized by odd curves of pitch and tone, a question, for example, rising when one would expect it to fall, and descending at the most unexpected places.” Maxfield lists a number of words and phrases that do not seem to be recorded elsewhere, e.g., huthering, a state of disorder; all-day, a sewing party lasting all day; pine-tree, any evergreen, and to lend, to borrow. To neb, to be inquisitive, and to sleep in, to sleep late, are also recorded for West Virginia, but whether they were taken there from Pennsylvania or vice versa is not known. To want out and to want in are in common use. The head of a family is the mister. The Appalachian poke, a small bag, is heard frequently. Can is used as an auxiliary, as in “I don’t think I w
ill can.” So is get, as in “I didn’t get to go.” On is used in the dative, as in “His wife died on him” and “I wear white shoes on my baby,” but is sometimes displaced by for, as in “The cow died for me,” meaning “I lost my cow.” The dialect of this region in pioneer days has been studied by Newlin,1 using certain writings of the Whiskey Rebellion era, 1793–94, as material. His conclusion is that “at least four widely different types of English” were then spoken there – “Scottish English, Irish English, backwoods English and standard English.”
De Camp, in reporting on the dialect of Scranton,2 says that it should be “classed as a kind of General American,” but that it has “distinctive features.” He finds that the r following the e of yet, as in very, is clearly pronounced, that the vowel in such words as ask, last and afternoon “appears to be identical with that in cat,” that the u in new, tube, due, assume, blue, etc., seldom shows a preceding y-sound, and that the two sounds of th are often changed to t and and d. Allen’s material came from the Reading region and Heydricks’s from Adams, York, Lancaster, Lebanon and Schuylkill counties, all within the Pennsylvania German Sprachgebiet. Allen reported the peculiar intonation before noticed: “the voice,” he said, “is raised at the beginning of a question and lowered at the end.”3 He went on:
Questions frequently contain an ain’t: “It’s a nice day, ain’t?,” “You’ll do that, ain’t you will?,” “He’s been a long time gone, ain’t he has?.” If one asks, “Have you any good apples?” the answer is “I do.” “Don’t you think?” with a falling inflection is often added to questions.… A sort of genitive of time is found in “She came Saturdays and left Mondays.” In each instance this means one particular day.… Many words and constructions are obviously of German origin. That equals so that, as in “We like our mince-pie piping hot that it steams.” … To look means to be fitting, as in “It doesn’t look for two girls to go there alone.” … You can give a person right and give him goodbye.
Allen listed a number of German loans in common use, e.g., tut, a paper bag (Ger. tüte); verdrübt, sad; freinschaft, relationship (Ger. freundschaft); glick, to come out right (Ger. glück, luck); hivvely, rough (Ger. hübelich, knobby); rutschi, a sliding-place (Ger. rutschen, to rush); siffer, a drunkard (Ger. säufer), and schussle, a clumsy person (Ger. schussel). Heydrick added butter-bread (Ger. butter-brot), saddy, thank you (probably from Ger. sag dank), and to stick, as in “Stick the light out” (Ger. ausstecken). Prettyman in his study of the dialect of Carlisle, eighteen miles west of Harrisburg, found plenty of evidences of Scotch-Irish influence, along with many Germanisms. He argued that the frequent local use of still, as in “Don’t yell: I heard you still,” shows the former. He ascribed the use of to flit, to move, and flitting, household effects going from one house to another, to the same source, and likewise strange in the sense of bashful. But he concluded that on the attic was suggested by the German auf dem boden. The use of that in place of it, as in “That’s a cold day today,” puzzled him, for he found that the German das was not so used in Pennsylvania German. He ascribed “the frequent use of the present tense instead of the perfect to denote an action begun in the past but continued in the present, e.g., ‘I have had only one since I am here’ ” to “the well-known German use of the present instead of the English perfect.” He concluded:
We have found a few survivals of obsolete or obsolescent English due to the influence of the Scotch-Irish, but it must be remembered that the persistence of some of these was traceable to the influence of similar German words. The vast majority of all the deviations from the English norm are directly traceable to the influence of the Germans, who, since the latter part of the Eighteenth Century, formed a considerable part of the population.
The most extensive vocabulary of Pennsylvania local terms is to be found in a pamphlet by Henry W. Shoemaker, first published in 1925.1 It deals with the speech of the central mountain region, above the upper border of the Pennsylvania German area. The words and phrases listed, says the author, “are mostly of English origin: a few of them were familiar in Chaucer’s day; more in Shakespeare’s. Next in number are Gaelic roots, brought into Ireland by Highlanders who settled there after the Battle of the Boyne, or real Erse from the Irish Indian fighters of Revolutionary days. Other words are of German, Dutch, French or Shekener2 beginnings, while a few hearken back to times of aboriginal associations and intermarriages with the whites.” Shoemaker includes many terms from the days of the canal-boatmen and lumbermen and even from the Revolutionary era; most of them are now obsolete, and others still in use seem likely to follow them “as good roads, automobiles, picture shows and radios standardize the mountain people.” His vocabulary seems to be predominantly Scotch-Irish, e.g., baachie, nasty, filthy (Sc. baach, disagreeable to the taste); boal, a cupboard in a wall; comb, the crest of a mountain; cot-betty, a man fond of women’s work; bubbly-jock, a turkey-gobbler; cooser, a stallion; fey, doomed to death or calamity, and usquebaugh, home-made whiskey, but there are many signs of German influence, e.g., bubeliks, an endearing term for a baby (Penn. Ger. bubli, a small boy); dudelsock, a homemade bagpipe (Ger. dudelsack); hex, a witch; geik, a home-made fiddle (Ger. geige); heaven’s letter, a written charm (Ger. himmelsbrief); lusty, cheerful, agreeable (Ger. lustig); nochtogal, whip-poorwill (Ger. nachtigall), rokenbrod, coarse black bread (Ger. roggenbrot, rye-bread); meyer, an ant (Ger. ameise); upstuck, proud, aristocratic, and wamus, a jacket. There are also some loans from the Dutch, e.g., kloof, a gap in the mountains and vrow, a wife; from the French, e.g., lupe, a wolf, and from the language of the Pennsylvania German gipsies, e.g., mukkus, a dull, stupid person (Gipsy mukka, a bear).
Many words seem to have been borrowed from the New Englanders who settled the northern tier of Pennsylvania counties, e.g., buttery, pantry; jag, a load of hay or wood, and vendue, an auction sale, and others were either brought in from Appalachia or (perhaps more probably) exported to Appalachia, e.g., dulcimer, groundhog and poke.1 Shoemaker says that Hog Dutch, meaning speakers of High German as distinguished from Pennsylvania German, is from Ger. Hochdeutsch, but it may be pejorative. Pennsylvania German influence appears in a number of the terms having to do with witchcraft, e.g., bonnarings, stars and circles painted on barns to ward off ill fortune, and black book, the reputed Seventh Book of Moses. Two terms that may be indigenous are Blackthorn Winter, a late Spring snow after the thorn-trees are in bloom, and Pigeon Snow, a similar snow after the arrival of the wild pigeons: this last survives despite the fact that wild pigeons are now no more. Other words that do not seem to have been reported from other regions are aethecite, a mean, eccentric person (atheist?); afterclap, a child born long after its siblings; to algerine, to cut timber on another’s land; to arsle, to sit unquietly; blackie, a small iron cooking-pot; bull-driver, a farmer from the back country; botty, a girl’s backside; cats’-heads, women’s breasts; clipe, a blow with a club; cat’s water, gin; codster, a stallion; cooster, a worn-out libertine; comb, the crest of a mountain ridge; castor-cat, the beaver; cooner, a cute little boy; to float, to produce a miscarriage; gow, a gelding; goose-cap, a wayward girl; goose-ground, a common or market-place; hog pig, a castrated hog; hawps, a tall, awkward girl; jit, a bastard; kadifter, a blow on the head; major-general, a large, masculine woman; pot-headed, stupid; to stamp, to loaf on the boss’s time; sickener, a tedious story; spread, a woman’s shawl, Summer-side, the north side of a valley, and tokens, a girl’s garters. Shoemaker reports that a noisy serenade to a bridal couple is called both a callathumpian and a belling – another indication of the mixed speech influences in the area. He also reports dauncy, unwell, which is mainly Appalachian, but has also been found in Maine, California and Oregon.
Kurath, in “German Relics in Pennsylvania,” before cited, bases his study, which is mainly confined to the Pennsylvania German area, upon the materials collected by the late Guy S. Lowman, Jr., and upon investigations by Lester Seifert and Carroll Reed “for their doctoral dissertations at Brown Universit
y, 1942.” He says that the most conspicuous German loans are “words for certain food stuffs and dishes, calls to domestic animals, terms for farm implements and parts of vehicles, names of insects and small animals, terms of endearment,… and [words for] parts of the house and the farm buildings.” Among the cooking terms he lists thick-milk, curdled sour milk (Ger. dickemilch); ponhaws or ponhoss, scrapple (Ger. pfannhase); fat-cake, doughnut (Ger. fettkuchen), and fossnocks, also doughnut (Ger. fastnacht). The calls to animals include vootsie, to pigs; hommie, to calves, and bee, to chickens. The farm terms include over-den, a loft (Ger. obertenne); saddle-horse, near-horse (Ger. sattelgaul); saw-buck and wood-buck, saw-horse (Ger. sägebock and holzbock), and shilshite, swingle-tree (Ger. silscheit). Says Kurath:
As one looks over the types of German or Germanized expressions that have survived in the English of Pennsylvania one is struck by the fact that they fall within the same range of meanings for which American English has widely retained local and regional terms. The conditions supporting the preservation of such terms, whether they are of English or foreign origin, are the same everywhere: everyday use in the home without countervailing influence of the school and the printed word.
During the Eighteenth Century German was more spoken in large parts of Pennsylvania than English, and in 1753 Benjamin Franklin voiced a fear that it might oust English altogether.1 The white bond-servants of British origin had to learn it, and so did the Negro slaves.2 Its lingering effects upon the English pronunciation of a century ago have been studied by Sara Gehman in the diary of an American-born Pennsylvania boy who began writing in German in 1826 and continued in English in 1832.3 The fact that in Pennsylvania German b was a voiceless consonant very close to p gave him difficulty when he essayed to write English, and his book was full of such spellings as pring (bring), petwene (between) and py (by). In the other direction he wrote broduck, biece and berson. He also confused d and t, as in pount (pound), remainter, hundret and United Staids.4 Wh and th baffled him sorely, and he wrote wit, wealberow and mesot (method). In 1871 his son continued the diary, but without showing a much better grasp of English phonology, for he wrote grintstown (grindstone), kitel, blough (plow) and swinkeltree, and imitated his father’s wealberow. John Russell Bartlett, writing in 1859,5 predicted that the German influence upon Pennsylvania English would last a long while. The German spoken in the State, he said, was “already much corrupted” and he believed that “in the course of time it must give way to English,” but he thought it would “leave behind it an almost imperishable dialect as a memento of its existence.” “It is a curious fact,” said Kurath in 1943,1 “that no one has recognized to this day the extensive contributions of Pennsylvania German to English. Our vague linguistic notions are obviously derived from our political history of the Nineteenth Century, which was dominated by the conflict between the North and the South.”2
American Language Supplement 2 Page 26
