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Pennsylvania Dutch

The Story of an American Language

Bibliographic Data

ID4867599
AuthorsK Burridge (0000-0002-2349-5160, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume104
Issue1
Pages171-172
Publication date2017-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jahist/jax021
OpenAlexW2653194365
LanguageEN
Citations received5

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization has identified language survival as a high priority. According to some estimates, the linguistic monopolies created by the expansion of English and other national languages will see more than half of the world's roughly seven thousand languages disappear this century—some predictions are as grim as 90 percent. And yet, Pennsylvania Dutch is alive and well, holding its own against English, one of the greatest linguistic bulldozers of all time. The story of this language must be told, and there is no better person to tell it than Mark L. Louden—a specialist in Germanic linguistics and fluent speaker of the language with many years experience in the speech community. Drawing on historical, anthropological, sociological, and linguistic scholarship, he helps readers navigate the complex maze of groups that make up the population of Pennsylvania Dutch speakers. As Louden documents, the language is most robustly maintained by the Amish and Mennonite sectarians. Basically, competence in Pennsylvania Dutch accords with the degree of religious conservatism—where the language-culture-religion network is tight, the language continues to flourish, even within those groups where some modernization has taken place

Conservatism · Linguistic competence · Linguistics · Modernization theory · Political science · Population · Scholarship · Sociology · Demography · Gender Studies in Language · History · Law · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy

  • Grammatical Innovations in German in Multilingual Namibia

    Open Access•Sheena Shah, Christian Zimmer•Journal of Germanic Linguistics•2023

  • Mr reda kà richtiges Dietsch1—“Bad language”

    Open Access•Karen Rösch•Yearbook of German-American Studies•2022

  • The Pennsylvania English Final Rise-Fall

    Open Access•Frances Blanchette, Johan Alberto De La Rosa Yacomelo et al.•Journal of English Linguistics•2025

  • Handbook of Leaving Religion

    Open Access•Clemens Cavallin, Monica Lindberg Falk et al.•Handbook of Leaving Religion•2019

  • Amish fertility in the United States

    Open Access•Lyman Stone, Cory Anderson et al.•Demographic Research•2025

Unique citing works5
Citations per year0,71
Citation span2019 - 2025 (7)
Citation velocityrecent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 5

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