Pennsylvania Dutch

1. What is Pennsylvania Dutch?

Pennsylvania Dutch — in the language itself Deitsch or Pennsilfaanisch — is a variety of Palatine German (Rhine Franconian) spoken by the Pennsylvania Dutch: the Amish, Mennonites, the so-called Fancy Dutch, and related communities in the United States and Canada. It has roughly 300,000 native speakers, and unusually for a North American heritage language it is growing, carried by high birth rates in Amish and Old Order Mennonite communities.¹

Despite the name, it is not Dutch: “Dutch” here is an old English usage tied to Deitsch (“German”), and the language of the Netherlands is only distantly related. Its speakers descend from late-17th- and 18th-century immigrants — mainly from southern Germany, especially the Palatinate, with smaller streams from Alsace and Lorraine.¹

Today most speakers live in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, with communities in Ontario and beyond. The language carries its own institutions — from Grundsau (groundhog) lodges in southeastern Pennsylvania to a growing body of print and broadcast material.¹

If you know any German, Pennsylvania Dutch will feel like a familiar cousin with an American accent; if you don't, treat it as a small European language with English as a friendly neighbor. Two centuries of contact mean everyday English words live comfortably inside Deitsch grammar:¹

Notice the pattern in kannscht (“you can”): the second person singular ends in -scht, a Palatine trait Pennsylvania Dutch shares with its European relatives.¹

Learning onward

Pennsylvania Dutch has an ISO code (pdc), a documented grammar and dictionary tradition, and — thanks to the Amish and Mennonite communities — a secure spoken future; UNESCO does not class it as endangered.¹ Later editions of this guide will add the vowel system, core vocabulary, and reading material.

Pennsylvania Dutch has no single official orthography. Writers follow one of two competing models: one spells the language using American English spelling habits, the other follows Standard German conventions (the influential Buffington–Barba system). The choice is purely graphic — it implies no difference in pronunciation.¹ You can see both side by side in the traditional Lord's Prayer text:

Reading tip: if you know German, start with German-based texts; if you don't, English-based spellings will feel more intuitive. Both write the same spoken language.¹

Pennsylvania Dutch keeps Standard German's three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) but runs on fewer cases: nouns distinguish only a common case (doing nominative and accusative duty) and a dative, while personal pronouns keep three cases (nominative, accusative, dative).¹ The old genitive is gone entirely — possession uses a dative-plus-possessive construction: 'the man's dog' is em Mann sei Hund, literally 'to-the man his dog'.¹

That dative itself is receding: studies of both sectarian and non-sectarian communities show the common case (for nouns) and accusative (for pronouns) taking over, and in one Iowa community (Kalona) speakers under 40 never used the dative at all, while older speakers varied. Whether the dative's decline reflects English influence or an internal development is a genuinely open research question.¹

The borrowing pattern you met at A1 runs deep: most English-origin verbs behave like German weak verbs, taking German endings and participles. The documented sample sentences show it in action — Ich bet, du kannscht Deitsch schwetze ('I bet you can speak PD') and Es dependt en wennig, waer du bischt ('it depends a little on who you are').¹ Borrowed nouns and verbs get folded into Deitsch phonology, as in tschaepp 'chap' and tschumbe 'to jump'.¹

Pennsylvania Dutch is the rare North American minority language on an upward curve: estimates run from 237,000 native speakers (2016–2020 American Community Survey) to 350,000 (2012), plus about 3,000 second-language speakers. Practically all Old Order Amish and horse-and-buggy Old Order Mennonites pass the language to their children, with no sign of that changing — the Old Order Amish alone numbered around 227,000 people by 2008.¹

Two documented exceptions sharpen the picture: among Virginia's Old Order Mennonites German had largely given way to English by the late 19th century, and some Amish communities (notably in Indiana) speak Bernese German or Low Alemannic Alsatian instead — so a visitor expecting Deitsch there hears Swiss German.¹

Outside the Anabaptist communities, a small institutional landscape carries the language: Kutztown University of Pennsylvania offers a complete minor in Pennsylvania German Studies including two full semesters of the dialect, a weekly radio program broadcasts in Deitsch, and many Lutheran and Reformed congregations in Pennsylvania still hold an annual service in the language.¹

Reading Deitsch today

There is more living print culture than most people expect: the newspaper Hiwwe wie Driwwe (founded 1997, online and in print) publishes around 100 active dialect authors;² the German publisher Edition Tintenfaß has printed Pennsylvania Dutch books since 2006; Wycliffe Bible Translators produced a Pennsylvania Dutch New Testament (with Psalms and Proverbs), and a dictionary (2013) and grammar (2014) by D. Miller use the same English-based orthography.¹ The European homeland of the language is Palatine German — especially the rural dialects around Mannheim and Ludwigshafen — which Deitsch speakers today can still partly converse with.¹

This guide grows iteratively: this edition (run 119) adds the sociolinguistics of the growing speaker community, its institutions (Kutztown, radio, church services) and a first exercise; later editions will add the vowel system, vocabulary lists with an SRS deck, and further CEFR sub-levels.