Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
American Language Supplement 2 (37 page)
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.
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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 Shekener
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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
.
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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 University, 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.
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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
Rhode Island belongs to what Hans Kurath
3
calls the Narragansett Bay speech-area, which also includes the adjoining counties of Connecticut and Bristol county, Massachusetts. “Here,” he says, “expressions are current that have not been encountered elsewhere in southern New England. Some of these are confined to small districts, others are known on both sides of the bay, and some have spread to Buzzard’s Bay, to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, to Cape Cod and to the New London area.” He lists a number of terms that are common to the whole area,
e.g., closet
or
kitchen-closet
, a pantry;
crib
, 2. corn-crib (
corn-house
and
corn-barn
are never used);
cade
, a pet lamb, and
apple-slump
, a deep-dish apple-pie, and others that are confined to parts of it,
e.g., tippetybounce
, a seesaw;
fryer
, a frying-pan;
horning
, a serenade;
shacket
, a hornet;
squin
, the livers and lights of a pig, and
eaceworm
, an earthworm. Some of these have extended beyond the bounds of Rhode Island, but they seem to have been carried by immigrants from the State. The rural Rhode Islanders, in pronouncing
aunt
, wobble between the Boston
ahnt
and the General American
ant
. They sound a clear
f
, not a
v
, in
nephew
. They use
how ah yuh?
as a salutation, with an occasional descent to
how be yuh?
They say
judge
, not
jedge
. They sometimes omit the first
r
in
secretary
, but they sound the vowel in the penultimate syllable. When they do not use
Negro
or
colored man
, which seems to be usually, they call an Aframerican a
niggah
, a
dahkey
or a
coon. Calm
and its analogues have the broad
a. Deaf
is usually
def
, not
deef. Jaundice
is never
janders
and
drowned
is seldom
drownded. Depot
for
railroad station
is still in use, though it seems to be fading.
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