VISITING
AUTHOR/EDITOR ARTICLE
APRIL
2010
Survey
Probes 1911 Law
Pennsylvania
German Program
Decline
of Pennsylvania German
Forwarded
by Eduard Grünwald
LEBANON - When William Unger of Annville was a youngster in the
late 1940s, he recalls getting slapped and having his knuckles rapped
with a ruler by a fifth-grade teacher for speaking Pennsylvania German.
In first grade in 1943, he got beat up by a fellow classmate because he
spoke Pennsylvania German, which was the only language spoken in his
home. "When someone got me angry, I didn't know how to chew them
out in English," he said.
Unger only began learning English the summer before he started
school from an older sister who had flunked first grade because of
speaking Pennsylvania German, which is commonly called Pennsylvania
Dutch. Those are the kind of stories that James Dibert, Alice Spayd and
others in the Pennsylvania German Studies Program at the Lebanon campus
of Harrisburg Area Community College have been hearing for years. They
want to try to document those, and try to find what effect they had on
the decline of the number of people speaking Pennsylvania German. Dibert
said one of the major factors in the language's decline is believed to
have been a 1911 state law that required only English to be used in the
public school.
"We know some superintendents pressured or encouraged the
teachers to basically, if anyone comes in speaking Pennsylvania German,
to use whatever means necessary to get them to speak English,"
Dibert said. "We don't know how widespread that was. That's one of
the things we're trying to figure out," he said, adding that some
schools may have been more lenient.
Pennsylvania German was brought here by people from the
Palatinate area of Germany from 1683-1776. An estimated 5 million people
in the U.S. still speak it, Dibert said, including the Amish and
descendants of these early settlers living in Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Illinois, Missouri and other states, and Canada. It is still spoken in
the Palatinate area of Germany.
The decline of Pennsylvania German in America began in the
mid-1800s with the industrial revolution, Dibert said. Workers had to
learn English to communicate. But even in the colonial period there was
an attempt by English speakers in Philadelphia to try to get Germans to
speak English, he said. Dibert said he's not sure why the law was passed
in 1911. There was a large amount of anti-German sentiment in World War
I, which aided in the language's decline.
Unger
said he believes anti-German sentiment during and after World War II
also played a factor in the attitude in schools regarding Pennsylvania
German. Dibert said they are spreading the word about the survey through
Pennsylvania German language study groups, groundhog lodges and
Pennsylvania German newsletters, and will collect them for at least a
year. The results will be
summarized in an article for the journal of the Pennsylvania German
Society, "Der Reggeboge," for possible publication.
Their goal is not to cast blame on those who may have discouraged
the language, Dibert said. "Our intent is two-fold: To what degree
did this influence the decline of the speaking of Pennsylvania German,
and how did it affect the people who went through it," he said.
"We're not trying to point fingers at anybody. We're trying to
understand what happened here and what was the impact of it,"
Dibert said.
"We do know, for at least a generation, often parents who
spoke stopped speaking it to their children. Whether there is a
connection between that and what was going on in the schools, we haven't
connected those dots yet,"
Dibert said.
Unger said he holds no ill will toward his teacher for the
punishment meted out, saying it was a different era.
The committee is also hoping to receive input from teachers who
dealt with Pennsylvania German speakers in their schools.
Date
of Original Article: December 28, 2006
BY
BARBARA MILLER
barbmiller@patriot-news.com
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