Pennsylvania Dutch language

Pennsylvania Dutch (Deitsch, Pennsilfaanisch-Deitsch^ⓘ or Pennsilfaanisch) or Pennsylvania German is a variety of Palatine German spoken by the Pennsylvania Dutch, including the Amish, Mennonites, Fancy Dutch, and other related groups in the United States and Canada. There are approximately 300,000 native speakers of Pennsylvania Dutch in the United States and Canada.

The language traditionally has been spoken by the Pennsylvania Dutch, who are descendants of late 17th- and early to late 18th-century immigrants to Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina, who arrived primarily from southern Germany and, to a lesser degree, the regions of Alsace and Lorraine in eastern France, and parts of Switzerland.

Differing explanations exist on why the Pennsylvania Dutch are referred to as Dutch, which typically refers to the inhabitants of the Netherlands or the Dutch language, only distantly related to Pennsylvania German.

Speakers of the dialect today are primarily found in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and other Midwestern states, as well as parts of the southern United States such as in Kentucky and Tennessee, and in Ontario in Canada. The dialect historically was also spoken in other regions where its use has largely or entirely faded. The practice of Pennsylvania Dutch as a street language in urban areas of Pennsylvania, including Allentown, Reading, Lancaster, and York, was declining by the beginning of the 20th century. But in more rural Pennsylvania areas, it continued in widespread use until World War II. Since that time, its use in Pennsylvania rural areas has greatly declined. It is best preserved in the Old Order Amish and Old Order Mennonite communities, and presently the members of both groups make up the majority of Pennsylvania Dutch speakers.

The ancestors of Pennsylvania Dutch speakers came from various parts of the southwestern regions of German-speaking Europe, including Baden, Palatinate (region), Hesse, Saxony, Swabia, Württemberg, Alsace, German Lorraine, and Switzerland. Most of the people in these areas spoke Rhine Franconian, especially Palatine German and, to a lesser degree, Alemannic dialects; it is believed that in the first generations after the settlers arrived, the dialects merged, as there were few new German immigrants for a period of ~60 years. (ca. 1760 to ca. 1820).^{[citation needed]} The result of that dialect leveling was a dialect very close to the eastern dialects of Palatine German, especially the rural dialects around Mannheim/Ludwigshafen.

Pennsylvania Dutch is mainly derived from Palatine German, spoken by 2,400,000 Germans in the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region, a region almost identical to the historical Palatinate. There are similarities between the German dialect that is still spoken in this small part of southwestern Germany and Pennsylvania Dutch. When individuals from the Palatinate (Pfalz) region of Germany today encounter Pennsylvania Dutch speakers, conversation is often possible to a limited degree.^{[citation needed]}

Pennsylvania Dutch for the most part does not reflect the diverse origins of the early speakers from regions along the upper Rhine River (Rhineland, Württemberg, Baden, Saarland, Switzerland and Alsace) but almost exclusively the strong immigrant group from the Palatine.

Pennsylvania Dutch is not a corrupted form of Standard German, since Standard German originally developed as a written standard based on the various spoken German dialects in a very long process that started in the time of classical Middle High German (1170–1250). Pennsylvania Dutch instead reflects the independent development of Palatine German, especially from the region that is called Vorderpfalz in German.