Hutterite German - History and Related Languages

History and Related Languages

Hutterite German is descended from the German which was spoken in Carinthia, in Austria, in the mid-18th century, a Bavarian-Austrian language. It is only 50% intelligible to a speaker of Pennsylvania German, as the latter variant is based on dialects spoken around the Electorate of the Palatinate. Hutterite German is more closely related to Austro-Bavarian (Bavaria and Austria), Cimbrian and Mócheno (the latter two are dialects spoken in Italy).

Although the Hutterites once spoke Tirolean German, they no longer do. The switch among Hutterites from Tirolean German to Carinthian German occurred during years of severe persecution in Europe when Hutterite communities were devastated and survival depended on the conversion of many Austrian Protestant refugees to Hutterite anabaptism.

The language has since adopted some Slavic as well as English loan words, which are the result of Hutterite migrations into eastern Europe and now North America.

Read more about this topic:  Hutterite German

Famous quotes containing the words history, related and/or languages:

    You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.
    Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)

    So universal and widely related is any transcendent moral greatness, and so nearly identical with greatness everywhere and in every age,—as a pyramid contracts the nearer you approach its apex,—that, when I look over my commonplace-book of poetry, I find that the best of it is oftenest applicable, in part or wholly, to the case of Captain Brown.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The less sophisticated of my forbears avoided foreigners at all costs, for the very good reason that, in their circles, speaking in tongues was commonly a prelude to snake handling. The more tolerant among us regarded foreign languages as a kind of speech impediment that could be overcome by willpower.
    Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)