Can German speakers understand Pennsylvania Dutch?

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MorkTheFiddle
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Can German speakers understand Pennsylvania Dutch?

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sat Jun 18, 2022 4:20 pm

German Reacts to Pennsylvania Dutch | Feli from Germany
Released 16 June 2022. German woman tries to understand several folks speaking Pennsylvania Dutch. The Pennsylvania Dutch speakers begin at 5:10. Interesting comment from Korina Smith. “Understood almost all of it. Sounds just like talking to folks back home. I'm from Ramstein-Miesenbach in der Pfalz and our dialect is Pfälzisch."
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Le Baron
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Re: Can German speakers understand Pennsylvania Dutch?

Postby Le Baron » Sat Jun 18, 2022 6:16 pm

It's always interesting to see how people from a dialect or more familiar with older forms of speech can recognise these 'distant' versions. which tend to be preserved versions of older speech that have faded away in the place they originally came from. So there must be a great sense of affinity between German dialects and these distant cousins.

That thing she talked about where the youth 'Germanise' English verbs is pretty much equal in use between Germans/Dutch. It's rapid too, because when I first came here people used to say 'opladen', but this clearly started to clash with the word for 'charge' as in a telephone. Now everyone says 'uploaden'. and geüpload, complete with diacritic, for uploaded.. So your telephone is opgeladen, but your files are geüpload.

It's odd, I can't remember if everyone said another word in place of 'download'. Mappen (folders, on a computer) are sometimes also now referred to as 'folders'. Yet 'save' remains as opslaan. Aside from computing one of the most annoying I hear is 'geclaimed' and with the precise meaning of trying to take ownership of a partner or being clingy.

There you go!
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Re: Can German speakers understand Pennsylvania Dutch?

Postby alaart » Mon Jun 20, 2022 4:19 pm

I'm from the same region, it really just sounds like a twisted version of our dialect (Palatian / Pfälzisch) mixed with English - I've heard it before, so no surprises, but I can understand it to some degree, it's a bit tiring. - I could probably understand everything with the help of the context when listening longer and repeating a bit back and forth and being more attentive.
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