Hot off the press! Check out this exciting new publication by MKI Co-Director Mark Louden!
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While most world languages spoken by minority populations are in serious danger of becoming
extinct, Pennsylvania Dutch is thriving. In fact, the number of Pennsylvania Dutch speakers is
growing exponentially, although it is spoken by less than one-tenth of one percent of the United
States population and has remained for the most part an oral vernacular without official
recognition or support. A true sociolinguistic wonder, Pennsylvania Dutch has been spoken
continuously since the late eighteenth century, even though it has never been “refreshed” by later
waves of immigration from abroad.
In this probing study, Mark L. Louden, himself a fluent speaker of Pennsylvania Dutch, provides
readers with a close look at the place of the language in the life and culture of two major
subgroups of speakers: the “Fancy Dutch,” whose ancestors were affiliated mainly with Lutheran
and German Reformed churches, and conservative Anabaptist sectarians known as the “Plain
people”—the Old Order Amish and Mennonites.
Drawing on scholarly literature, three decades of fieldwork, and ample historical
documents—most of which have never before been made accessible to English-speaking
readers—this is the first book to offer a comprehensive look at this unlikely linguistic success
story.