What language did Amish Mennonites speak when they began migrating to Southern Ontario from dialectally-diverse regions in German-speaking Central Europe? This lecture will analyze the speech of their descendants from East Zorra-Tavistock and Wilmot townships, compare it with what Amish and Old Order Mennonites speak elsewhere, and explore important implications for our understanding of the linguistic history of Anabaptists in North America more generally.
Mark L. Louden is the Director of the Max Kade Institute and the Alfred L. Shoemaker, J. William Frey, and Don Yoder Professor of Germanic Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. A fluent speaker of Pennsylvania Dutch, he has written extensively on the history and contemporary situation of the language and its speakers.