[Lowlands-l] Amish & "low German"

[Lowlands Languages & Cultures]

Hello dear Jack Driedger, can you tell us whether the Plautdietsch 
community is rapidly dwindling just like the Low German community is? Or 
does it maintain some low-level stability? Is there any deliberate and 
organized support of young speakers? This is just emerging in the Low 
German community, most probably too late for the language.

By the way, I live near Bad Oldesloe, a place where the historic Menno 
Simons has lived and worked for a considerable time. This 
http://www.plattpartu.de/gott/erinn/wernecke_menno.htm Text about the 
place where he lived is written in Low German, you will have no problems 
reading it.

Hartlich!

Marlou


Am 08.10.2017 um 22:41 schrieb Lowlands Languages & Cultures:
> Very interesting. I grew up speaking Plautdietsch. I have written a 
> book Enn Bloomenheim Oppjewossen. If you Google Jack Driedger 
> Plautdietsch you my run across some Plautdietsch reading I have done. 
> I am a 91 year old retired teacher in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. My 
> grandfather Johann Driedger arrived in Canada from Ukrain in 1875 at 
> age 15.
> Jack Driedger
> ``````````````````````````````````````
> On Oct 8, 2017, at 2:03 PM, Lowlands Languages & Cultures 
> <lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org 
> <mailto:lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org>> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 10/8/2017 2:46 PM, Lowlands Languages & Cultures wrote:
>> This article was on the front page of our local newspaper yesterday.  
>> I hope it opens.
> I received my undergraduate degree from Middlebury in 1967.  Years 
> after I left the state of Vermont, I hung out with Mennonites in 
> Ontario most of whom spoke or at least still understood the 
> Plautdietsch they or their prents brought with them from Russia after 
> WWII.  This dialect was absorbed by them during the century or so that 
> they lived in the Danziger Bucht after fleeing persecution in 
> Holland.  The founder, Menno Simons (right, you ask, why aren't they 
> called Simonites?), was Friesian.  The Rhineland Amish were there 
> after fleeing from persecution in Austria and Switzerland (hence the 
> name Yoder).  I have a former brother-in-law named Yoder, and his son 
> Kevin is a Congressman from Kansas. There are perhaps half a million 
> speakers of Plautdietsch mostly in South America, but substantial 
> numbers remain in Ontario and especially Manitoba.  They are the only 
> remaining speakers of the language which was the lingua franca of the 
> Hanseatic League.
>
>>
>>
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> -- 
> Edwin Alexander
>
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