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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/8/2017 2:46 PM, Lowlands
Languages & Cultures wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:mailman.1760.1507488404.1573.lowlands-l@listserv.linguistlist.org">
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<div style="font-size: 13px;color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:
arial,sans-serif;">This article was on the front page of our
local newspaper yesterday. I hope it opens.<br>
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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.<br>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Edwin Alexander</pre>
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