LL-L "Language change" 2002.12.18 (09) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
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From: jpkrause <jpkrause at weblink2000.net>
Subject: Language Change

"So their church  legislated  their school teaching and religious
written communication to be German which they adhered to to this day."
Cornelius Bergen

Not quite.  As a matter of fact, German has not been officially used in the
U.S by Mennonite Church publications since the outbreak of WWI. .  And being
a product of  Mennonite higher education I can assure you on personal
experience that all of my classes were conducted in standard American
English.
     And while I'm at it, Reuben Epp makes some rather critical observations
regarding Mennonite usage of German in his book "The Story of Low German and
Plautdietsch"  I quote from p. 87
     "Moelleken describes the High German of the Mennonites as a radical
departure from standard German.  He labels it 'Mennonitisches
Standard-deutsch,' and thereafter refers to is at MSD at its best, and as
'Dummy High' at its most disfunctional."  There is more, but I'll leave it
up to the reader to investigat this further.  Suffice it to say that I have
heard all of Epp's examples in the slopbucket Deutsch spoken in central
Kansas.  We would be better off retaining our ancestral Plautdietsch.  I say
"we" because I am one of them.
Jim Krause (probably should be Kruse)

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