LL-L "Language survival" 2003.04.13 (07) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Eldo Neufeld <greneuf at interchange.ubc.ca>
Subject: LL-L "Language survival" 2003.04.13 (03) [E]

>From: jpkrause <jpkrause at weblink2000.net>
>Subject: Language Varieties
>
>Here in Kansas, the language decimation began a generation earlier with
WWI.
>There are many local stories about signs being posted in shop windows in
>Newton, KS the heart of Kansas German country saying "No German spoken
>here."  To bring this into closer relation to our Lowlands Languages
>interest, Low Saxon/Low German has nearly disappeared.  I cannot find any
>one locally who speaks it better than I.  And I only speak it very
brokenly.
>So imagine my surprise when I overheard two elderly gentlemen speaking Low
>German after church services one Sunday in Newton.  I think WWI really
dealt
>the death blow to the survival of Low German in Kansas.
>
>[Jim Krause]

Jim Krause wrote "Here in Kansas, the language decimation began a
generation earlier with WWI."

Basically that is correct, but I find the use of "German," "Low Saxon/Low
German," and "Low German" in your paragraph somewhat confusing, Jim.  In
smaller places, like Inman and Buhler in the exact centre of the State, the
common everyday language of the Mennonites among themselves between the
wars was Plautdietsch (my mother-tongue), while in  Moundridge (a few miles
east) that was Swiss-German, or Schweizer-Dietsch.

Following each of my first three years in elementary school (1932,'33, and
'34)
the parents of our school district, in the hope of keeping us from growing
up NOT speaking German, hired a special German teacher who taught us High
German for a month past the end of the English school year, 9 am to 4 pm
five days a week.  There was no apparent objection to this on the part of
people of non-germanic heritage in the community.  I personally lost the
use of the Plautdietsch dialect between my 20th and 65th years, and then in
retirement began working in it and have become totally fluent again.  I was
back in the Inman community in November of 2002, and found that almost all
of the age 70+ people still can speak Plautdietsch, and do so quite
willingly, if spoken to.  They are, however, clearly the last generation to
be able to do so, because the overwhelming majority of them did not
themselves speak it with their children.  The chief cause of that was
anti-germanic feeling during and after WWII.  Even the irony of the fact
that a language can be killed only by those who speak it, now passes these
people by.

Eldo Neufeld
4040 Blenheim St.
Vancouver, B.C
Canada   V6L 2Y9
greneuf at interchange.ubc.ca

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