The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-01-03

cal or in social life would as little form sepa-
rate class as they now do in business.
The majority of German-born citizens,
however have q vague notion that they can
stop this inevitable tendency by having their
children taught the German language, aud
hence their anxiety to get instruction in
German introduced into the public
schools. But just as one may learn foreign
language without denationalizing himself, so
he may adhere to the language of his fore
fathers without denationalizing himself. The
PENNSYLVANIA German native-born farmers
were, at the time of the Native American
movement, the most pronounced Know
Nothings, and many of them are still so, a.
every "German' settling among them soon
finds out; and yet they not only speak a
German dialect, mixed with words German
lied from the English, but this, their ordinary
language, is also spoken by their fellow-citl-
zens and neighbors of Celtic, Anglo-Saxon
and African descent. Indeed, the writer
Of these lines has seldom been more
surprised and at the same time moved
to hearty laughter than at being addressed
by q venerable negro in a Pennsylvania vii
lage in the most approved Pennsylvania-Ger-
man dialect, and with all the nuGnces with
which that dialect is spoken by immigrants
from the Palatinate or their descendants in
Pennsylvania, this very day, to the sixth
generation. The idea of an African acquiring,
not the German language, but dialect of it,
and that horoughly-connecting, by the as
sociation of ideas, African barbarism with the
particularism of small German territory
seemed at first highly ludicrous. 1t was con-
trary to all experience in regard to the
capacity of that race to acquire foreign
idioms, while it proved, besides, the tenacity
with which the dialect has taken root in that
section. and thus outlived the language itself
the 'Hochdeutsch" or High German origi
nally spoken by German immigrants and lost
by the second generation.
| The importance of dialects has at times
| been undervalued by scholars; but it is nov
| perceived that they are the roots out of which
| o language grows, and from which it con
stantly draws new nourishment From then
only arises tho language of letters, or as Ma,
Muller expresses it, the ''HochSprache.
| Jacob Grimm, in his history of language
| compares them to q comfortable morning
| gown, in which you feel at ease, but in which
you do not venture to go out. In them tn
| greatest wealth of a language lies hidden, anc
| it may be conceded that for the German the.
have been of more Importance than for othe
| languages on account of the greater numbe
| of tribes composing the nationality. Gram
mars of Low-German as well as High German
dialects have of late been published in Ger
many, and the success which works writ
ten in dialects have met with ther
shows a strong scientific and popu
lar movement in their favor No
can we wonder that it be so. Fritz Reuter-
the Low German poet, owes his success nc
less to the poetical merit and unsurpasse
humor of his works than to the happy idea G
writing them in dialect At first it Nigh
seem as if readers not yet acquainted with
might be repulsed rather than attracted, mos
of them being obliged to take pains to rea
it; but Germans are apt to overlook that diff
Guilty for the enjoyment they find in bein
reminded of "home." AS to the vitality {
dialects, it may be mentioned that in the prC
vinces of Alsace and Lorraine, wrested frol
Germany by France centuries ago, the Ais
tian- n-German dialect is still the language
the peasants, and that only recently have I'll
inhabitants of the latter province petitione
the Emperor to have the German languas
introduced into the pu'lic schools.