The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1890-02-21
PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH.
The Dialect Rapidly Going Out of Use an
ENGLISH Taking las Place.

The Dialect RapfdIy GOlDS Oub OIL Use ana
English Taking les Place.
In twenty-five or thirty years. if not
before, the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect
will be to all intents and purposes a
dead language. There have been very
great changes during the last ten or fif-
teen years and the rapidity with which
they are taking place is being acceler-
ated every year. This is noticeable in
the churches, in the newspapers, in the
language of business, in intercourse with
the people, and in the increased facility
with which one who does not under
stand the dialect can make himself un-
derstood wherever he goes. When the
Presbyterian Church was founded in
Reading, Pa, about half century ago,
it was done chiefly because there were a
few people who wanted to have English
preaching, and the only way to have it
was to found new church. Now there
are only three or four out of forty
churches where the services are con-
dubted in the German language.
A score of years ago there was split
in the Trinity Lutheran church, the
largest in Reading, because some of the
members wanted one service each week
in English. Now for long time past
all the services of that church have been
in English. In the country all the young
people who come up for confirmation"
have been taught the catechism in En-
glish, and where they have not already
been granted it they are clamoring for
English services in the churches, and
all the old-style preachers who have
been accustomed to delivering German
sermons all of their lives find that they
must begin to yield little to the new
demands or sacrifice their usefulness
and popularity. Every parent who is
ambitious for his children desires that
they shall learn to speak English, every
Young man and woman feels that to do
so is much desired accomplishment,
and there are few of the younger gener-
alton who are not able to understand
and carry on conversation in the lam
guage of the country, though in their
homes and in their ordinary business
they may use the Pennsylvania Dutch.
Nearly all of the last generation were
taught to read, and many of them tc
write, German in the schools which were
attached to the churches. Since the eS.
adjustment of the common-school sys
tenn these have gradually died out, and
there is probably not one of them left
The early newspapers OF the country
were all German, and there are still
quite a number of them published, but
they seem destined to die out in COM
paratively short time for want of sub
scribers who will be able to read them.
The proprietors of the Adler. one of the
pioneer newspapers of Pennsylvania
which was founded over century ago.
have recognized the direction in which
things are tending by issuing an English
paper to take the place of the German
edition. The same precaution has been
taken by the owner of the Kutztown
Journal, an old and influential German
paper.
The time of the war, and for few
years thereafter, the Adler was still
great power in politics, and what it said
was widely quoted and commented upon
but for the last fifteen years it has
scarcely been heard of, even in the most
exciting political campaigns, and no one
who wishes to address the public on any
political subject thinks of doing sc
through the journal that for nearly
century was one of the great Democratic
organs of Pennsylvania, and was known
far and wide as the Berks County Bible.
This is not because the Adler is nc
longer good newspaper, but because il
is printed in a language which is being
rapidly discarded by the rising genera
ten.
Here in Reading the language of the
street, of the store, and of all public
places is English, and Pennsylvania
Dutch is seldom heard except in some OF
the outer wards. 1t is still, of course,
desirable that a clerk or conductor OF
a great retail store should be able to
talk Pennsylvania Dutch, but it is nc
longer absolutely necessary, and it is
becoming less so every year. Out in the
boroughs and larger villages more and
more English is being constantly heard,
the English newspaper is everywhere
seen, and in every possible direction
the old language is losing it's hold and
English is being substituted.-Co Ne.
tonal Tribune.