Talk:Pennsylvania Dutch

message: this page was to long so it has been archived --gdaly7 (talk) 13:30, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Archive

message: While I am certainly in camp with the other religions mentions as being Pennsylvania Dutch I am not so certain "Roman Catholic" would fit the bill for the mainstream Anabaptists which are the predominant group associated with the culture. The Pennsylvania Dutch fled from the church as a matter of religious persecution, even from some more mainstream protestant denominations from europe into Quaker Pennsylvania, I suggest you begin by reading the Martyrs Mirror.
Surprise! I am of Pa Dutch ancestry and a Roman Catholic-not alone, I have quite a number of kinfolk that claim Pa Dutch ancestry-being German-and Roman Catholic.This includes Dormers and Kappens and Fryes. This is not a small number of people to be ignored and omitted from the article. When I have an exact number and cite, it will be added to the article. --Brattysoul  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.124.158.50 (talk) 02:45, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Religions of the Pennsylvania Dutch 

message: Maybe you guys could work together with the people of the "Pennsylvania German language"-page ?81.207.97.6 (talk) 11:31, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Complete information 

message: The populations figures must be a massive undercount. It lists 200,000 as the largest figure, when the population figures for the Amish and the Pennsylvania German speakers both surpass that number. This number not only does not take into account the "Fancy Dutch" who assimilated and stopped speaking the language, the population of which was always larger than the "Plain People", it also appears to miss a large portion of the Plain Dutch as well.
In addition, over a quarter of the populations of Pennsylvania and Ohio and nearly a quarter of the population of Indiana claim German heritage as well. That's in addition to the many other people in other parts of the US and Canada who have Pennsylvania Dutch roots (Dwight Eisenhower is one of the most famous, and I have a friend in Kansas who does as well). I think it is likely the same case as the Americans of British Isles ancestry... People don't consider themselves part of it because they aren't aware or because they've abandoned the identity.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.98.148.217 (talk) 03:42, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Massive Undercount 

message: As the entry of "Massive Undercount" points out this article seems to make the classic mistake in positing that only the "quaint folk" such as the Amish and Mennonites are the PA Dutch which is not the case at all. My own family line is one of the families that immigrated to the Tulpehocken Valley in PA from New York in 1723 being my 6th. great-grandfather, Johan Nicholas Schäfer with his family consisting of his wife, Maria Suder and their five sons. Johan Nicholas is believed to have immigrated with two of his brothers and genealogists estimate that this family alone has over one million descendants in the US today. 70.20.121.68 (talk) 23:10, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Amish and Mennonites are Only a Fraction of PA Dutch 

message: The Pennsylvania German movement is not to be confused with the Anabaptist movement during the 1600s to 1700s.  The Pennsylvania German movement was a result of Napolean Bonaparte liberating d'Alcase and the French area of Switzerland from the late 1790s to 1815.  It was enough that Napolean accomplished his conquests, but then a phenomenon in 1815 occurred called the "Year without a Summer" in Europe where the summer temperature never exceeded 50 degrees affecting crop production.  As a result of this many Europeans in d'Alcase left for America.  The Pennsylvania German movement essentially occurred between 1800-1820 and was comprised of three people groups: Germans, French and Jews, many of them entering through Philadelphia.  These were the Pennsylvania Germans.
This comment appeared at the end of the page, but should be elsewhere.  --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:55, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pennsylvania German movement comment 

message: right now the article says "Germanic peoples who emigrated to the U.S. (primarily to Pennsylvania), from Germany, Switzerland and The Low Countries prior to 1800" Germany did not exist as a country in 1800, so shouldn't the article say where they actually came from? also "The Low Countries" is a completely ridiculous term to use. 96.224.36.234 (talk) 21:11, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The "Pennsylvania Dutch" are fundamentalist Mennonites from Switzerland. There are virtually NO Amish or Mennonites from what is now Germany. People like to make things up and find explanations where there are none, so every article I've ever read talks about the Pennsylvania Dutch having "German" roots. Keep in mind that German-speaking Mennonite people generally refer to themselves as "Deutsch," which is an ethno-liguistic group to them, not a "nationality" in the modern nation-state sense. Most of this article is speculation and other nonsense, and the entire article should be deleted in favor of a "stub."97.125.42.15 (talk) 16:12, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: they  do include the Mennonites -- but most were Lutherans, as typified bhy Frederick Muhlenberg. See A. G. Roeber, Palatines, Liberty, and Property: German Lutherans in Colonial British America (1998) . Rjensen (talk) 01:54, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The Pennsylvania Dutch consist almost entirely of people who emigrated from the German Palatinate, along with some Hessian soldiers who spoke an almost identical dialect. Only a small minority of them were Anabaptists (such as Mennonites and Amish) and even those tended to have migrated from Switzerland to the Palatinate and then on to Pennsylvania. To say that the Pennsylvania Dutch were not German is just not accurate; they were almost all German and even the ones who were from Switzerland or Alsace would have spoken a Germanic language and considered themselves German. (Remember that Germany was in those days an assortment of principalities and such and therefore being German described one's ethnicity and not one's nationality. At the time, they would have had no way of knowing whose homeland would eventually be incorporated into present-day Germany and whose would not so they would not have drawn a distinction between Germans and German-speaking Swiss or Austrians or German speaking Alsatians from what is now a part of France.) Dave  (djkernen)|Talk to me|Please help! 18:51, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

text: Since the Holy Roman Empire (yeah I know neither holy nor roman nor an empire) renamed it self in the early 1500 into Holy Roman Emprie of the German Nation - one might argue that there was a Germany as some kind of a country 78.42.252.102 (talk) 20:16, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where did they emigrate from? 

message: I would like to place an "Etymology" heading above the second paragraph, thus moving it out of the lede and making it the first section after the lede. I would also like to then expand the lede to make it a summary of the article rather then a section on etymology. Is anyone against this? Dave  (djkernen)|Talk to me|Please help! 23:58, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: yes: very good idea. Rjensen (talk) 04:13, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, I made an initial pass at it. I am not entirely happy with the result but since I still prefer it to the old abbreviated lede I have moved it onto the live page. Please feel free to contribute to improving this section! Dave  (djkernen)|Talk to me|Please help! 20:22, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reengineering of Lede 

message: Recently there has been a bit of an edit war over the 2nd paragraph of the Etymology section. After reverting the edits several times I've finally given in and decided to try to work with the changes. My main objections to the changes so far have been a) the original version represented the "mispronunciation of Dietsch" theory as the only viable theory even though the cited source lists five possible reasons why this groups uses "Dutch" as their English-language endonym (although many now do use "German" or "Pennsylvania Dutch" or "Pennsylvania German").  Also, the wording claimed that the name Dutch was onomatopoeic, which is clearly not the case and appears to represent a misunderstanding of the word onomatopoeic. Finally, the new wording claims that Pennsylvania German bears only a superficial resemblance to Dutch, which is nonsense because the language is a dialect of German and German and Dutch have a deep and fundamental relationship that renders the two languages very very similar (as are by extension their respective dialects and offshoot languages).
However, do we even need that 2nd paragraph at all? It seems to contradict the first to some extent and doesn't flow well from the 1st paragraph at all. Also, the etymology of the English word "Dutch" demonstrates a far more compelling explanation for the current label of the Pennsylvania Dutch people (who BTW still prefer to be called Dutch even though they are totally aware of their relationship to German and have historically used Standard German and not Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands in their church services).
Thanks for your input, Dusty|💬|You can help! 16:02, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology 

message: I remember in college US history class the assertion that many of those from the Palatinate were encouraged to come because of their metal-working skills. The article at present mentions only their excellent farming skills.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.237.150.151 (talk) 03:36, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Occupation skills of immigrants 

message: More and more photos, maps and other images have been added to this article over the last several months and years, giving it an increasingly cluttered look that makes it difficult to read and comprehend, particularly for people with visual impairments. At least several of these image additions appear to violate Wikipedia's Manual of Style/Accessibility standards which urge editors to "Avoid placing images on the left hand side as a consistent left hand margin makes reading easier" and "Avoid sandwiching text between two images or, unless absolutely necessary, using fixed image sizes." At this point, several images need to be removed in order to bring the article back into compliance with the MOS and make it more accessible for Wikipedia users with visual impairments. 47thPennVols (talk) 04:12, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Photo and image formatting needs to be reviewed and improved 

message: I'm concerned that the article might be conveying an impression that Anabaptist sects are inherently "Pennsylvania Dutch". The photograph of the Black Mennonites in the article features James and Rowena Lark, African-American converts to Mennonitism. Maybe I am mistaken, but in what way are they Pennsylvania Dutch? I removed their photo from the article on the non-Anabaptist Fancy Dutch because the Larks were Anabaptists who dressed plain. Bohemian Baltimore (talk) 10:54, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Anabaptist isn't synonymous with Pennsylvania Dutch