PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH: A DIALECT OF SOUTH GERMAN WITH AN INFUSION OF ENGLISH. BY S. S. HALDEMAN, A.M. PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, LONDON: TRÜBNER & CO., 8 AND 60, PATERNOSTER ROW. NOTICE. WHILE I was engaged with the third part of my Early English Pronunciation, Prof. Haldeman sent me a reprint of some humorous letters by Rauch, entitled Pennsylvanish Deitsh. De Campain Breefa fum Pit Schwefflebrenner un de Bevry, si alty, gepublished olly woch in "Father Abraham." Perceiving at once the analogy between this debased German with English intermixture, and Chaucer's debased Anglosaxon with Norman intermixture, I requested and obtained such further information as enabled me to give an account of this singular modern reproduction of the manner in which our English language itself was built up, and insert it in the introduction to my chapter on Chaucer's pronunciation, Early English Pronunciation, pp. 652-663. But I felt it would be a loss to Philology if this curious living example of a mixture of languages were dismissed with such a cursory notice, and I therefore requested Prof. Haldeman, who by birth and residence, philological and phonetic knowledge, was so well fitted for the task, to draw up a more extended notice, as a paper to be read before the Philological Society of London. Hence arose the following little treatise, of which I, for my own part, can only regret the brevity. But the Philological Society, having recently exhausted most of its resources by undertaking the publication of several extra volumes, was unable to issue another of such length, and hence the present Essay appears independently. Owing to his absence from England and my own connexion with the paper, which I communicated and read to the Philological Society, on 3 June, 1870, Prof. |