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Concept
Pennsylvania Dutch
Summary
The Pennsylvania Dutch (Pennsylvania Dutch: Pennsylvanisch Deitsche), also known as Pennsylvania Germans, are an ethnic group in Pennsylvania and other American states. They descend from Germans who settled in Pennsylvania during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, primarily from the Palatinate, and other German-speaking areas, including Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, Saxony, and Rhineland in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and France's Alsace-Lorraine region.
The ancestors of the Pennsylvania Dutch spoke Palatine German and other south German dialects; the intermixing of Palatine, English, and other German dialects formed the Pennsylvania Dutch language as it is spoken today.
Historically, "Dutch" referred to all Germanic dialect speakers and is the origin of Pennsylvania Dutch, its English translation. The Pennsylvania Dutch name has caused confusion in recent times, as the word Dutch has evolved to associate mainly with people from the Netherlands.
The Pennsylvania Dutch Country, Pennsylvania Amish Country, and the Ohio Amish Country are heavily associated with them.
The word Dutch in Pennsylvania Dutch is not a mistranslation but rather a derivation of the Pennsylvania Dutch endonym Deitsch, which means "Pennsylvania Dutch" or "German." Ultimately, the terms Deitsch, Dutch, Diets and Deutsch are all descendants of the Proto-Germanic word *þiudiskaz, meaning "popular" or "of the people."
Dutch in the English language originally referred to all Germanic dialect speakers. New Englanders referred to the Hollandic Dutch language spoken by the New York Dutch as "Low Dutch" (Dutch: laagduits), and the Palatine German language spoken by the Pennsylvania Dutch as "High Dutch" (German: hochdeutsch).
The oldest German newspaper in Pennsylvania was the High Dutch Pennsylvania Journal in 1743. The first mixed English and German paper, the Pennsylvania Gazette of 1751, described itself as an "English and Dutch gazette," in reference to the High Dutch language spoken in Pennsylvania.
Official source
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