Es Neinuhr Schtick

                                                                          
                                                                                               4-08-04
 

Ihr liewe Leit:

    It’s April!  So what’s so great about April?  Well, for starters, this year Easter comes in April.  And how many of you dear readers remember April 5, 1984?  Thousands of you, I bet!  Yes, you are all right; the Old Professor’s very first column appeared on April 5, 1984 on the pages of The Call.  It seems then, that we have just ended our 20^th year and are this week starting our 21^st.

    And so this may well be a good time to review some of the ideas that appeared in the first column.

    I first of all commented on the occasional lack of good idiomatic English translations, the results of my desire to render the Pennsylvania German (PG) text into English equivalents that reflect as closely as reasonable the PG constructions.  I quote from by book A Pennsylvania German and Reader (Penn State Press, 1982):  “I hope readers who are well-versed in formal English will forgive my less-than-formal and unidiomatic English constructions they will at times find in the translations of the PG texts.  Especially for the beginning student, I have attempted to translate the PG as literally as possible without duplication the ridiculous restaurant placemat translations like ‘Throw the cow over the fence some hay.’  Thus, ‘the schoolmaster is sitting also already at the desk; may not be proper idiomatic English, but it does reflect for the beginning student the progression of words in the comparable PG construction, a result that I believe justifies sacrificing a perfectly idiomatic English translation.”

    The Old Professor is, after all, interested in the presentation and teaching of PG, not English.

    Far more serious is the possibility that some (many?) readers will insist that these columns are written in Hochdeitsch – that is, Standard German (StG) – rather than the PG dialect.  Were this true, then it would have to be true that PG writers have never used PG since they began writing in the dialect more than 150 years ago, for as you regular readers are aware, almost every column has contained examples of PG literature, including Boonastiel and Hulsbuck, two of the most popular, beloved and revered PG writers of all time.

     A part of this problem no doubt has to do with the vast number of words that has slowly but surely disappeared from the average PG speaker’s vocabulary, to be replaced by any handily available English equivalent.  Let me once again quote from my Reader and Grammar: “My students who spoke PG even before they attended my PG classes have told me that the text includes many words they have never heard of.  I am then glad that I have given them the opportunity to gather up some of the words and expressions that have been lost during the 300 years that the PGs have been in America.”

    But I am certain that the more important part of this problem has to do with the way the Old Professor spells his PG.  It is according to the so-called Buffinton/Barba system of spelling, a system that is based on German sound values rather than the English.  Many PG writers, both past and present, have chosen the English sound values to spell the dialect; the reader uses his knowledge of English sounds to read the PG words.  Several present-day PG columnists use this system, and their regular readers, I am sure, have become accustomed to the system and would not want the writers to change.

    But one irrefutable fact has led me to use the German system of sound values, and thus the German system of spelling, for these columns: because English vowels have as many as four or five different sound values, the reader must have a prior knowledge of the dialect to read PG written “in English.”  Only those readers who have already mastered the dialect can be certain that they are pronouncing the PG words correctly.

     For example, Joseph H. Light, in his Der Alt Schulmeeschder (1928), spells the PG word for ‘house” as hous, with the ou pronounced as in E “house.”  He spells the PG word for “just” as youscht, with the ou this time pronounced like ou in E “you”.  One more example taken from scores of such doublets: PG kott “had” with o pronounced as in E “hot,” but PG soll with o pronounced (approximately) as in E go.”

    Thus my conclusion that a test meant for the beginning student of the dialect must use German orthography; if nothing more, the relatively “purer” sound values of German vowels allow the student a much better chance at an informed guess of the correct pronunciation of dialect words he has not seen before.

    And so, whether or not you insist on calling the PG of these columns “Hochdeitsch,” the fact remains that for 20 years you have been reading the very best of PG literature.  The Old Professor will certainly not last another 20 years, but he is certain that there is still enough PG literature to last several times 20 years!

Macht’s gut and take care,

The Old Professor