The German language in America, 1683 - 1991

More about the book

This volume presents seventeen articles, revised and expanded from a Max Kade Symposium, on the German language in North America. It includes historical studies (colonial German in contrast with Native American languages, the language of Pietism among colonial immigrants), dialect descriptions (Donau-schwäbisch  in the Midwest, Low German in Kansas, Volga German in Kansas) and investigations into the impact of German on English (German ethnic varieties of English, German in advertising, German loanwords in American English). Research on language maintenance and shift is especially well-represented, with a general theoretical contribution and case studies of Alberta, Black Sea Germans in the Dakotas, and the Amana colonies. Methodological and theoretical issues include case loss and morphosyntactic change (East Franconian in Indiana), a comparative study of German in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as several papers on Pennsylvania German, treating linguistic convergence, language attitudes, and sociolingusitic variation.