What kind of language is spoken by the Mennonites?

BRY2K

Plautdietsch It is a large minority language spoken in the north by the Mennonite communities, and is spoken by more than 200,000 people in Mexico, while standard German is spoken by the affluent German communities in Puebla and Mexico City. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/language-centre/Self-Access-Centre/german/ Jul 12 08, 7:58 AM

HeavensArrow

"Plautdietsch" or Mennonite Low German, was originally a Low Prussian variety of East Low German, with Dutch influence. http://www.plautdietsch.ca/ The language (or groups of dialects of Low German) is spoken in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Honduras, Belize, and Argentina by over 300,000 Mennonites. Jul 12 08, 7:59 AM

Flem-ish

A bit surprised at the way the name Plattdietsch or Plattdeutsch is rendered here. Compare:http://www.snaggedinmyweb.com/genealogy/mennohistory/index.htm Mennonite History Document Various other websites give PLATT as well. Platt means low. Jul 12 08, 3:51 PM

author

As it seems, the Mennonites call their language Blattdeitsch. http://pdc.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blattdeitsch Jul 12 08, 7:38 PM

zbeckabee

Swiss Mennonites -- The first immigrants from Switzerland and Southern Germany spoke German as their mother tongue. After arriving in the "New World," they came into increasing contact with English. After some time this German evolved from "high" or the Palatinate German dialect to a unique Pennsylvania Deutsch, or "Pennsylvania German." Russian Mennonites -- Russian Mennonites have had a similar experience with their language. Although they emigrated from Russia, these people had lived quite isolated from their Russian counterparts; German was still spoken in their homes and taught in their schools. When these groups began to migrate to Canada, they came into contact with the English language. Most read and some spoke "high (formal) German," while many others spoke a more informal dialect called Plattditsch or "low German." Today Mennonite churches in Canada are not limited to English and German. Groups meet regularly who worship in Laotian, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Hmong, Spanish, Japanese, French, Chinese (Cantonese, Mandarin), Hindi, and Punjabi. On a global level, the Mennonite church includes people of about 75 languages and over 100 cultural groups! http://www.mhsc.ca/index.asp?content=http://www.mhsc.ca/mennos/clanguage.html Jul 12 08, 10:08 PM

Flem-ish

The use of the term Hochdeutsch is misleading in a number of cases. Linguistically speaking Hochdeutsch is not formal German, but the type of German spoken in the uplands and the Alps. So the Southern parts of present-day Germany . There was a consonant shift there which changed k into ch, p into pf or f, t into ts. Dutch zoeken became High German suchen, pijl became Pfeil, tijd Zeit. Later the success of Luther's High-German Bible-translation promoted the High German system.And people associated High German with "the better form" of German. This in turn led to the popular misunderstanding that Plattdeutsch was an inferior form of German. It is not at all. It is a language in its own right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hochdeutsch Hochdeutsch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In the Palatinate High German was spoken. The misnomer Pennsylvania Dutch (local misinterpretation of the German word Deutsch) created the misunderstanding that those Mennonites spoke a kind of Dutch and that their language was a variant of Plattdeutsch. There may have been Mennonites that spoke the other type of "Deutsch" and considered themselves as speakers of Plattdeutsch, but I would have to know more about the history of the Mennonites to go into that. Jul 13 08, 1:56 PM