Haldeman requested me to superintend the printing of his essay, and add anything that might occur to me. This will account for a few footnotes signed with my name. The Professor was fortunately able to examine one revise himself, so, that though I am mainly responsible for the press work, I hope that the errors may be very slight Sufficient importance does not seem to have been hitherto attached to watching the growth and change of living languages. We have devoted our philological energies to the study of dead tongues which we could not pronounce, and have therefore been compelled to compare by letters rather than by sounds, and which we know only in the form impressed upon them by scholars of various times. The form in which they were originally written is for ever concealed. The form in which they appear in the earliest manuscripts has practically never been published, but has to be painfully collected from a mass of various readings. The form we know is a critical, conjectural form, patched up by men distinguished for scholarship, but for the most part entirely ignorant of the laws which govern the changes of speech. The very orthography is medieval. We are thus enabled to see as little of the real genesis of language, in form, in sound, in grammatical and logical construction, in short in the real pith of philological investigation—the relation of thought to speech-sounds-as the study of a full-grown salmon would enable us to judge of the marvellous development of that beautiful fish. Such studies as the present will, I hope, serve among others to stimulate exertion in the new direction. We cannot learn life by studying fossils alone. KENSINGTON, 23 APRIL, 1872. ALEX. J. ELLIS. CONTENTS. § 1. Gender of English Words in Pennsylvania German, § 2. The German Genders, p. 26. PENNSYLVANISCH DEITSCH. CHAPTER I. PEOPLE-HISTORY-LOCATION-CONDITION. The reciprocal influence of languages affords an interesting subject of investigation, and it is the object of this essay to present an outline of a dialect which has been formed within a century, and which continues to be spoken, subject to the influences which developed it. Of such languages, English, Wallachian, and Hindûstânî, are familiar examples. Like other languages, the dialect of German known as Pennsylvania Dutch presents variations due to the limited intercourse of a widely-scattered agricultural population, and to the several dialects brought from abroad, chiefly from the region of the Upper Rhine, and the Neckar, the latter furnishing the Suabian or Rhenish Bavarian element. The language is therefore South German, as brought in by emigrants from Rhenish Bavaria, Baden, Alsace (Alsatia), Würtemberg, German Swisserland, and Darmstadt. There were also natives from other regions, with certain French Neutrals deported from Nova Scotia to various parts of the United States, including the county (Lancaster) where the materials for this essay have been collected. These, and probably some families with French names from Alsace, are indicated by a few proper names, like Roberdeau, Lebo, Deshong and Shunk (both for Dejean), and an occasional word like júschtaménnt (in German spelling), the French justement, but which a native might take for a condensation of just-an-dem-ende. Welsh names like Jenkins, Evans, Owen, Foulke, Griffith, Morgan, and Jones occur, with the township names of Brecknock, Caernarvon, Lampeter, Leacock (Lea' as lay), and in the next county of Chester-Gwinedd and Tredyffrin; but there seems to have been no fusion between Welsh and German, probably because the Welsh may have spoken English. Local names like Hanover, Heidelberg and Manheim, indicate whence some of the early residents came. The French-American ville appears in German Pennsylvania, in Bechtelville, Engelsville, Greshville, Lederachsville, Scherksville, Schwenksville, Silberlingsville, Wernersville, Zieglerville; paralleled by the English town in Kutztown, Mertztown, Schäfferstown, Straustown; burg in Ickesburg, Landisburg, Rehrersburg; and the German dorf has a representative in Womelsdorf. Pennsylvania German does not occur in the counties along the northern border of the state, but it has extended into Maryland, Western Virginia, Ohio, and farther west; and it has some representatives in western New York, and even in Canada. In many of the cities of the United States, such as Pittsburg, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Saint Louis, recent large accessions from Germany have brought in true German, and to such an extent that the German population of the city of New York is said to exceed that of every European city except Berlin and Vienna. The newer teutonic population dif fers from the older in living to a great extent in the towns, where they are consumers of beer and tobacco-luxuries to which the older stock and their descendants were and are but little addicted. The numerous allusions to the Fatherland' to be met with, belong to the foreign Germans-the natives caring no more for Germany than for other parts of Europe, for they are completely naturalised, notwithstanding their language. Several thousand Germans had entered Pennsylvania before the year 1689, when a steady stream of emigration set in, and it is stated that their number was 100,000 in 1742, and 280,000 in 1763. They occupied a region which has located the Pennsylvania dialect chiefly to the south-east of the Alle |