Interesting German-themed news items

Zachary Anthony, a senior at Pleasant Valley High School, wants to be able to talk easily in Pennsylvania German with his 95-year-old great-grandmother. But the dialect is spoken only by a few of his older relatives. His father, Ray Anthony, never learned to speak it well and so he never taught his son.

"Grammy and Pappy used to speak it at the dinner table so my father and their kids wouldn't understand what they were saying," said Zachary, of Kunkletown. "I'd really like to speak it fluently." [...]

The Pennsylvania German, often called Pennsylvania Dutch, dialect originated in the southwest part of Germany along the Rhine River and came to America with German immigrants as early as 1683

The academy is a post-9/11 initiative promoting solutions to violence and community leadership.

It was September, and Mr. Roberts and Ernesto Isaac, 34, the academy’s assistant director, were about to accompany a group of students on a trip to Germany.

For the next 10 days, the teenagers would feel like royalty, staying in an 11th-century castle, Burg Hohenzollern, in Hechingen, which is partly owned by the Princess Kira von Preussen Stiftung Foundation. The foundation was started after World War II to foster American-German relations. For the last three years, it and another group, Atlantic-Brücke, have underwritten the visits as a way to reach out to New York’s underprivileged families affected by the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

Ten days later, after the group returned to New York, Mr. Roberts summed up the trip: “The world came into Harlem for our young people. It has changed their walk.�

Mr. Roberts is now at work to bring young Germans to New York. “We are trying to raise money for them to come here,� he said. “It is time for them. It has been three years of them opening their doors for us — they treat us like royalty. We want to do the same.�

Nov. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The cranberry, a Thanksgiving holiday icon in the New World, is bouncing back from a market slump thanks to the Old World.

Four centuries after the bitter berry was embraced by hungry immigrants who left Europe seeking a better life, the cranberry is getting a boost from new markets in Germany, France and yes, Great Britain, where those first expatriates set sail.

``It's been phenomenal,'' said David Farrimond, general manager of the Cranberry Marketing Committee, a quasi-public agency in Wareham, Massachusetts, under the U.S. Agriculture Department. ``You go into a little neighborhood store in Germany now and they have cranberries. In some places they have our Thanksgiving, too.''

U.S. cranberry exports, helped by studies showing health benefits, have jumped 70 percent in the past six years. Ninety percent of the product shipped overseas is in the form of juice concentrate, less than 2 percent is raw berries, and the rest is canned sauces or dried, sweetened cranberries sold as a snack food or baking ingredient, according to the Agriculture Department.

Today, 26 percent of the U.S. cranberry crop ends up abroad in one form or another, including the equivalent of more than 8 million pounds (3.6 million kilograms) bound for Germany.

Plautdietsch, or Low German, was once the common tongue throughout present-day Germany. But as spoken German evolved in its homeland, the old language lived on at remote farms in Latin America and the former Soviet republics, where the most religiously conservative Mennonites isolated themselves to live unencumbered by "worldly things."

Now, the globalizing economy is forcing some into mainstream society. And from the flax fields of Germany to the Kansas plains, Plautdietsch is becoming known as the near impenetrable language of a new wave of Mennonite migrants.

But the Mexican consulate in Kansas City said it's likely the number in the U.S. has risen, based on the increase in Mennonites requesting identification cards issued by Mexico's government.

"Plautdietsch speakers are coming here in droves," said William Keel, a German language professor at the University of Kansas. "The language is suddenly more active in southwest Kansas than it is in Germany."

The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages has given Plautdietsch a protected status, which will bolster efforts to have it taught in schools and universities in Germany.

"We're struggling against this perception that it's backward," Wiens said. "But worldwide, we all speak exactly the same language. If I go and visit Mennonites in Paraguay and I speak Plautdietsch to them, it's just like 400 years ago."

Starving North Koreans could soon be enjoying steaming platters of giant rabbit - thanks to German pensioner Karl Szmolinsky who recently sold 12 of the überbunnies to the nosh-strapped Communist state.
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According to the Telegraph, one Gray Giant provides up to 15lb of meat. The paper does, however, spot one potentially fatal flaw in the plan: since the monster rabbits are "voracious eaters", just where will the Pyongyang authorities find the food necessary to fatten them for the pot?