Professor wants to preserve Texas German dialect

Dying dialect gets a voice:


Elfenstar, any Texas German experiences growing up in the Hill Country?

I have a few German coworkers who were driving from Houston to San Antonio a few years back. They stopped for lunch near New Braunfels and were shocked to hear the waitress speaking to them in German. When asked how she knew they were German she replied that it was obvious - they looked like the locals.

There's some interesting information about German Dialects in the US over on this page. Including recordings of various dialects.

Including information regarding the debunked myths of German almost being the official language of the US and Kennedy mis-speaking in his famous speech.

Muenster Texas is also another city proud of its roots. I attended an Oktoberfest there about 10 years ago and did hear german being spoken by older generations. As for the youth there seemed to be no desire to speak it.


MMM Ice Cream sounds good right now.

A bit of a side story is that my best friends family(both grandparents) came from Germany. A few years ago the grandmother got alzheimers(sp) and was placed in a home. After a year it progressed worse but the interesting thing was that she stopped speaking english and spoke only german which made it hard for the staff to communicate with her.

In my little tiny town, the nicest restaurant in town was German and the best dessert house was Swiss.

Can't really say i had any while I was at college (or rather not had noticed) except for people often stopping to ask how to get to "Green" texas for some rafting or to go to the dancehall and not being able to find it on the map. It's spelled "Gruene".

I think its a good time to reintroduce the shout out for Texans in Germany discussions. I think Ive been reading some Texans around here...I swear I spotted a Red Raider.

Possibly related to this?

@JML

Mr Blitz was talking to a couple of Texas cuties the other night at the Arc. They were just in Munich for thanksgiving..odd really.

This explains the photography exhibit at Villa Stuck. There are rooms full of photos of Texas from the late 1800's, and it struck me as an odd thing to show in Munich. Now I understand! The photos, btw, are very interesting.

Yeah that is odd, I dont think Ive ever seen Blitz and cuties in the same sentence. Hahaha. Man, I love Blitz.

my husband's family is from New Braunfels, and every year (except this one!) we head to Wurstfest the city's own 'Ten Day Salute to Sausage.' Therefore we already had our trachten ready to go for our first Oktoberfest this year Meanwhile, when his grandmother was getting on with alzheimers there was one Thanskgiving (after a few too many glasses of wine) that after being silent the whole night she broke out in some old German song right in the middle of dinner. We all had a great time! The rumor I heard is that there was a freak snowstorm in the area the first winter the German immigrants where there, and with the hills they all decided it was just like home, so set up shop with steep-pitched roofs for the snow and everything. Probably not much prepared when the 100+ degree F weather hit the following summer!

There's also a lot of German influence in Ohio.

And the Amish still speak German, right?

Germans had a lot of influence in the states. They settled places that a lot of other peoples wouldn't.

yeah i think you're right.

i was riding on amtrak through ohio and indiana a few months ago, and there were quite a few young amish looking people on the train. i think they were speaking german to each other, it sounded familiar. i think an old german dialect. sometimes there were english words and sentences thrown in between.

Half of the midwest was settled by german or polish immigrants.

And a large portion of central/western Pennsylvania (north of Amish country). That's where my ancestors settled because it reminded them of Germany!

(Honestly, the first time I visited the town where my husband grew up, I looked around and saw PA. Even to the abandoned coal mines.)

I was in Hamburg about two years ago and took a tour of their emigration museum. It was sad to see what conditions these poor people went through. The good thing about the museum was since hamburg was one of two cities(Bremen being the other) that most Europeans (outside English) exited from there it had begun to post the ship logs of the families that left from there on line. You can enter your family name and it brings up all the names and dates of those families in its data base. They had been able to list up into the year 1924 names and dates. The sad thing is that upon entering the US often these names were changed from slightly to completely so your current family name might not be your original family name. I do believe the web site was under www.hamburg.de. I have not checked this site since two years ago so I do not know how much larger the data base has become.

Found it; it has its own URL now: http://www.linktoyourroots.com/

Thanks for pointing this out!

EDIT: Well, that's what the hamburg.de site said. that site says that it's somewhere else starting this month. I've yet to find that one and see if it's up.