Page:The American language; an inquiry into the development of English in the United States (IA americanlanguage00menc 0).pdf/423

 amples of Pennsylvania German are to be found in the copious humorous literature of the dialect; e.g., "Mein stallion hat über die fenz geschumpt and dem nachbar sein whiet abscheulich gedämätscht." (My stallion jumped over the fence, and horribly damaged my neighbor's wheat.) Such phrases as "Es giebt gar kein use" and "Ich kann es nicht ständen" are very common on Pennsylvania German lips. Of late, with the improvement in communications, the dialect shows signs of disappearing. The younger Pennsylvania Germans learn English in school, read English newspapers, and soon forget their native patois. But so recently as the eighties of the last century, two hundred years after the coming of the first German settlers, there were thousands of their descendants in Pennsylvania who could scarcely speak English at all.

An interesting variant dialect is to be found in the Valley of Virginia, though it is fast dying out. It is an offshoot of Pennsylvania German, and shows even greater philological decay. The genitive ending has been dropped and possession is expressed by various syntactical devices, e.g., der mann sei buch, dem mann sei buch or am mann sei buch.

The cases of the nouns do not vary in form, adjectives are seldom inflected, and only two tenses of the verbs remain, the present and the perfect, e.g., ich geh and ich bin gange. The indefinite article, en in Pennsylvania German, has been worn away to a simple 'n.The definite article has been preserved, but das has changed to des. It is declined as follows:

In brief, this Valley German is a language in the last stages of decay. The only persons speaking it are a few remote country-folk and they have reduced it to its elements: even the use of polite pronouns, preserved in Pennsylvania German and so important in true German, has been abandoned. It has been competently investigated and described by H. M. Hays, from whom I borrow the following specimen of it: