[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] German Dialects

[Dona Reeves-Marquardt]

Hi Ron and all,
    Indeed there was a project loosely associated with AHSGR to record 
people speaking German. Lew and I videotaped some 70 informants who were 
willing to sit before a video camera, go through a brief list of words 
which might reveal German dialect or coloration, and then tell something 
about their impressions of growing up German-Russian. The tapes should 
be stored at AHSGR headquarters in Lincoln. The idea was to preserve as 
much German as we could before it disappears completely. I'm afraid, 
however, it was not intended to determine the German "homeland" of the 
speakers or of anyone else, since this is a risky business at best. 
Jerry is quite correct: there has been too much mixing, levelling, 
intermarrying and loss to ever hope to determine a primary, original 
dialect. The most one can expect by listening to a speaker is to 
separate a north German ("Plattdietsch") dialect from Rhine-Franconian 
or Swabian, but these are broad sweeps and not totally accurate either. 
Verna's one set of grandparents illustrate the problem perfectly--Low 
German and Swabian couldn't be further apart geographically! And as I 
have often asked, did a child learn to speak like the mother or like the 
father? Foods and recipes are about as accurate, and you know how mixed 
up that can get. But isn't it fun to know that your grandparents said 
"Wassermelon" instead of "Arbuse" for example?
    Surely we must all mourn the loss of the German language among our 
people, but it was never a good indicator of native origin, as many 
distinguished linguists who have studied the problem have agreed. The 
best we can do is just to describe their dialects scientifically, and 
fortunately, much of that has been done as early as the 1920s.
    But it's good to hear from you again, Ron! And thank you Eleanor for 
forwarding these messages to me.
Bestens,
Dona