I don't think they eat cats so you should be good to go.

I delivered a 53 ft flatbed trailer full of wood to an Amish farm/carpentry shop way off the road in Indiana. Beautiful out there, had a driver trainee with me and when he saw they were Amish he asked, How are they going to get that lumber off the trailer? I said by hand. He answered that's going to take forever. About 5 mins later here comes the forklift. I speak fluent German and we conversed a little but it really was an eye opener how much a language can change.

I wish it was that easy for me to connect. I’d like to have a barn/shed built and would prefer to employ the Amish. We have some communities an hour - hour and a half away, I just don’t know how to locate them and someone that would do the work.

quote:

Originally posted by fischtown7:
I delivered a 53 ft flatbed trailer full of wood to an Amish farm/carpentry shop way off the road in Indiana. Beautiful out there, had a driver trainee with me and when he saw they were Amish he asked, How are they going to get that lumber off the trailer? I said by hand. He answered that's going to take forever. About 5 mins later here comes the forklift. I speak fluent German and we conversed a little but it really was an eye opener how much a language can change.

Technically they speak Pennsylvania Dutch so while they are similar with Pennsylvania Dutch being a German derivative it’s not exactly the same language.

Just look at all the English dialects we have and how different they are.

Shoot, I could take many of you down in the hollers of Eastern Kentucky and you wouldn’t have the slightest idea on what folks are saying.
Can be rough for me to get what they are actually trying to say at times.


Spent a few summers with the Amish in Adams County Ohio growing up.

Amish are not and do not speak Dutch. They speak one of the German dialects.

quote:

Originally posted by Johnny 3eagles:
Amish are not and do not speak Dutch. They speak one of the German dialects.

You are correct. They are not Dutch, nor do they speak Dutch.
Also no one stated the were Dutch or speak Dutch so I am not sure where that came from.

The language many of them speak is very much Pennsylvania Dutch.

It’s more than just a dialect of German.

https://amishamerica.com/what-...-do-the-amish-speak/

quote:

Pennsylvania Dutch, as spoken by the Amish today, includes some English words. Accents, and manners of speaking Pennsylvania Dutch, can vary between Amish communities. Besides PA Dutch, most Amish people speak two other languages – English and High German.

Most of the Mennonites came from Friesland which is in Holland and Germany. Lived up there so I do understand Platt German also and I am conversant in Dutch also. What I meant earlier is it is fascinating how dialects change over distance and years. If I am not mistake some Amish were from Switzerland, another different dialect all together.

The Amish have different tolerances for modern conveniences based on their local group under the direction of the local bishops.

Around here, (northern Indiana), it's not uncommon to see them driving tractors or skid steers. Many have cell phones, and they'll ride in vans just not drive them themselves. On the lakes I fish it's not uncommon to see some farm kid pull up in a lifted truck at the boat ramp, drop a pontoon boat in the water, and then the Amish show up and take the whole family fishing. They have lights and warning signs on their buggies, and even license plates. Many of them have cell phones, and before those were available it wasn't uncommon to see a little shack in their front yards down by the road, which was actually a little phone booth because apparently it was ok to use a phone, just not in their house.

In central Ohio where my parents live, their Amish are much more conservative. They wear plain colored clothes and only light their buggies with lanterns...no reflectors or battery powered lights. They're next to impossible to see in the dark, especially on a hilly county road, and a lot of them get hit. I've never seen one of them on a tractor, and they farm with horses.

Both groups are Amish, but very different rules.

quote:

Originally posted by Johnny 3eagles:
Amish are not and do not speak Dutch. They speak one of the German dialects.

German from 200+ years ago

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:

quote:

Originally posted by Johnny 3eagles:
Amish are not and do not speak Dutch. They speak one of the German dialects.

You are correct. They are not Dutch, nor do they speak Dutch.
Also no one stated the were Dutch or speak Dutch so I am not sure where that came from.

The language many of them speak is very much Pennsylvania Dutch.

It’s more than just a dialect of German.

https://amishamerica.com/what-...-do-the-amish-speak/

quote:

Pennsylvania Dutch, as spoken by the Amish today, includes some English words. Accents, and manners of speaking Pennsylvania Dutch, can vary between Amish communities. Besides PA Dutch, most Amish people speak two other languages – English and High German.

The word 'Dutch' here being often mis-heard 'Deutsch'.

Yeah, it is "Pennsylvania Deutsch," not 'Dutch.'

My father was fluent in Penn/Deutsch. When he visited me in Germany (I was stationed there in the USAF), he couldn't much understand the German in the west and Berlin areas. BUT, once we got to Bavaria, he conversed with the locals like he was a native.

Funny story about the Amish here

And another BIG thank you to member Cookster who hooked me up!

A while ago I was asking about those large backyard playsets and started getting sticker shock at the nice big vinyl ones at $4,000-$6,000

Cookster contacted me that he had a nice big white vinyl one and it was mine if I could move it. We live 21 miles apart from each other and I went and checked it out and decided yes we'd love it for the kids. I set it up for a shed moving company to come and load it up after we took down the big cross beam and the stairs/slide etc and transport it to my house.

Got it all back to my house and then enlisted a neighbor, my FIL and two BIL's to help lift up the crossbeam to reassemble. This thing was long and massive and probably was 400+ lbs. After a lot of struggle and it starting to feel kind of dangerous I called it off and contacted a company that built these playsets and very well may have built this one, in New Holland PA (in Amish country and near the famed Shady Maple). I spoke to a man with a thick PA Dutch accent and explained my issue and said he'd put it back together for me for $180.

OK $180 more versus having this fall on someone and kill them? DONE!

A week later a truck pulls up and one regularly dressed man and 3 burly Amish men got out and 10 minutes later they hoisted that sucker up like they were raising a barn and had it all together!

quote:

Originally posted by Hound Dog:
Yeah, it is "Pennsylvania Deutsch," not 'Dutch.'

No. It perhaps should be "Deutsch", as the Pennsylvania Dutch language is an offshoot of the German language, not the Dutch (Netherlands) language. But it's not.

The modern German term Deutsch is derived from the Old High German word Diutisc, meaning "the people", and in modern German refers to "the (German) people", as well as their language.

This old word Diutisc is also the origin of the Palatine German subdialect's word Deitsch, which is that dialect's term for "the (German) people". As mentioned above by several posters, languages vary from region to region, not only within Germany, but in the US as well.

Groups of Palatine German Anabaptists immigrated to America in the 17th and 18th century and became today's Amish. This "Deitsch" term they used to refer to themselves was then corrupted/anglicized over the years by non-Amish Americans into the word Dutch, which stuck in American English.

Thus today the Amish people and their language is known specifically in American English as Pennylvania Dutch, despite them not being related to the modern Netherlands.

Interestingly enough, the term Dutch as used by the Germanic-derived dialects spoken in what would become the Netherlands also has its roots from the same Old German term, which over the centuries then morphed within that specific region into Duutsc, then Duytsch, then Dutch.

Thus while "Dutch" doesn't mean the same thing in the 21st century as "Deutsch", and has developed a very specific relation to the Netherlands today, Dutch/Deitsch/Deutsch all share the same root and all have the same general meaning: "the German/Germanic/German-ish people of this region".

Isn't language fun?

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
Shoot, I could take many of you down in the hollers of Eastern Kentucky and you wouldn’t have the slightest idea on what folks are saying.

Last week, I stopped to get lunch at a little place out in the boonies by Shepherdsville, KY. A place called Brandy's Kitchen. Ordered a burger and went out on the porch to wait for my order. There were two guys out there talking. One, I could understand and the other, I absolutely could not, and I speak Southern. I said hello, and we had a friendly chat, but I kept apologizing to the one guy and asking him to repeat himself. He was polite and patient, but wow, was it hard to make out what he was saying. He had to leave and I talked with the other guy while I ate and he dropped the bulk of the heavy accent to make it easy on me.

I'm a linguistics and etymology fan, so this sort of stuff fascinates me. That Kentucky hill country dialect vs the other larger American regional accents has got to be pretty comparable to Pennsylvania Dutch vs modern German. They could probably type messages to each other and mostly get by, but when spoken....

quote:

Originally posted by Johnny 3eagles:
Amish are not and do not speak Dutch. They speak one of the German dialects.

There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch.

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
That Kentucky hill country dialect vs the other larger American regional accents has got to be pretty comparable to Pennsylvania Dutch vs modern German. They could probably type messages to each other and mostly get by, but when spoken....

It's that way even within modern day Germany, and between the surrounding German-speaking countries. Someone from Berlin would struggle to understand someone from Bavaria. Even more so with someone from Austria, or Switzerland.

And the geographic and temporal gulf between Pennsylvania Dutch and modern German is even greater. So I suspect it'd be more akin to something like someone from Portugal trying to converse with someone from Mexico. Their languages share the same roots and some similar basic vocabulary, but each were shaped by hundreds of years worth of linguistic development in different directions.

Rogue pretty much nailed it, you can go from one side of the Weser river to the other in the Bremen area and they speak two different dialects. In Bavaria, the Franconians sound completely different from those in Allgau or the Pfalz. Its not just accent but different words also.

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
...
Shoot, I could take many of you down in the hollers of Eastern Kentucky...

Dag. Would we find Raylan and Boyd and some of the others hanging around? I don't know I'd want to go; some say you'll never leave Harlan alive .

A detail that was mentioned and might be worth repeating - while the Amish and Mennonites speak their dialect of “Dutch” wherever they live, I believe most also speak and understand High German. This would be the “formal” German language as taught in Germany. As I understand it, their church services use the High German. So they know it and can speak it but rarely have the need.