by the English of the seventeenth century and the colonists simply brought the term with them and preserved it as they preserved many other English archaisms. The Pennsylvania Germans themselves often used Pennsylvania Dutch in place of Pennsylvania German.
Their dialect has produced an extensive literature and has been studied and described at length by competent philologians; in consequence there is no need to deal with it here at any length.[1] Excellent specimens of it are to be found in "Harbaugh's Harfe: Gedichte in Pennsylvanisch-Deutscher Mundart."[2] That part of it which remains genuinely German shows a change of a to o, as in jor for jahr; of the diphthong ö to a long e, as in bees for böse, and of the diphthongs ei and äu to the neutral e, as in bem for bäume. Most of the German compound consonants are changed to simple consonants, and there is a general decay of inflections. But the chief mark of the dialect is its very extensive adoption of English loan words. Harbaugh, in his vocabulary, lists some characteristic examples, e. g., affis from office, altfäschen from old-fashioned, beseid from beside, boghie from buggy, bortsch from porch, diehlings from dealings, Dschäck from Jack, dscheneral-'leckschen from general-election, dschent'lleit (= gentle leut) from gentlemen, Dschim from Jim, dschuryman from juryman, ebaut from about, ennihau from anyhow, gehm from game, kunschtabler from constable, lofletters from love-letters, tornpeik from turnpike and 'xäktly from exactly. Many English words have been taken in and inflected in the German manner, e.g., gedscheest (= ge + chased), gedschumpt (ge + jumped) and gepliescht (= ge + pleased). The vulgar American pronunciation often shows itself, as in heist for hoist and krick for creek. An illuminating brief specimen of the language is to be found in the sub-title of E. H. Bauch's "Pennsylvania Dutch Handbook":[3] "En booch for inschtructa." Here we see the German indefinite article decayed to en, the spelling of buch made to conform to English usage, für abandoned for for, and a purely English word, instruction, boldly adopted and naturalized. Some astounding ex-
