Voah mei daett sei deitsh: 
	Developments in the vowel system of Pennsylvania German

			David Bowie
		(University of Pennsylvania)

Pennsylvania German (PG) is a minority language of North America spoken as a
first language primarily by members of the Old Order Amish religion in a
roughly diamond-shaped area with corners in Chester County, Pennsylvania;
Sudbury County, Ontario; the Illinois-Indiana border; and Saint Mary's
County, Maryland.  PG has been in constant contact with North American
English (NAE) since it arrived in North America in the early eighteenth
century, and native PG speakers now nearly universally speak NAE as a second
language, with formal training in NAE beginning at about age six.

This paper presents preliminary data on an unusual change in the PG phonemic
system which appears to be the result of contact with NAE (namely, the
appearance of (ae) in the PG vowel system) but which requires special
treatment, particularly in light of Thomason and Kaufmann's (1988)
conclusions regarding what sorts of borrowing are possible in various types
of language contact situations.

The vowel system of PG consists of the diphthongs (au), (ei), and (ohi), the
long vowels (oh:), (e:), (i:), (o:), and (u:), and the short vowels (a),
(e), (i), (o), (u), and (ae).  The vowel (ae) appears, from a cursory glance
at the data available, to appear only in English loanwords.  The text of _Es
nei teshtament_ (a 1993 translation of the New Testament into colloquial PG
by native PG speakers) is used to document that (ae) only appears in English
loanwords, and questionable cases are dealt with.  In addition, earlier
data, including transcriptions of twentieth-century PG speakers made by
Meister Ferré (1991) and letters written by nineteenth-century PG speakers
collected by Parsons and Heimburger (1980), are used to document the rise of
(ae) in PG.  On the basis of this investigation the case is made that PG
(ae) is a case in which the speakers of a minority language have borrowed a
sound previously unknown to its phonemic inventory from its counterpart
majority language.

Possible mechanisms for such borrowing are proposed, and possible
ramifications of the borrowing of (ae) on the stability of the PG-NAE
bilingual situation are touched upon.  Finally, the borrowing of (ae) into
PG is looked at in relation to Thomason and Kaufman's (1988) theories
regarding borrowing and shift in language contact situations, and support
for the theory is offered.

References

_Es nei teshtament_. 1993. The Bible League, trans.
Meister Ferré, Barbara. 1991. _Stability and change in the Pennsylvania
German dialect of an Old Order Amish community in Lancaster County_.
University of Georgia PhD dissertation.
Parsons, William T. and Mary Shuler Heimburger. 1980. "Shuler family
correspondence." _Pennsylvania folklife_ 29. 98-114.
Thomason, Sarah Grey and Terrence Kaufmann. 1988. _Language contact,
creolization, and genetic linguistics_.