Iowa, German Dialects in
According to the 2000 national census over 50 percent of Iowans claim that their ancestors hail from German-speaking Europe, which ranks the state second-highest in the United States (Wisconsin is first) in this category.
German immigrants came to Iowa for various reasons: some sought refuge from religions persecution, while others desired to find relief from poverty and improve their economic situation. Iowa also served as an opportune geographical location for “daughter,” and in some situations “granddaughter,” settlements for groups that had already established themselves in Pennsylvania or the eastern Midwest. Although these German immigrants who settled in Iowa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries came from many different areas of German-speaking Europe, the majority of dialects spoken in the early twenty-first century in the state of Iowa are variants of Low German.In the early 1850s a large number of immigrants, primarily from Schleswig- Holstein (along with some Danes and North Frisians), settled in the Davenport area (Scott County) and later in 1881 in the Manning area (the southwest corner of Carroll County in west-central Iowa). Many immigrants settling around Eldridge in northern Scott County were from the Probstei area of Holstein. Most of these settlers left northern Germany following the failed revolution of 1848. These immigrants began to farm and operate mills in small communities in Scott County, such as Walcott, Wheatland, and Dewitt. In 1870 more came—many desiring to avoid serving in the Franco-Prussian War.
A significant number of settlers from Schleswig-Holstein also came to Mineola in Mills County. These particular immigrants found their origin near the Baltic coast in Holstein. Other pockets of Low German speakers from Schleswig-Holstein are found dispersed throughout the state in Benton, Blackhawk, Bremer, Butler, and Tama counties in northern east-central Iowa.
Their variant of PlaatdUUtsch is still spoken in the early twenty-first century in the aforementioned areas, although its strongest presence is found in and around Scott County. The creation of the American Schleswig-Holstein Heritage Society (ASHHS) in 1989 greatly assisted in the promotion and preservation of the Low German heritage, not only in Scott County, but also throughout the state. As for dialectal peculiarities, speakers of all these variations of Nord Niedersachsisch do what is called snacken Platt; that is, all verbs in the plural indicative (Einheitsplural) display the (e)t ending. The reference to the standard English term outhouse as Tante Maria (Aunt Maria) is an intradialectal distinction displayed predominantly by speakers from eastern Iowa (Scott County and surrounding areas). The city of Dubuque, founded originally by English and Canadian traders in the 1780s, saw an influx of Catholic German (from the Hanover region) and Luxemburger immigrants settle in the area between 1840 and 1890. In contrast to Irish Catholics who dominated the southern portion of the city, the German and Luxemburger Catholics occupied the northern section. Roughly 30 miles south of Dubuque stands the village of St. Donatus, founded in 1846 by Jean Ensch. It is unclear whether Letzebuergesch is still spoken in this area today.Western Iowa (Shelby County) received a significant number of Westphalian immigrants in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Westphalian Low German dialect islands can also still be found in and around the Waterloo/Cedar Falls area (Blackhawk and Bremer counties). These dialect speakers employ either kurren or kallen for the infinitive of the verb “to speak.” Unfortunately, very few Westphalian Low German dialect speakers can be found as of this writing in 2005.
Another variant of Low German found in plenum in Iowa is East Frisian Low German (EFLG). In the mid-1850s news of cheaper farmland in central and northcentral Iowa (Butler, Hardin, and Grundy counties) came to the attention of East Frisians in the German Valley colony in northern Illinois.
Grundy County in 2005 still holds the largest concentration of East Frisians west of the Mississippi River. The area was originally settled by East Frisians in northern Illinois in 1854 and Lutheran and Reformed adherents who came directly from East Friesland (Krummhorn) in 1867. Immigration directly from East Friesland to north-central Iowa continued until 1952. Dialect usage is still strong in the Grundy County area. Although the majority of fluent dialect speakers are above the age of fifty in 2005, there still exists a healthy corpus of roughly 500 speakers. East Frisian Low German (Plaat- duutsk) is regarded by speakers of other Low German dialects as difficult to understand. This is primarily due to the complex linguistic history of EFLG in comparison to that of other Low German dialects.Although Iowa is principally a “Low German” state, there are other German- dialect-speaking groups that have played a significant role in shaping the linguistic heritage of Iowa. One such group is the Amana Colonies in Iowa County. Determining the exact origin of Amana German has proven to be difficult. Amana really represents a cross section of the Germanspeaking areas of Europe, with a few more settlers coming from one area, a few less from another. This fact is reflected in its speech. Amana German is actually a dialect mixture produced by more than a century of interaction between the countless German dialects of the original Inspirationists. As one might expect, the Hessian dialects of the Buedingen-Gelnhausen area, where the Ronnenburg castle is located and where the Inspirationists lived off and on for almost twenty years, have had a noticeable influence. However, sheer numbers of speakers of any particular dialect and the prestige of any given dialect speaker must have played a role in shaping Amana’s speech, too. Swabian elements very different from the Hessian dialect mentioned above can, for example, be identified quite easily in Amana German.
The linguistic diversity within the individual villages themselves accurately reflects the “melting-pot” dialect known as Amana German. Prior to what is known as the “Change of 1932” when separate branches of governance were established for secular and religious matters, each village was operated independently, with its own council of elders exercising final authority in temporal and spiritual affairs; hence independent village identity and settlement history helped shape and maintain these intradialectal variations of Kolonie-Deutsch (e.g., Amana German). For example, the settlers of the village of Main Amana were frequently referred to as “the Saxons,” given the high concentration of Saxon Inspirationists that settled in Main Amana. Among these speakers intervocalic voiceless stops are voiced, especially /t/ to /d/ and /k/ to /g/. For example as reported by Webber (1993, 63), the word Mutter (mother) is regularly pronounced Mudder and Stticke (pieces) as Stigge. The intervocalic /g/ of standard German regularly appears in this dialect as a velar fricative. The Change of 1932 ushered in many sociolinguistic changes to Amana German. Perhaps the most striking were the ubiquitous usage of English and the gradual erosion of the most significant intradialectal differences among the individual villages. The emergence of a conglomerate “Amana German” by those who continued to speak Kolonie-Deutsch in the colonies can be seen as a quasi-defense mechanism to unite this unique German heritage shared by those who still spoke German in the villages.
Pennsylvania German “daughter” settlements found their way to Iowa in the middle of the nineteenth century. The earliest Mennonite and Amish families arrived in Iowa in 1839 and settled in Lee County, part of the so-called Half-Breed Tract, a treaty signed in St. Louis with the “Sac and Fox tribe” relinquished their claim to 119,000 acres in what would be Lee County set aside for the children of racially mixed parentage.
The first Amish settlers in Johnson County arrived in the southwest corner of the county in 1846, relocating from Somerset County, Pennsylvania; Fairfield, Ohio; and other eastern communities. A rapid increase in the number of Amish households in Johnson and Washington counties flourished between 1850 and 1880. Many “granddaughter” colonies within Iowa were founded in the 1880s in Wright and Davies counties. The anabaptist brethren of the Amish and Mennon- ites, the Hutterites, settled in the northwest corner of Iowa in Lyon and Sioux counties.The situation regarding the longevity of these dialects in Iowa is similar to that within other states in the midwestern United States; namely, that the oldest generation in these secular communities represents the last fluent dialect speakers. Within the coming decades many of these dialects will unfortunately be spoken either by relatively few, with a retarded degree of fluency, or simply not at all. The most conservative sects of the Amish, Mennonite, and Hutterite communities who continue to pass their German vernacular on to their children are the only groups who will maintain speaking these German American dialects for generations to come.
Mike Putnam
See also Amana Colonies; Amish; Kansas, German Dialects in; Pennsylvania German (Dutch) Language; Texas, German Dialect in
References and Further Reading
Eiboeck, Joseph. Deutschen von Iowa und derer Errungenschaften. Des Moines: Iowa Staats- Anzeiger, 1900.
Reschly, Steven D. The Amish on the Iowa Prairie 1840 to 1910. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, 2000.
Rettig, Lawrence. Amana Today: A History of the Amana Colonies from 1932 to the Present. Iowa City: University of Iowa, 1975.
Stockman, Robert L. North Germany to North America: 19th Century Migration. Alto: PlattDuutsch, 2003.
Webber, Philip E. Kolonie-Deutsch: Life and Language in Amana. Ames: Iowa State University, 1993.