Texas German Dialect
Historical Background
Texas German is a unique dialect spoken by the descendants of settlers who emigrated primarily from middle and northern Germany, starting with the first large wave arriving in the 1840s.
Throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century, large patches of German settlements grew consistently across the central Texas “German Belt,” which encompasses the area between Gillespie and Medina counties in the west; Bell and Williamson counties in the north; Burleson, Washington, Austin, and Fort Bend counties in the east; and DeWitt, Karnes, and Wilson counties in the south. Prolonged contact between speakers of different German dialects such as Hessian, Palatinate, Saxon, Thuringian, and Low German, among others, eventually led to the formation of a unique New-World dialect, Texas German, which has been—and still is—to a large degree mutually intelligible with Standard German.Established as the regional dominant language for upward of 100,000 speakers at its peak in the early 1900s, Texas German flourished particularly well in predominantly German enclaves such as New Braunfels, Fredericksburg, Schulenburg, La Grange, and Giddings, among many others. Texas German was not only the language of the domestic sphere, but also an official prestige language used at local public institutions such as schools, churches, newspapers, and businesses. Literature, laws, congressional proceedings, the Texas Constitution, and the Constitution of the Confederacy were all printed in German. As such, it was possible for at least three generations of native-born Texans to live their entire lives without speaking a word of English. While English was taught as a foreign language in school, non-German-speaking newcomers were often assimilated linguistically. It is important to keep in mind that in many settlements of the “German Belt” the population was almost exclusively of German descent, whereas in other areas German speakers lived in communities with speakers of other languages, such as English, Spanish, Czech, and Polish.
During World War I, the stable linguistic state of Texas German changed drastically due in part to extensive antiGerman sentiments that triggered the establishment of English-only laws. By requiring that public schools and all official transactions be held in English, this legislation contributed to the loss of public institutional support for the widespread maintenance and use of German in the public domain. As a result, English was established as the official prestige language, while Texas German was relegated to the private domain (e.g., home, friends, shooting and singing clubs, neighbors, and church). Between the two world wars, many Texas German children thus learned German as their first language at home and English at school. Concomitantly, a significant number of Texas Germans did not pass on their mother tongue to their children for fear of anti-German sentiments and discrimination. These children were thus raised with English as their first language, while only acquiring a passive knowledge of Texas German by being exposed to conversations among members of the older generations.
As a result of World War II, the prestige of Texas German decreased even more, which in turn induced even more Texas German parents to raise their children in English-only homes. Children schooled in English in between the two world wars were more likely to identify with the more prestigious English than with the traditional Texas German of their parents and grandparents. Further, many servicemen returning from their duty in World War II had not spoken Texas German for an extended period and spoke primarily English on their return to Texas.
In the post-World War II years, the demographics of the “German Belt” began to change. The increased migration of nonGerman speakers to the traditional German enclaves resulted in most public transactions taking place in English. The predominant use of English in the public domain pushed the use of German even further into the private domain.
This declining use of German led most Texas German newspapers and church services to switch to English at the end of the 1940s. At the same time, young Texas Germans left the traditional German-speaking areas for employment in larger cities such as Austin, San Antonio, and Houston, or to enroll in college or the military. For this group, speaking primarily English had a number of practical and economical advantages, eventually leading to a linguistic decline in their command of Texas German. Another factor contributing to the shrinking number of German speakers in the post—World War II years was the increase in marriages between German and non-German speakers. In these cases, English typically became the language of the household, which led to children being raised exclusively with English.By the 1960s about 70,000 Texas German speakers lived in the central Texas area (Gilbert 1972). Whereas German was the principal language for most Texas Germans as late as the 1940s, and German monolin- guals anchored the community’s language uses well into the 1960s, English became the primary language for most Texas Germans in both private and public domains in the 1970s, when the language shift from German to English reached its final stage. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, only an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 fluent speakers of Texas German remain. The number of semifluent speakers using a drastically reduced inventory of phrases based on the language of their forebears is estimated to be 4,000 to 6,000. Because the great majority of the remaining fluent and semifluent speakers of Texas German in 2005 are sixty years and older and Texas German is not learned by the younger generations, it is considered a critically endangered dialect. This sharp decrease in speakers puts Texas German on the list of about 3,000 languages and dialects worldwide that are expected to become extinct by the end of the twenty-first century.
Some Linguistic Properties ofTexas German
Texas German differs from Standard German and other German dialects in a number of significant ways.
These differences have led many speakers of Texas German to believe that their dialect is a substandard or somewhat inferior variety vis-a-vis other dialectal variants of German. However, this view lacks any scientific evidence, as linguists have repeatedly demonstrated that nonstandard varieties have their own sets of rules and exceptions that equal those of standard varieties in complexity and regularity.The first and most obvious area in which Texas German differs from other German dialects is its lexicon. While the basic vocabulary brought over from Germany remains virtually unchanged, the Texas German lexicon consists of approximately 1 to 3 percent of words that are borrowed from English. Among the nouns borrowed from English, many refer to agricultural, technical, or cultural concepts that did not exist at the time when German settlers first arrived in Texas. They include, for example: das Antifreeze, die Battery, die Car, der Carburetor, der Dime, die Electricity, die Exhaustpipe, der Fanbelt, der Gastank, die Homeplate, der Longhorn, der Mesquitebaum, der Muffler, der Norther, der Peachbaum, der Pitcher, der Radiator, der Sheriff, die Truck, die Vierbits, das Windshield, and die Zweibits, among many others. At the same time, there are a sig- nifιcant number of English nouns for which there existed perfect German counterparts at the time of German immigration. Over time, the original German nouns dropped largely out of use and were replaced by their English counterparts. Sometimes, individual speakers use both German and English nouns interchangeably. Examples are nouns such as die Blackberry, der Butcher, der Candy, das Courthaus, die Fence, das Game, der Mule, die Napkin, die Pickle, die Postoffice, das Property, der Recess, die Road, das Rope, der Shelf, and die Whip, among others. Besides nouns, Texas German has also borrowed a significant number of verbs from English. Among them are verbs such as arresten (to arrest), aufpicken (to pick up), batten (to bat a ball), cannen (to can food), cultivaten (to cultivate), einfencen (to fence in a field), fighten (to fight), jumpen (to jump), lynchen (to lynch), meeten (to meet), paven (to pave), picken (to pick cotton), scrapen (to scrape), smoken (to smoke meat), spellen (to spell), trappen (to trap animals), and yellen (to yell).
An interesting fact about English verbs borrowed into Texas German is that they conform to regular inflectional patterns of German. That is, when a verb such as paven (to pave) occurs in the present perfect tense in sentences such as Sie haben die Road gepaved (They have paved the road), then the verb paven takes on the regular German ge- prefix that marks it as a past participle. Similarly, so-called particle verbs such as aufpicken (to pick up) insert the ge- in between the particle and the verb when the participle is formed: Gestern haben wir die Cotton aufgepickt (Yesterday, we picked up the cotton). Besides adhering to Ger- manlike word formation patterns, the borrowing of English verbs into Texas German may sometimes lead to ambiguities and misunderstandings. For example, a sentence like Montag habe ich abgenommen (word-by-word translation: Monday have I off-taken) can be interpreted in two different ways. The first interpretation relies on the meaning of the Standard German verb abnehmen (to lose weight), yielding “On Monday I lost weight.” The second interpretation involves the calque abnehmen based on the English verb “to take off” (time), yielding the interpretation “I have taken off Monday.”
Another area in which Texas German differs from other varieties of German is its phonetics and phonology; that is, the way sounds are pronounced. English words borrowed into Texas German often exhibit a distinct German-sounding pronunciation. For example, the Texas German pronunciation of store, smokehouse, sink, and road are “shtohr,” “shmokhaus,” “zink,” and “rohd.” Texas German pronunciation differs from that of Standard German in a variety of ways. The most obvious one is the near absence of umlauted vowels. Whereas Standard German displays the umlauts /à/, /î/, and /è/, Texas German substituted these sounds with /e/, /e/, and /i/, respectively. To illustrate, we find Standard German er schlagt (he hits) becoming er schlegt in Texas German, and Standard German schon (beautiful) and uber (over) are realized in Texas German as schen and iber, respectively.
Texas German also differs from Standard German in the way that /r/ is pronounced. For example, the words Regen (rain), dreissig (thirty), and hier (here) are pronounced with a trilled /r/ in Standard German, but with an American English retroflex /r/ by many Texas Germans, particularly by the younger speakers. This example illustrates how prolonged contact with English has led to substantial sound substitutions in Texas German.One of the most important characteristics in Texas German morphosyntax is its reduced case system. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, linguists are in the unique position of being able to observe the evolution of the Texas German case system because of prior research conducted in the 1950s on the different uses of cases by members of different generations. These historical records are compared and contrasted with current data, thereby providing valuable insights into how the Texas German case system has evolved vis-a-vis other German dialects. That is, whereas Standard German has a four-case system consisting of nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive cases, Texas German has basically lost the genitive case and retained the dative case only in selected environments. As such, Texas German shows a development that is similar to that of many other German dialects, which have lost the genitive and dative cases over the centuries. For example, possessive genitives such as in Dies ist Wilburs Schmokhaus (This is Wilbur’s smokehouse) are replaced by possessive datives such as Dies ist dem Wilbur sein Schmokhaus (literally, This is the Wilbur his smokehouse), or what looks like a possessive accusative such as Dies ist den Wilbur sein Schmokhaus (literally, This is the Wilbur his smokehouse). Similarly, dative case marking on personal pronouns has given way to accusative case marking, replacing the dative pronoun mir (to me) as in Bernice gibt mir das Geld (Bernice gives the money to me) with its accusative counterpart mich (me) as in Bernice gibt mich das Geld (Bernice gives the money to me). Another example of case coalescence in Texas German can be found with prepositions such as uber (over) and unter (under) that typically mark the following noun with dative case when indicating a location instead of motion or a change of state. To illustrate, sentences such as The picture hangs over the bed would be translated into Standard German as Das Bild hangt uber dem Bett where dem Bett is marked with dative case following the preposition uber. Instead, most Texas Germans translate this sentence as Das Bild hangt uber das Bett where das Bett is marked with accusative case.
In 2005, it is not clear whether the developments in the Texas German case system are caused by external or by internal factors. An analysis focusing on external factors would attribute the development in the Texas German case system to the influence of English, which has a drastically reduced case system. Adherents of such an analysis would argue that Texas German has changed due to its prolonged contact with English, eventually leading Texas German speakers to adopt a reduced case system. Proponents of an analysis favoring internal factors would suggest that these developments are part of a naturally occurring process that proceeds at different speeds depending on a speech community’s structure. As such, Texas German is finally undergoing a natural development that has already taken place in other German dialects.
Variation in Texas German Whereas the term Texas German evokes the idea that one is dealing with a clearly definable dialect, this classification is difficult to support. This is because a great number of different donor dialects brought to Texas in the middle of the nineteenth century intermingled and mixed to various degrees in the German enclaves throughout the German Belt. Depending on factors such as geographic isolation, variety of different donor dialects, availability of school instruction in Standard German, and contact with non-German speakers, distinct subvarieties of Texas German evolved over the past 150 years. Thus, based on the regional flavoring of Texas German one can often identify even into the twenty-first century the particular region of Germany from which the original settlers came to Texas.
For example, linguists agree that there are a number of differences between the Texas German varieties spoken in the Hill Country to the west of Austin (Fredericksburg, New Braunfels, and Mason), as opposed to those spoken to the east of Austin (Giddings, La Grange, Schulenburg). The western area was predominantly settled through the efforts of the Adelsverein. The majority of immigrants came from the west duchy of Nassau (located in the present- day German states of Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hessen, and Rheinland-Pfalz). In contrast, the settlers in the eastern area came predominantly from northern Germany and Saxony, speaking different varieties of Low German and Saxon. These differences in settlement patterns are reflected by differences in the pronunciation and choice of words from different dialectal regions in Germany.
Aside from this general split in settlement patterns, there are other linguistic groups that have influenced the formation of Texas German to various degrees. One group is the Sorbs (Wends), which settled in Lee County. Being surrounded by German settlements in Texas led to gradual assimilation and to giving up their Wendish language in favor of German within two generations. Subsequently, the Wends, too, underwent the gradual assimilation from speaking Texas German to English. As little research has so far been conducted on the influence of Wendish, the full scope of its influence on the Texas German spoken in Lee County is rather unclear. The most obvious influence is the borrowing of the words der Braschka (the man in charge of the food at a wedding) and der Bobbak (boogie man). The other large Texas German-speaking group different from the two general east- and west-Texas German groups are the descendants of settlers who immigrated to Medina County, to the west of San Antonio. These settlers came from Alsace, on the western bank of the Rhine River in present-day France. As such, their Alsatian dialect differed from most of the other German dialects brought to central Texas in that it exhibited features characteristic of south German dialect varieties. The influence of Alsatian on present-day Texas German in Medina County is most obvious in the pronunciation of words. To illustrate the broad regional variation between different subvarieties of Texas German, consider the different translations of the verb to die in the past tense in a sentence such as The animal died out in the pasture (Gilbert 1972). The different Texas German translations include, among others, ist tot gegangen (went dead), is tot (is dead), ist tot (is dead), ging tot (went dead), ist verreckt (literally “kicked the bucket”), ist gestorben (died), and ist kaputt gegangen (went broken).
Despite the multitude of donor dialects that have provided the base for Texas German, some scholars have argued that the dialect is primarily formed from a middle-northern base, which over time has assimilated other dialectal varieties. In this view, Texas German is a modified Standard
German with strong regional colorations depending on the location. As Texas German is spoken only by a few thousand elderly speakers at the beginning of the twenty-first century, there is little time left to research the exact linguistic makeup of this unique dialect. To tackle this problem, the Texas German Dialect Project at the University of Texas at Austin (http://www.tgdp.org) is interviewing as many remaining Texas German speakers as possible. These interviews are permanently stored in a digital archive of Texas German as a resource for future generations to study Texas German culture, language, and history well beyond the eventual death of this distinctive dialect.
Hans C. Boas
See also Adelsverein; Fredericksburg, Texas;
Iowa, German Dialects in; Kansas, German Dialects in; New Braunfels, Texas; Pennsylvania German (Dutch) Language; Sorbs (Wends); Texas; World War I and German Americans
References and Further Reading
Boas, Hans C. “Tracing Dialect Death: The Texas German Dialect Project.” In Proceedings of the 28th Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Eds. Mary Larson and Louise Paster. Berkeley Linguistics Society—Linguistics Department of the University of California, Berkeley, 2003, pp. 387—398.
Crystal, David. Language Death. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, 2000.
Eikel, Fred. The New Braunfels Dialect.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1954.
Gilbert, Glenn. Linguistic Atlas of Texas German. Austin: University of Texas, 1972.
Guion, Susan. “The Death of Texas German in Gillespie County.” In Language Contact across the North Atlantic. Eds. Per Sture Ureland and Iain Clarkson. Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1996, pp. 443—463.
Jordan, Gilbert. “The Texas German Language of the Western Hill Country.” In Texas and Germany: Crosscurrents (Rice University Studies 63). Ed. J. Wilson. Houston: Rice University, 1977, pp. 59-71.
Nicolini, Marcus. Deutsch in Texas. Munster: LIT-Verlag, 2004.
Salmons, Joe. “Issues in Texas German Language Maintenance and Shift.” Monatshefte 75, no. 2 (1983 ):187-196.
Wilson, Joseph. “The German Language in Central Texas Today.” In Texas and Germany: Crosscurrents (Rice University Studies 63). Ed. J. Wilson. Houston: Rice University, 1977, pp. 47-58.