Talk:Pennsylvania Dutch language

Requested move 4 May 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Overall there's a clear consensus to move. Some argue against the move because in linguistic literature the term "Pennsylvania German" is more often used or because the title is considered by some editors to be an incorrect name (although that's disputed). However, most editors commenting do not accept that argument or consider it to supersede WP:COMMONNAME in this case. (t · c)  buidhe  01:19, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Pennsylvania German language → Pennsylvania Dutch language – This title has been a travesty against WP:COMMONNAME for years. Absolutely everyone in Pennsylvania calls this Pennsylvania Dutch. We already moved Pennsylvania Dutch to the correct title.

When I looked through the talk history, I see the vast majority of comments have been in favor of a move. The only exception is the last requested move, which failed only because enough people failed to show up for the discussion.

(courtesy ping User:TortillaDePapas who recently commented) Magog the Ogre (t • c) 11:53, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Hardly "absolutely everone". Kutztown is in PA, but it's the "Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center". — kwami (talk) 00:50, 5 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Supposrt per WP:commonname—blindlynx (talk) 13:58, 4 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the ping. Support TortillaDePapas (talk) 14:24, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Support per WP:COMMONNAME. Rreagan007 (talk) 17:19, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
 *  Support  per WP:COMMONNAME. This is a clear and indisputable case where the accepted scientific name is not the common name.  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 18:00, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Kwamikagami's argument below. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 00:56, 5 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Support. Even though I know it's a dialect of German and the "Dutch" is a rendering of "Deitsch" (comparable to the origin of Netherlands "Dutch") meaning "German", in English I've only known it to be called "Pennsylvania Dutch", and even the first sentence of the article has said that's the more common name for the last 15 years. Largoplazo (talk) 18:48, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Support "Dutch" doesn't commonly referred as the Netherlands in Pennsylvania Dutch. 180.242.74.101 (talk) 21:01, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Support move per COMMONNAME.  O.N.R.  (talk) 23:24, 4 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment Ngram shows 3:1 to 6:1 in favor of "Pennsylvania Dutch" in recent years (though the gap has narrowed considerably over prior decades). And that would be the choice per the criterion of "Recognizability". But per COMMONNAME, "inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources." ISO, Ethnologue, Glottolog, LinguistList and the Endangered Languages Project all use "Pennsylvanian German", as does Kutztown University's Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center. Jellyfish and starfish are similar names in another field, where we went with a common name that conflicts with the modern use of a word. (In the 17th century they were fish, as were whales, but they are no longer.) Note that Pennsylvania Dutch English is also relevant here. — kwami (talk) 00:47, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Kwami makes a good argument that the speakers themselves use "Pennsylvania German" (or, in language, "Deutsch") and all reference works on the language use "Pennsylvania German". I'll change my "support" to "oppose".  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 00:56, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't consider "Pennsylvania Dutch" to be "inaccurate" per se because it isn't directly related to the modern Dutch language anymore than I consider french fries to be an inaccurate term because it has nothing to do with France. "Pennsylvania Dutch" is the name most commonly used in reliable sources, as well as the most commonly used term in general, so that's what our article title should be. Rreagan007 (talk) 23:27, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
 * This article is about a language, so the only reliable sources that count as reliable sources are linguistics ones. Nearly 100% of linguistics sources use "German", so your comment about "Dutch being the most commonly used term in reliable sources" is false.  (I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to some linguistics source I have not seen, so not an absolute 100%.)  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 13:06, 6 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment - Not knowledgeable enough about this particular topic to feel comfortable presenting my reply as a !vote; but Kwami makes a very good argument that the current title may conform better to policy and also fundamentally be less misleading. HumanBodyPiloter5 (talk) 04:09, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose per WP:PRECISION. Not only does "Pennsylvania German" prevail in scientific literature, the current name distinguishes it from Pennsylvania Dutch English, serving as a WP:NATURALDAB. Nardog (talk) 00:56, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose Only commented above, as wanted to think about it. While you can still occasionally find "Pennsylvania Dutch" in the recent linguistic lit, the field has largely shifted to Pennsylvania German, as Penn Dutch is misleading. (Most people, at least outside PA, who aren't familiar with the language naturally assume that "Penn Dutch" is Dutch, to the extent that intros need to clarify that it's not.) As for the claim above that the name "Penn Dutch" is not inaccurate, perhaps within PA "Dutch" means German, but for the rest of the English-speaking world, "Dutch" means Dutch. So we have two quite valid and defensible but conflicting rationales: Common usage indeed is "Penn Dutch", but RS's are overwhelmingly "Penn German". Add in the potential for "Dutch" to mislead our readers and the fact that the people themselves call themselves "Penn German", at least a significant amt of the time, and I've come down on the side of keeping the article in line with RS's.
 * As for the people being at Pennsylvania Dutch, I don't find the discrepancy bothersome. We generally try to use the same name for a people and their language, but there are plenty of exceptions. — kwami (talk) 22:52, 8 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment - this discussion is everything that's wrong with Wikipedia. The denonym and the significant majority of popular usage is Dutch, while the scientific literature is nearly even, but we are going to close this discussion as no consenus because the permanently online crowd who live outside the state, have no knowledge of our history, and haven't a single clue on popular usage decided their opinion was more relevant than the popular one. You know what? Fine, keep your stupid name. Can't say you weren't warned. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 16:00, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I favor the name change, but nevertheless: If this discussion is everything that's wrong with Wikipedia then, given that you're stating that a disagreement over which sources to give more weight to in choosing which title to use for an article is everything wrong with Wikipedia, it's as though you're saying that, overall, Wikipedia really has very little wrong with it and there's utterly nothing else about it to criticize. If that isn't what you meant, then take this as a lesson on how one undermines oneself when one's contribution to a discussion relies so much on overwrought rhetoric.
 * In addition, you didn't warn us of anything, so "Can't say you weren't warned" also seems to serve a purely rhetorical purpose. Largoplazo (talk) 16:11, 9 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Support Pennsylvania Dutch is near-universal in non-academic media. Pennsylvania German appears frequently in linguistic articles, but this need not take precedence over common usage, as Wikipedia is not an academic publication.Zhanmusi (talk) 16:37, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Dative usage for possession instead of genitive
It might be interesting to add that there are/were similar phenomenons in English (his genitive) and modern German (as described in the book Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod). Nakonana (talk) 15:58, 12 August 2023 (UTC)