Talk:Texas German language

Untitled
The German word for "mile" is "Meile", or is it supposed to be "Meil" in this case? /arnewpunkt

It might just be a loan from English. Either way, it's pronounced like "Meil". Also, almost everything about this article is either wrong or misleading. I'll fix and expand it when I get some time. /jimblor


 * It's Meile, ultimately from the Latin mille, a thousand fathoms. Nowadays it does indicate a British Mile, a few hundred meters longer than a traditional Roman mile.  Meile has some interesting comparisons of Prussian, Saxon and other historical mile lengths.  Roman measurements had a way of sticking around as the only real international standard available, so I'd guess it passed to German directly from a Romance language rather early.   &mdash; Laura Scudder &#9742; 22:05, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Anglicization
I've had conversations, in German, with several native speakers of this dialect in Fredericksburg. They all seemed to prefer to pepper their speech with English constructions. For example, one individual said, "Das war pretty okay!", referring to my accent. At one point, when my group arrived at a small heritage site, the curator asked if we had "die greene Tickets." None of this really belongs in the article, but I include it here for anyone who might be interested.--5th Angel 21:02, 12 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Texas German has unrounding of the ü and ö vowels to i and e, so die grünen Tickets would come out sounding like "die greenen Tickets", even without English lexical influence. And Tickets is used in Germany by people who speak no English at all. —Angr (talk) 13:43, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Words like "cowboy" and "hamburger" are used in German speaking countries, too, so that would be bad examples for Texas-German anglicisms. Hamburgers probably also originate from Germany, so it's not an English word per se (referring to the city of Hamburg). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.110.76.137 (talk) 05:55, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Fayette County
There is still a considerable amount of German spoken in Fayette County as well. I am not sure that the dialect is exactly the same as in Fredericksburg, but it is German.

--F3meyer 12:40, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Luftschiff
A "Luftschiff" is a Zeppelin, not a "Flugzeug". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 89.14.24.237 (talk • contribs) 22:30, 21 March 2007  (UTC)
 * In Standard German, yes. But in Texas German, as pointed out in this article, Luftschiff in Texas German means "airplane". —Angr 22:51, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

all/alle
I don't get the distinction between the use of "all(e)" in Texas German as opposed to modern. "Der Kuchen ist alle" means "The cake is all (gone)" in most every dialect region except for Bavaria and Austria.Janko (talk) 22:58, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I think what it's trying to say is that in Standard German it's "Der Kuchen ist alle" but in Texas German it's "Der Kuchen ist all". +Angr 09:21, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Based on a particular dialect?
Is Texas German based on a particular German dialect (like other "diasporan" German dialects)? -- megA (talk) 13:01, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Apparently not. According to the Spiegel article linked at the bottom of the page, "Es ist auch einzigartig, weil es ein Mischdialekt aus mindestens fünf verschiedenen Dialekten ist, da die Immigranten aus verschiedenen deutschen Gebieten kamen." ("It's unique because it's a mixed dialect of at least five different dialects, since the immigrants came from different German areas.") —Angr (talk) 13:38, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps this should be pointed out as an outstanding feature? -- megA (talk) 19:32, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe, but I'd prefer a better source than Spiegel for it. The popular press has a habit of getting linguistic facts wrong. —Angr (talk) 20:04, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Not only linguistic ones, and especially the Spiegel, as I noticed some days ago... -- megA (talk) 10:34, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Now that's pretty self-evident...
"Almost all of these speakers are in either the 18-64 or the 65+ age groups." -- megA (talk) 13:02, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I've removed it as unsourced, but in fact I would suspect almost all of the speakers are in the 65+ (or even 85+) age group, not 18-64. —Angr (talk) 13:34, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I suspected as much... -- megA (talk) 19:33, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Odd mixture?
“It’s an odd mixture of English and 19th century German,” says Boas ... “Hardly any of the Texas Germans speak alike. There’s a lot of variation in the dialect. Texas German borrows about 5 to 6 percent of its vocabulary from English, creating words like ‘der hamburger’ or ‘der cowboy.’”[3]

This seems to be a quote from Boas's book. However, 'der hamburger' as an example of an 'odd mixture' of German and English is a bit peculiar, as the word that's supposed to be borrowed from English, 'hamburger' is originally a German word (adjectival form for the city of Hamburg). 'Hamburger steak' was replaced by 'hamburger' by 1930, which has in turn been somewhat displaced by the simpler term, 'burger'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KramerNL (talk • contribs) 14:36, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
 * But the English meaning of hamburger originated in English (unlike, say, the meaty meanings of frankfurter and wiener, which did originate in German). What I find unfortunate about this quote is that it doesn't illustrate anything unique about Texas German as opposed to German in Germany, since der Hamburger and der Cowboy are the usual terms in Germany too. He should have gone with things like der Truck or das Airplane or something that Germans in Germany don't say. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 07:16, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree that the examples by Prof. Boas aren't particularly fitting. "Der Hamburger" and "der Cowboy" are part of modern Standard German in German-speaking countries. Even "der Truck", by the way, you'll find it in the Duden dictionary. Maybe don't use that quote? But I have restored "der Hamburger" to the quote for now, someone had removed it - as it is a direct quote, it shouldn't be altered if used. Gestumblindi (talk) 21:37, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

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All Güt Things
If anyone wants to update the line with an "update needed" tag about the short documentary titled All Güt Things being made into a feature-length film to be completed in 2017, I found this web page with information about a screening of the finished film at the University of Texas (I think) in 2019, but I'm not sure how to add/format it if it's useable. Vielen dank. Metrowestjp (talk) 07:26, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Edit: I also found this page with more information on the "specifications" tab. Looks like the film was completed March 15, 2019. Apparently it's still only 35 minute long, so not really "feature length". I couldn't find it on IMDB. Thanks. Metrowestjp (talk) 07:38, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Standard American German?
It's mentioned that Standard American German was developed, yet I haven't really heard much of this outside of this article and German language in the United States with the latter using some of the "standard American German" from sources about Pennsylvania Dutch Davidalejandromc (talk) 22:09, 3 February 2024 (UTC)