Kirsten Vera Van Rhee

Van Rhee:the Pennsylvania German Englis Kirsten Vera Van Rhee

Seminar paper from the year 1993 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Englische Philologie), course: Varieties of American English, language: English, abstract: The long persistence of Pennsylvania German English for nearly two centuries in an English-speaking territory which was settled by English, Scotch-Irish and Welsh as early as by Germans , naturally brought about a certain contact between English and German language that influenced both, the generally spoken English and the specific dialect formation that languages borrowed from each other. This paper is an attempt to show in how far this language contact has caused mutual language borrowings, which were by no means restricted to vocabulary items but also extended to phonological and syntactic features, having as well influential effects on intonational patterns.