Cousin Teresa says, " Cole Camp is only about 25 miles from Windsor, Mo.
It is a wonderful little German town where they spend a lot of time in
preserving their German heritage.
They are writing a "low German" dictionary. Low German is the spoken
German, and "high German" is what they use when they write anything. Many
people think it had to do with where people lived in Germany, but that is
not the reason for two languages. Low German is spoken by even the
"highest" or "most elite" people. High German is what is used for business,
etc. Strange, but true. As I understand it, low German has never been
written down, so the Cole Camp Germans are attempting to do that, plus they
teach special classes for the children in low German so the language will
not be lost. They have a low German choir which performs at all their
festivities, which are many in Cole Camp."
Lest this post is taken as gospel. There are many Low German dictionaries in
print. I have two of them next to me. I also have many books and articles
written in Platt which historically has been the language of the rural
population while the city folk spoke high German. Today Platt is being
preserved as best it can but its time is numbered as a common communications
tool. Today everybody speaks Hochdeutsch and Platt is for reserved for local
chit-chat.
Things may be different in Cole Camp as surely they have a dialect all of
their own much like the Mennonites who mix a healthy portion of English into
their language. So if Maurice is describing conditions in Missouri he may
well be correct.
Fred
PS the archives are full of previous dicussions on Platt or Low German.
730 5th St. NW
Naples, FL 34120
FredRump@gmail.com
Cole Camp corrections......I live in Cole Camp and am the manager of the
Cole Camp German singers...Most of our singing is done in High German. We
are not teaching Low German. I work with 18 young people in our Kinderchor
but their songs are also in High German. We are not writing a Low German
dictionary. There are several excellent ones available. Low German was the
language of the Hansa many years ago, but today it is only spoken in the
northern areas of Germany and is gradually disapearing there also.
However, we are working hard to preserve our German heritage.
Neil Heimsoth
Many of the German Lutheran families that I grew up with in the Midwest
came from in and around Cole Camp, MO. Those older families that I knew
spoke what they called low German. These families moved further west and
settled, some on homestead lands. My home community had Mennonites, Amish
and German Lutherans around as a predominance. If you were from a certain
part of the county, you were generally a part of one of those sects. I was
never sure what was low German etc but all seemed to think they were
speaking low German.
Marvin Woltje
PO Box 163478
Sacramento, CA 95816
marv@mindsync.com
In Lank-Latum is the location of Missouri Platz. The sign there mentions
several mid-Missouri towns, including, off hand, Loose Creek and St. Thomas,
but not (Bavarian) Rich Fountain.
Some schools in that area were taught in German until about 70 years ago.
Some of the folks from that part of Germany emigrated to those Missouri
towns as early as 1835, shortly after steamboats ran the Mississippi.
About 20 years ago, some people from those towns, mainly Loose Creek,
decided to go to Germany in search of cousins. [They knew the region.] It
turned out that they had retained a dialect that was of great interest to
the Germans. Subsequent group trips between Missouri and Germany focused on
language.
Nice to know about Cole Camp. I will have to make it a point to visit there
the next time I travel to Mo.
You are of course incorrect about your definition about Low and High German.
The English speaking people translate the word Platt to mean Low when it
should be translated to Flat. The word Platt or Low is used in this since to
refer to the Low Lands of Northern Europe and has nothing to do with
economic or education of the people that speak Plattdeutsch or Low German as
some refer to Plattdeutsch. Plattdeutsch is a language and not a dialect as
Badisch, Bayerisch or Hessisch. If one would look at a topographical map of
Europe you would see that the land rises in altitude from the North Sea to
the Alps in Southern Germany. There for you have a Platt(low) area by the
sea a Lower Bayern (near middle Germany) and a Over Bayern in southern
Germany.
Plattdeutsch was widely spoken in earlier years as the sailors of Northern
Europe carried the language with them to all parts of the world. The
language of commerce for the Hanseatic League was in large part (if not all)
Plattdeutsch along with Latin.
Martin Luther (1483-1516) was credited with the beginning of Hochdeutsch
(high German) when he translated the Bible from Latin to German. At that
time there were so many dialects of the German people he decided to write it
in a language that all Germanic People could understand. So now you have
Hochdeutsch(high German) being the language that is spoken on the
television, radio and in the government as this is the official Language of
Germany, Austria and Switzerland. And Plattdeutsch the language of the
Northern People who care about their heritage and culture
As far as it not being a written language that is also incorrect as there
are many books written in Plattdeutsch and it can be heard on the radio
daily in Northern Europe.
A simple search through the internet will find a wealth of information about
Plattdeutsch that was spoken by many of or ancestors from northern Europe
and that is still proudly spoken in Oestfreisland.
Jim Decker
Somewhere in my files, I have an article that was published in the Kansas
City Star, in about 1988 or 89, that was about a group from Loose Creek who
went to Germany and found their roots. They even listed a phone number that
you could call and hear a recording of the Low German dialect spoken in
Loose Creek. Their dialect is slightly different than ours. There are
several Low German clubs in America and they have a meeting every two years.
This year it was in Walcott, Iowa. Those attending came from our club here
in Cole Camp (Niedersachsen Platt), the Schleswig-Holstein group in Iowa,
the Mecklenburg-Pomeranian group from central Wisconsin and various other
small groups. These groups all speak Plattd��tsch or Low German, but there
is quite a difference among the groups. In 1989 we hosted a group of 46
from Elsdorf, Germany which is in the area of our ancestors. They were
amazed to hear us use Low German words that they barely remembered hearing
from their grandparents. The Low German spoken today in Germany has evolved
to include a lot of high German, where ours is the same that our forefathers
brought with them in the 1840's and 50s.
Neil H.
I'm curious if the Low German that is still being spoken there is being passed on in large part, or will it too invariably go the way of the dinosaurs within a short time, like so many other things today? That which we took for granted in times past cannot always be said in the present age now that we have the influence of mass communications on such a broad and ubiquitous scale (with varying positive and negative results). The bleeding over effect of all this can be quite overwhelming (the Internet and Hannover-L are mere offshoots of the 'information age' phenomenon). Heck, even the aborigines are in pursuit of MP3 players today!
While your generation still retains this cultural marvel, are the youngins' there absorbing it as your generation did? It seems to me that where Parkinson's Law in business and Moore's Law in computing are withstanding the tests of time quite well (proving to be as true today as when they were first proposed), you folks seem to be defying the Immigrants' Language Law (sic), whereby the first generation speaks the native tongue mainly at home and amongst friends in their community while struggling to adopt the new language, the second generation learns a somewhat "lighter" version of it but speaks it almost exclusively at home, and the third generation wonders what those occasional foreign glibly-gook phrases from their second generation parents mean (now spoken mostly under their breath, and often as curse words).
Exceptions apply of course, but can probably be counted using your fingers.
Having lived in California most of my life I have never been bothered with
the Mexican/American people speaking Spanish. But I do wonder about the
German/Americans not being able to speak their mother tongue.
Jim
In the Cole Camp Low German area, which includes northern Benton county,
southern Pettis and western Morgan counties of Missouri, there are probably
no more than 300-400 people who can still speak the language and the
majority of these are older than fifty. So, yes, this too will go the way of
the dinosaurs. I grew up in Stover, in Morgan county, and barely remember
hearing the Hamlisch dialect of Low German. There are only a few left who
can speak it.
Neil H.
I'm curious if the Low German that is still being spoken there is being passed on in large part, or will it too invariably go the way of the dinosaurs within a short time, like so many other things today?
I think the Pommerns in the Mequon-Freistadt area of Wisconsin are passing on the language and culture to their children. Pommeranians spoke Platt also, though it was different from the Platt of Hanover. (My Dad's people were from Hannover, my mom's from Pommern -- they could hardly understand one another.)
Anyway the Pommerscher Verein Freistadt has some good things going with a dance/music group. It's neat to see the young people involved and continuing to be interested in the ways of their forefathers. It makes me wish I lived a lot closer to Milwaukee.
Where I grew up, it was as you described
"the first generation speaks the native tongue mainly at home and amongst friends in their community while struggling to adopt the new language, the second generation learns a somewhat "lighter" version of it but speaks it almost exclusively at home, and the third generation wonders what those occasional foreign glibly-gook phrases from their second generation parents mean."
I remember the 'was ist los' - I thought it meant, "What's going on?"
I also grew up with the phrase 'fer stay?' I was advised by my German cousin that it's 'Versthste.' My father pronounced it 'fer stay' - or "Do you understand?" Of course I also heard the phrase "nick-fer-stay' (nicht versthste) just as often.
Having lived in California most of my life I have never been bothered with
the Mexican/American people speaking Spanish. But I do wonder about the
German/Americans not being able to speak their mother tongue.
Jim
During the First and Second World Wars, Germans were discouraged from speaking German outside their homes. In fact, my mother thought it was illegal to speak German on the phone. I don't know if there was actually a law against it, but that was her impression.
It's almost sad but inevitable Neil. But so is the march of progress. I hope a few find a way to carry on for all it's worth. Appreciate the follow-up.
As for you Barbie-Lew: Was ist los mit Pop?? Or to pinch from Gary's kin: Ich verstehe nicht [ist richtig]! I used to call my father Pop, and I still do (though he's no longer here). Er, onward. [Cactus Flower, you keep us young, and the archives dust-free ;-)]
To add a bit to Don and Joy's remarks: Realistically few can escape the "When in Rome, do as the Romans" syndrome over the long haul, now as in the past :: partly so as to not stick out more than necessary, partly to find a suitable footing in the social strata and thus feel adequately accepted. The push to "Americanize" was quite strong among most early immigrants. The neue Amerikaner Deutsch were not alone in this regard. Sadly though the echo of "The past is the past! Auf Wiedersehen!" seems to wind through many early German family member sentiments (more so with some than others naturally).
My father (who like myself picked up only broken German) told me on occasion how his grandfather loved to sit him on his knee as a child and speak softly to him in his native tongue. It was only a matter of time before the two of them would be marching majestically about the room together with German martial tunes blaring from the aged Victrola, that is until Ama (Grandma) would storm in and put and end of it, chasing them both outside. It could still bring tears to my father's eyes as he recalled those carefree childhood days in the company of happy old Apa, even though he had by then grown to grandfatherly age himself.�
But alas all good things must end. When old Apa left the scene a few years later, Pop recalled watching Ama gather all of the old family artifacts that had survived the original journey, place them in a pile in the backyard and set a match to them. Ama was well up in her years by then, but the pyre of items going up in smoke struck my then young father as something quite unnerving. His mother tried to intervene, but there was no stopping it.
I've made it a mission of sorts to reclaim much of that unfortunate loss, if not in tangibly then at least abstractly. Strangely, if I sit still long enough and allow myself to get lost in thought, I sometimes imagine I can hear vague strains of those old Germanic tunes.
I hope a few find a way to carry on for all it's worth. Appreciate the follow-up.