Texas German: The American-German Dialect

[@TheLingOtter]

🌏 Get an Exclusive NordVPN deal + 4 months extra here ➼ nordvpn.com/thelingotter It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✌ Corrections: 1) Editing Mistake: The Standard German Word should be Eichhörnchen 2) Auto is more common than Wagen

[@ThomasTravis-e5k]

Thanks so much. Du bist sehr cool

[@Gyozamagic]

where the link to the texas german preservation project?

[@christopherb.2986]

i was thinking the same thing about "auto" but when youre talking about a car as in "part of a train", then "wagen" would be the most suitable translation and im sure thats what you were going for anyways :p

[@NoctivagantDiurnal]

I want to mention that, from what I understand, Germans pronounce "w"s as "v"s but I might be wrong. Still learning so... 😅

[@RandomThingsEn]

8:41 Germans more frequently say "Auto"

[@cameroneridan4558]

Or if you wanna be formal, Fahrzeug or Kraftfahrzeug. I've never heard anyone call a car a Wagen

[@redstonebro4965]

Sometimes as slang like schöner wagen or something like that but yeah it's rare

[@nikibordeaux]

​@@cameroneridan4558Unless you're watching Derrick 😉

[@Zeppelinschaffner22]

@@RandomThingsEn you misspelled "Dreckskarre"

[@kedrak90]

I still see Wagen being used from time to time. But it seems to very slowly drift out of use.

[@lucidattf]

8:28 german word for squirrel is a mistake here

[@BambooTime]

Should be "Eichhörnchen"

[@tru7hhimself]

@@BambooTime or eichkatzl, depending on the region.

[@jonasrmb01]

​@@tru7hhimself In Bavaria i think it would be more like Oachkatzl

[@tru7hhimself]

@@jonasrmb01 you'd definitely pronounce it as oachkatzl, but in a minimally formal context like a youtube video, i'd spell it as eichkatzl. bavarian or austrian don't have a standardised spelling, so both spellings are equally valid. and depending on the social context i might even say eichkatzl, even though it's oachkatzl normally.

[@Pfromm007]

As soon as I saw this, I knew the "Ackchyually" Mode inside every German viewer would be activated.

[@SantiagoHennig]

I believe that Pennsylvanian Dutch is called that because Germans refer to themselves as Deutsch which sounds like Dutch.

[@TOBAPNW_]

That's also the reason why the actual Dutch (from the Netherlands) are called that in English

[@Zeppelinschaffner22]

@@SantiagoHennig it's the same word. "German" in Dutch is "Duits" and in German its "Deutsch". Dutch is actually "Nederlands"/"Niederländisch". Its the English speaker that jumbled this up 😂 Germans and Dutch people are in agreement 🤝

[@daddykarlmarx6183]

That and also the modern concept of a unified Germany didn't really exist when the pa Dutch came here, pretty much everyone in that general area in Europe called themselves "Dutch" or their regional equivalent

[@benginaldclocker2891]

That's exactly why Pennsylvaniam Dutch is called such.

[@auburn_rachel]

ya, my german grandpa got his nickname "Dutch" in the army, so we called him Opa Dutch lol

[@Fermifire]

This channel is severely underrated. Love how easy I get his lessons.

[@Zeppelinschaffner22]

Just FYI both common and proper nouns should be capitalized in German. Interestingly also, "Eichkatz" is still a very recognizable word because it stems from the Bavarian dialect which is rather famous

[@ilikeyourname4807]

Although if it weren't for the meme status of the word, many Germans wouldn't understand the Bavarian version. Compare "Eichhörnchen" to "Oachkatzl"

[@ominusomega7803]

fun fact: theres a German dialect in Namibia (which was a former German colony) called Südwesterdeutsch/Namsläng/Namdeutsch as well as a German based Creole from Papua New Guinea (tho all the speakers now live in Australia iirc) called Unserdeutsch

[@TheDigitalApple]

Why do they all live in Australia? Was it because of standard anti colonial ethnic cleansing?

[@BosmanHa]

My great great grandmother was a German from South West Africa. I wonder if she spoke it.

[@Argacyan]

@@TheDigitalApple The empires of the day after WW1 banned German in every piece of land that was annexed. I think that would be better filed under colonial than anti-colonial, it was the British suppressing the language in Papua.

[@solarmoth4628]

It’s not really a fun fact since Germany also committed a genocide in Namibia and put the indigenous Namibians in the Shark Island concentration camps. It’s a dialect with an extremely sad colonial history tied to it.

[@BosmanHa]

@@solarmoth4628 Reddit-tier take. You're not allowed to appreciate a cool dialect because muh ebil colonialism.

[@GameTornado01]

Note that Luftschiff is a word that also finds use in standard high german, it's just used for stuff like fantasy airships instead of real life planes.

[@la-go-xy]

Zeppeline...

[@LangSphere]

8:10 small correction: usually "st" and "sp" are pronounced like "sht" and "shp" (except in hamburg)

[@la-go-xy]

Except in Hamburg

[@MikeEwer]

Small correction? I quit watching after 5 minutes. Awful pronunciations by someone calling themselves lingo-something.

[@LangSphere]

@@MikeEwer unless you give me a link to a video of you perfectly pronouncing a voiced velar trill, i won't agree with your argument. you do know that he is not a native german speaker, right? artefexian is half-german *i think*, and even he has an accent. sure, maybe the ling otter could've said that he's not a native german, and that he is not gonna pronounce the words perfectly, but what do you expect? he's not gonna download duolingo for some youtube video. also, noone's gonna learn the pronunciations of the most random german words from some random ass youtuber. what do you expect are the negative outcomes of this? like one person is gonna learn some german word with a wrong pronunciation? btw im not gonna read all of that(what i wrote) so if i repeated myself, i'm sorry

[@MikeEwer]

@@LangSphere I'm not talking about perfection. I'm talking about at least attempting to read it like it's a German word. Joe-han? Yo-hun. It's not that difficult. For all the research that went into this video it would have been better as a slideshow without audio if the language was going to be butchered that badly.

[@nikibordeaux]

He could use an AI voice for the German names. I mean, this is a lingo channel, and therefore some effort regarding pronunciation should be made.

[@neversarium]

Guy ran a boarding house in New York. Bought a large plot of land. He really did embezzle that post office money

[@Mino9V6]

Mexico was basically giving away free land in Texas at the time. They needed people to live there

[@LingoLizard]

Guten tag Jahl!!!

[@_Labyrinth_]

Wer ist Jah???

[@SubSkrub]

As someone with German descent, who grew up in and recently moved back to Texas, Texas German has always been super interesting to me and I'd love to learn it well enough to talk to some native speakers before they're all gone

[@Snoopy-20111]

Texas-German here! Accent-wise, I’ve always heard more southern-German influences with the hard throaty “ch” sounds instead of the low German “sh.” Unrelated note: Schulenburg = “Shoo-len-berg.” And despite the native speaker’s example, I’ve generally heard Boerne pronounced “Bernie,” though maybe my family just always said it wrong or was influenced by English more. My family immigrated to Texas from Germany from 1845 to the 1870’s, whose documents from landing in Galveston and early photos we still have. My great grandma was born in 1910 and spoke German first, as did my grandma born in the 1930’s. Negative views on Germans definitely hurt the perception of speaking it in public, and we have a few stories of that from the WW1 era, but another factor missed is that, after the 1870’s or so when Germany unified, the immigration slowed and the number of English speakers grew exponentially. My great grandma married a fellow German speaker, so my grandma grew up speaking German around the house but learned English and spoke it at school/work. She married a man who spoke English in the 1950’s , so it hardly made sense to speak it at home (my mom only learned bits and pieces). I was lucky enough to see the town my family came from when studying in Germany, big plaque on a wall and everything. Anyway, thanks for the video! It’s really cool to see you discuss something near and dear to me.

[@Timothy.Cuevas]

I've always pronounced Boerne as "Bernie," but prior to that I referred to it as "that cute town outside of San Antonio," lol.

[@TexasGermanDialect]

How interesting! We here at the Texas German Dialect Project are still looking for Texas Germans to interview -- if you'd be up for it, please let us know!

[@stalkerentertainment3671]

My friend jokingly spoke German with a American accent back in High-school. But never did I thought that there was a dialect of German that is exactly like that. Hopefully it will at least stay archived rather than lost on us completely like so many languages.

[@auburn_rachel]

Oh hell yeah! My German ancestors (the Albrechts) moved to Texas in the 1860s-80s, opened a German cornerstore outside of San Antonio, and my Grandma spoke German until she was 6 (and then she had to stop because of the war. It was 1945 lol). So my mom never learned it but my brother went to UT Austin and worked on the Texas German project and actually got his degree in linguistics, became fluent in German, and is studying proto-indo-european at the University of Vienna :)) We went on a family trip to Germany and he had a lovely time telling all the locals about our word for Stinkkatze with a Texas German accent hehe. I'm so happy it's getting more recognition! :DD

[@igcsestudent6756]

Studying Proto Indo European is like the coolest thing out there it's like studying the father of all(obviously not all but many) all the best to your brother i do want to learn the PIE and also be fluent in it but it hasnt been reconstructed yet properly

[@ThomasTravis-e5k]

Ok i live in texas and on my momsside her ancestors knew him, and they immigrated to texas in the 1800s , yeah . However. Im the only one in my family thatbspeaks german.

[@ThomasTravis-e5k]

Where i live in Texas there is a lot of Vietnamese speakers and I'm learning that as well ( and Korean)

[@ThomasTravis-e5k]

Sorry I can't type that well yet

[@partqfavor]

@@ThomasTravis-e5kfrom a fellow texan - vietnamese ppl r one of the largest asian diasporas in texas, bc the climate is similar. i also dont know any german that speaks german here w their family anymore tbh

[@ThomasTravis-e5k]

​@partqfavor oh that's nice just ask a dude in corpus Christian around 14. He's knows german.( me )

[@ruedigernassauer]

It sometimes hurts to listen to TheLingOtter´s pronunciation of German words. "Seil" would be in English spelling "zile" (he says "seal") and "Zaun" would be "tsown" (he says "zown"). "Eichkatze" for "squirrel" is regional Bavarian word. In colloquial German it is "Eichhörnchen".

[@Twisted_Logic]

"Joe-HANN"

[@soIzec]

It REALLY wouldn't hurt to just go to google translate and hear how it pronounces words. Is it perfect? No, but far more accurate than TheLingOtter's pronunciations.

[@monotonehell]

Same, and I don't even speak German. :D

[@maxhochdorfer3069]

​@@soIzecyeah I mean this is a channel about linguistics, so that shouldn't be too much to ask imo

[@la-go-xy]

​​@@Twisted_Logic Yo-hun or Kres-tee-un Freed-resh Arnst ...right, better use google &co

[@GameTornado01]

8:40 More commonly the standard high german word for car would be "Auto", Wagen is a more general term for things with wheels.

[@Mcdingusman]

Hey Texan resident here. Actually met a woman at the library who came here from Germany, turns out her husband was a Texan german. Pretty cool

[@riton349]

Went to Texas for a month. Didn't meet anyone who spoke Texas Germans, but met many Americans w. German ancestry, who learned High German as their second language.

[@partqfavor]

born and raised in texas, i dont know anyone who speaks texas german lol tbh

[@AxGerm756]

​@@partqfavoryou probably need to visit Fredericksburg 😅

[@Thunderstar7]

FINALLY A VIDEO ABOUT THIS!! Such an interesting history about this dialect! That region of Texas is beautiful as well

[@KotrokoranaMavokely]

Texas-Deutsch, auch Texas-Deutsch genannt, ist eine Kreolsprache, aber keine Mischung aus Englisch und Deutsch, wie der Begriff „Kreolisch“ vermuten lässt. Es ist eine vom Deutschen abgeleitete Sprache, insbesondere der hochdeutsche Dialekt, weist jedoch erhebliche Einflüsse aus dem Englischen und anderen Sprachen auf. Die Geschichte des Texasdeutschen reicht bis ins 19. Jahrhundert zurück, als deutsche Einwanderer in großer Zahl nach Texas zogen. Diese Einwanderer sprachen verschiedene Dialekte des Deutschen, vor allem Hochdeutsch, die Sprache, die in ländlichen Regionen Süddeutschlands gesprochen wurde. Als sie sich in Texas niederließen, fanden sie sich in einer Umgebung wieder, in der Englisch die vorherrschende Sprache war, und sie kamen auch mit Spanisch und anderen in der Region gesprochenen Sprachen in Kontakt. Im Laufe der Zeit begannen die von Einwanderern gesprochenen deutschen Dialekte zu verschmelzen und eine einzige Sprache zu bilden, die von Englisch und anderen Sprachen, mit denen die Sprecher in Kontakt standen, wie Spanisch und Französisch, beeinflusst wurde. Diese Sprache, Texas-Deutsch, zeichnet sich durch einen Wortschatz und eine Grammatik aus, die Elemente des Deutschen mit Elementen des Englischen und anderer Sprachen kombinieren. Es ist wichtig zu beachten, dass Texas-Deutsch nicht einfach eine Mischung aus Deutsch und Englisch ist. Es handelt sich um eine Sprache mit eigener grammatikalischer Struktur und eigenem Wortschatz, obwohl sie Wurzeln im Deutschen hat. Der Einfluss des Englischen ist in der Aussprache, der Grammatik und dem Wortschatz deutlich zu erkennen, doch das Texas-Deutsch weist Besonderheiten auf, die es vom Englischen und anderen Sprachen unterscheiden. Texas-Deutsch ist eine lebendige Sprache, obwohl sie aufgrund der Assimilation der Sprecher in die amerikanische Kultur und des wachsenden Einflusses des Englischen im Niedergang begriffen ist. Allerdings gibt es in Texas immer noch Gemeinden, in denen Texas-Deutsch gesprochen wird, und es gibt Bemühungen, diese einzigartige und geschichtsträchtige Sprache zu bewahren.

[@TheLordZoka]

There’s a few social clubs and bars where descendants of Texas Germans hang out. (Such as Sons of Hermann clubs). There’s also many German language choirs in cities like San Antonio, Austin, Fredericksburg and even Houston. I’ve talked with a few members who grew up speaking German at home, but most of them are quite old now. The choirs get together a few times a year at Sängerfests in different Texas cities. If you live in Texas and speak German, I recommend looking the Sängerfests up.

[@OzeMozeDoze]

I watch your videos a lot but this one is very hard because the constant moving is messing with my motion sickness : (

[@TheLingOtter]

I will reduce it for the next video! Thanks for letting me know

[@claso7221]

just wanna say i hope you never stop uploading ❤

[@lunawenko9324]

As someone that is from Oldenburg, I‘m always surprised how many people from my city have had some kind of effect on history

[@deutschermichel5807]

Well itʼs more about the Counts of Oldenburg and later the Granddukes of Oldenburg, ehose descendents today rule the Kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Great Britain etc.

[@lunawenko9324]

@@deutschermichel5807 Yeah

[@igcsestudent6756]

@@deutschermichel5807 Wait house of Windsor is from Oldenburg?

[@H3ad1nthecl0uds]

Weird because I was born, raised, and still live in Texas and I have German in me from on my dads side. I was told my great grandmother could only speak German AND when I tried the free part of ancestry it told me that she was born here and I was very confused. This could be part of my history and I’m kinda freaking out because I hardly know anything about my background ❤

[@christopherthr]

My grandmother grew up in north-central Texas in the 1920s, and she told me that they had to have two different schools in her relatively-small town, one taught in German for the German-speaking kids, and one taught in English for the English-speaking kids.

[@H3ad1nthecl0uds]

@@christopherthr that’s so cool! Thinking about a German school here is really fascinating.

[@Realcupcake]

8:28 there is a mistake it should be Eichhörnchen and not stinkkatze

[@zenboi6129]

would be cool to make this a series discussing the English X (insert language here) pigeons !! as a native russian speaker ive heard quite a lot about how russian evolved in the US in small communities all across rhe country :]

[@asseating_mailman]

Any good recommendations for channels or sources to help someone with an interest in the evolution of the russian language in the US?

[@dankmemewannabe]

I’m so curious, what communities are those? How might I read up on them?? I don’t know any Russian, but something I’ve picked up on from where I live in Oregon is that the vocative case is maintained, so if you’re talking to a guy named Дасик, you call him Дасия, from what I recall witnessing :0 There are also some speaking communities in Brazil I’m certain you’d find interest in!!

[@zombnoggin]

Ah, a weird mix between English and German what a beauty to behold

[@blakes_flakes]

I love videos like that to be honest. Thank you for looking up the history and sharing. One thing tho, I think it would be cool if in videos about other languages, you could find a native speaker, maybe helping you with stuff like pronounciation or to give you more context that you might not find on the web. Or maybe even spotting editing errors like the Eichhörnchen one. I am honestly not sure if that is too much to ask tho. But I bet there are people willing to help you in stuff like that for free. I for example wouldn't mind helping, should you ever wanna make another word about German language, and I bet I wouldn't be the only one. In any way, I am excited to see more videos of you and your cute otter avatar!

[@abbacadaver]

I lived in a city where they sent in German soldiers a few decades ago, only in New Mexico. Oktoberfest with green chiles and German next to Spanish writing. It was so cool

[@AsahiMiya]

I used to live in Fredericksburg, Texas. The dialect is fun. They do teach it in the schools there, but, optionally, since Spanish is another common language in the region, so a ton of people take those classes instead, unfortunately. Though, had I had taken a Texas German class in school instead of vocational rocket engineering I would have jumped the opportunity

[@MarcosEstevez-r2t]

Ive heard stories from my family from Texas (indigenous) see the culture change in New Braunfels, Texas over the years. Its really interesting but also kind of sad as they lost their heritage in the urge to assimilate. German food still hits the spot when I visit!

[@coolbrotherf127]

It's not as common nowadays, but there have been a lot of German immigrants that have come of Alabama over the years. My grandmother grew up bilingual in German in Mobile, AL during the 1930s after her family immigrated in the 1890s. It's still the 3nd most common language spoken at home in the state that's not English or Spanish.

[@johnvermillion4395]

I grew up in Marble Falls, TX. there are no German speakers anywhere around the area, at least outside of a few individuals who i never met, After I started learning German I asked friends who grew up in Boerne or Fredicksburg so I could find people to practice with, and they told me they it used to be spoken by a few people, but they didn't know of anybody left, or places where it was ever spoken I could go to. Outside of a rare few individuals who learned it as kids and have forgotten it now in their old age, it is completely extinct.

[@janvesely1087]

I swear almost every European language has a Texas dialect at this point

[@clarencehammer3556]

Also Tex-Mex a version of Spanish

[@nfrldr2]

My family literally came back to Germany after some years... my great granny still has an accent but that's it

[@nfrldr2]

Like from Austin

[@wanderingyeehaw]

0:23 i guess i never thought about it, but yeah that explains why there are so many german restaurants around here. i wanna learn german, so i wonder if moving out there to german texas would be good for that?

[@AgenderBee]

I would love to hear your take on Swiss German (South Alemannic) - that could be an interesting video to talk about concepts like "what is a dialect vs. language" or things like "medial diglossia".

[@TechnickelMusic]

I haven't seen any post on it (I didn't really look through all the posts), but there is a French dialect called Missouri French, mostly found in St. Francois county in the state of Missouri. it's similar to Texas German in that it has a number of English loanwords and calques not present in Metro French, Quebec French, and Louisiana French, even if it's more common to Quebec and Louisiana French than Metro French.

[@TechnickelMusic]

Sadly, unlike Texas German which had to switch to English because of the World Wars, most Missouri French speakers were taught English as kids because they were seen as stupid by the English speaking population of the area. while they do have revitalization efforts, the numbers of Missouri French speakers number in the hundreds, if not less than that.

[@astroneural]

5:29 Dachshund is pronounced "daak-snd." I never made the connection until very recently; they always existed separately in my mind. Cool video--I'm really liking the longer form content!

[@astroneural]

"Boerne" is also pronounced "Burn-ee" btw

[@danieljohn4014]

it's acctually prnounced in a way you can't write in english, but best is ducks hoond

[@ilikeyourname4807]

@@danieljohn4014 And being German, I've never met anyone wo actually calls it that in German. Most use the short form "Dackel"

[@Josukegaming]

My Oma (grandma) fled to the USA from Germany during WW2, and she settled along with a lot of other Germans and Slovenians in Northeast Ohio, where there is still a large population to this day. Not many still speak the language, and I wonder how much anti-german rhetoric had to do with it, as I never learned the language, and neither did my dad.

[@HotelPapa100]

"Eichkatze" ('Oachkatzl', to be precise) for 'squirrel' exists in German, in the Bavarian dialect/language.

[@keffen]

Now do a vid on Pennsylvania Dutch which isn't Dutch it's technically German but is actually not German either💀

[@clarencehammer3556]

I believe that I am about half German and half English but I have never had a DNA test. I think that both my parents were the same except that my paternal grandmother also was partly French. My maternal great grandfather was said to have been 1/4 Spanish but I don’t know how accurate that might be but he did speak Spanish and spent a lot of time in Mexico according to my grandmother. No one in my family spoke German to my knowledge and I never learned it. I was born and raised in Texas too. My surname Hammer is both English and German. Once a priest in the Air Force told me that he had just returned from Holland and that he had met many people there with the name Hammer.

[@Lunar.Ser3nity]

10:16 Don’t worry! I’m one and am very young

[@CyborgCMorg]

Interesting video! Quick note, the town of Boerne, TX is pronounced “Bernie” by people from the area

[@bigsqueak4086]

Hey, at 6:43 you claim that Fredericksburg is in Austin county but it's actually in Gillespie county.

[@lohostege]

Im currently learning German at a Uni, and im in Texas. My last name is also German, so this is kinda cool. Although tracing my last name back its mostly in Kansas and New York State

[@JaseLeake]

German cowboys lowkey sounds the coolest shit ever 😭🙏

[@goofyahhslimjackson1942]

FREDRICKSBURG FREDRICKSBURG!

[@Boredman567]

Fun fact: New Braunfels is home to a large German-themed waterpark, which I used to visit every summer with my family as a child. It was also the same waterpark used in the opening scene of Spy Kids 3D.

[@TexasGermanDialect]

Thanks for getting the word out about Texas German! We here at the Texas German Dialect Project are still looking for Texas Germans to interview, so if you know anyone, please reach out to us!

[@oakquercus]

Hi! My father knows tons of information on the Texas German Dialect. We live in a region of Texas near Brenham, which is a bit far from the bigger areas where the dialect is spoken like Fredericksburg. I'd love to get you in touch with him!

[@AxGerm756]

Try it in Fredericksburg

[@TexasGermanDialect]

@@AxGerm756 Thank you for the suggestion! We've interviewed many people from Fredericksburg, but if you have any suggestions of specific people we should reach out to, please send us an email!

[@edinogogg]

As a linguistics student I had my summer internship with one of our professors who studies Alaskan Russian. I had to work with the recordings from the speakers of Alaskan Russian from the expeditions to Alaska, held by Russian researchers. Nowadays this dialect (?) has almost died out, there are only very few elderly people who can remember some phrases or words. It was wild to hear some archaic words, which have died out in the standard Russian decades ago or changed their meaning. Alaskan Russian was once a lingua franca for the native peoples and russians in Alaska during the times when it was a part of the Russian Empire. To this day the culture and the language of many alaskans is being influenced by those of Russia in peculiar ways (for example, many people there are orthodox christians), which kinda fascinates me. :))

[@SantiagoHennig]

If I remember correctly, there were a lot of German immigrants in Michigan and they regularly spoke german to each other. Then in 1940, they all magically forgot it and only spoke english from then on. They are responsible for the town of Fowler and the high number of Thelens in the area.

[@Joshuathegreen]

My Oma spoke Texas German. I wish I recorded some before she passed.

[@TheJakeDixon]

We actually celebrate Oktoberfest where I’m at in TX

[@HotelPapa100]

Going by the thumbnail: Texas German? What I find astonishing listening to Texas-German is the accent. There's not a lot of English phonology that has creeped in. Vocabulary, yes, but the diction is surprisingly pure.

[@la-go-xy]

Do you mean the lady? She is very intelligible to a German, but definitly with an American accent!

[@clarencehammer3556]

@@la-go-xy I don’t speak German but I thought that she definitely sounded American even though I didn’t understand her at all.

[@dragonick2947]

This is a really interesting video. I enjoyed it! I will say, though, that I thought that the sponsor segue was a bit weird. It doesn't quite sit right with me. Aside from that, I'm always fascinated by communities who migrate all across the world like this! Thanks for the vid!

[@RandomThingsEn]

8:27 the german word wasn't changed, the actual German word is "Eichhörnchen"

[@Duke-1-m4u]

Would love to see you do a video with on Cajun French. My family is of Cajun descent but sadly doesn’t really speak it anymore. It’s a dying language sadly but there is still quite a number of native speakers out there, usually on the southern coast. Either way, great video!

[@RecklawTheAmazing]

If it wasn't for the World Wars, I really wonder how many people would still speak German in the US

[@clarencehammer3556]

I heard that but for one vote we all would be speaking German instead of English.

[@RecklawTheAmazing]

@clarencehammer3556 Nah that's kind of a myth. The vote was to have laws written in both English and German. German still wouldn't have become the national language, but it would've had a special status (still after English). Germans didn't have much representation in the early colonial government because they were mostly settling further inland and away from the major east coast cities

[@igcsestudent6756]

Maybe it would have a similar number to Spanish speakers? as English would still be the dominant language and many would rather assimilate than to preserve.

[@jjkthebest]

Fun fact: the bavarian word for squirrel also translates to oak cat (or little oak cat, I suppose)

[@Garfield_Minecraft]

Achievement unlocked: learned obsecure dialect

[@TalysAlankil]

i hate that i mostly understand that clip of texas dutch you play…because i know a decent amount of dutch :')

[@SmitzPNK]

Thats how the town of Fredericksburg was started, they have a comprehensive history tour you can go on too see how the early settlers lived

[@drews9008]

I was raised in the Fredericksburg area. I have heard people talking in German but never knew it could have been Texas-German. Personally I think it would have been way cooler for Texas-German to have been a combination of Spanish and German as there were and are quite a few Spanish speakers in the area as well. A few small corrections; Fredericksburg is in Gillespie County, not Austin. Also, Boerne is pronounced “Burn-E”

[@neuro_corgi]

Great video, thank you. But I feel the animations were too fast and aggressive?, like the moment something appeared it started to disappear, it was sometimes even hard to understand what it was

[@benjaminlevy8230]

Austin is a city, not a county. Austin is in Travis County.

[@lolglolblol]

I'm a German and we've actually had distant relatives from Texas reach out to us. We even came to visit them twice.

[@princezsshorts3209]

see what you can find about the La Crete dialect in northern Alberta, locally called Germish

[@gabriellawrence6598]

In Brazil there are around a million people whose native language is a form of German, namely the Hunsrik language in the south.

[@PMAOpus]

I grew up (as an English-speaker) in Pennsylvania Dutch country, and knew heritage speakers there. I was surprised recently to hear it spoken in Western Montana! The story isn't a surprising one; Amish migrants from PA to MT and so forth. But their Montana dialect of German is the same as the one in PA. The migration is recent enough that things haven't changed much.

[@brodyofhillcountry4050]

actually, everyone I've met since moving here 10 years ago pronounces Bourne as Burn-ee.

[@krabstickle]

Wymysorys is a pretty funky language

[@dankmemewannabe]

“Liberty measles” has got to be the most foul neologism I’ve ever heard

[@timmylean]

For some reason my favorite non-English American dialect is Paw Paw, or Missouri, French. On another note, my mother-in-law's parents were Volga Germans who moved to Eastern Oklahoma, and they went out of their way to obliterate their Germanness, right now to giving their kids extremely "American" names like Pete or Doug and refusing to speak German around their kids. The only culture they shared, fortunately, was Kuchen.

[@MrTohawk]

I feel like Texas German is really well known. If you want a German dialect that actually few people know look to Namibia

[@Mad_Dog-by2nl]

Fun fact about new braunfels the mascots for the towns school district is a dragon and a unicorn

[@Mrgreatscott2u]

“Boerne” is pronounced similarly to “Bernie”. At least for English-speaking Texans

[@kedrak90]

Eichhörnchen probably isn't a little oak horn. Etymologically it got eggcorned into what it is today centuries ago, with no real link to horns. Hörnchen is a type of small rodent to me as a native speaker, it's the German word for the biological family Sciuridae. Like a chipmunk is a Streifenhörnchen literally striped Hörnchen. But Hörnchen is used to mean little horn as well. Some conical pastries are called Hörnchen. Acorn sounds very much like the old English word for squirrel, but the words seem to be unrelated.

[@catmacopter8545]

1:27 you said new york city but the animation shows the middle of texas

[@OliveHugh2]

Netherlands speaks dutch, Dutch and deutsch (what German is called in German) are closer than you’d think. The Dutch just lived in the lowlands, hence the name Netherlands. Medieval times and ppls migrations are very interesting.

[@kylerjordan9616]

THE CLIP OF HER SPEAKING IS SO CUTE ITS SO TEXAN

[@Soguwe]

Liberty Pups would be way preferable over Dachshund, cause 1. The name is massively outdated, nobody uses them to hunt badgers anymore. They're referred to as Dackel now. And 2. At least the anglophones could pronounce liberty pup. It kinda hurts how y'all butcher the word Dachshund

[@la-go-xy]

Dux-hoond more like, if it weren't Duck-al

[@M3GG1RL]

I probably should learn thag dialect instead of "german" German (although i live in Germany, i think it be easier to me, because Texas dialect seems to have words more similar to English than the "German" german)

[@EalaFreond]

If ye live in Germany, learn Standard High German and everybody will understand your message. Don't learn Texan German for Germany.

[@la-go-xy]

​​@@EalaFreondIt is hard to understand some German dialects, because they differ. @M1GG3RL In which region are you? Don't be shy ;-)

[@MyMusics101]

Please have a short listen to how words are pronounced before pronouncing them yourself! You don't need to get it perfect, but it's obvious you didn't research the pronunciation and I feel like for a (monetized!) linguistics channel those couple extra minutes aren't too much to ask :)

[@fightingfinn1503]

Finnish American culture is almost gone, but the story is similar, and use alot of outdated words, like nisu which is a desert, but modern finns call that pulla now, or skorpers (which is like a cinnamon bread, I dont the modern finn name)

[@hhoopplaa]

I really really love your videos and that's why I wanna say that I think you can do better in German pronounciation sometimes (maybe also other languages which I don't know so well) ! I don't think it's that hard to improve since there's many resources for German. I'm not sure how you researched the translations and pronounciations but if I were to make a similar video with Spanish for example (which I don't speak) I would I think the easiest attempt would have been this: I'd listen to the pronounciation of the AI voice on Google translate and repeat that (or just let her speak although it's maybe a bit off-putting). Sure, my ears are not used to Spanish phonetics so I won't pick up on every little detail, but basic vowel and consonant errors like saying "zeal" instead of "zile" for the German word Seil I would have avoided this way. Also here's maybe an idea in order to avoid maybe a bit "off" translations like Wagen for car which has a bit of an old feel to it and usually is called Auto ("ou-toe", with the "ou" from "about" and "toe" from well "toe") or squirrel which I think was an editing mistake because the translation refers to the more correct word "Eichhörnchen" (I'm sry it's hard to write down englishified. maybe smth like "I-sh-hu-n-tion", "I" from "I", "sh" from "shoe", "hu" from "hurt" so no pronounced r, "tion" from "nation"): If you don't know any native Germans, you could make a little post on r/Germans and there's probably enough people who've got nothing better to do like me rn than to help you with how to translate some English words and tell you how it'd be directly translated back to English ^^ Not to say that the video is absolutely horrible because of this but it comes off a bit jarring to the German-speaking audience (which I think is considerable part here since this video is about a foreign German accent). Besides that, great informative and entertaining video as always :)

[@CullodenCowboy]

Texas German is relegated to the regionally German portions of Texas in the center of the state. Those insular communities retained the language and are also responsible along with the Czech for the style of bbq that most of y’all know as Texas bbq. The rest of that 14% is spread out among largely Tejano and Anglo-Celtic regions.

[@Soulborn_Cinder]

Native german speaker here. The german word for squirrel is Eichhörnchen not stinkkatze.

[@greylikesart756]

neustadtgödens is pronounced like "noy-shtaht-gir-dens" btw :)

[@ThomasTravis-e5k]

Cool my aunt lives in Fredericksburg

[@greylikesart756]

also as a hoch deutsch speaker this video was super interesting and it makes me want to learn some texas german

[@parasit6183]

Diese Kommentarsektion ist nun Eigentum der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. 🇩🇪🫡 Edit: und Texas ebenfals!

[@Pfromm007]

As a German who has lived in the US for over twenty years, I can assure you that I have been afflicted with a similar dialect over time. Lol.

[@jakub_exhibition]

Damn. I knew about czech-texasan, now texas-german…if someone adds poland the jokes might be magnificent😂😂

[@christopherthr]

I feel like the Texas-Czech history isn’t as well known as the Texas-German history. At least for myself, growing up in Texas everyone knew about the Texas-German history, especially in the Hill Country. But I had no clue that there were native speakers of Czech in Texas until I happened to meet someone whose wife was a native Texan and a native Czech speaker when I was in my 20s.

[@jakub_exhibition]

@@christopherthr yes. Linguistically speaking. But I mean more of the original nation’s history. But I guess it wasn’t really funny 😅

[@3chmidt]

When Johann Friedrich Ernst married at 20, his wife was 16. Not making any points, just stating a fact since it was normal during that time and I was curious.

[@theGermanMaid]

Wait squirrel is not stinkkatze ? Its Eichhörnchen in german XD

[@Henry-nw9fg]

Hey what’s up can you I’m trying to learn Spanish what’s the most important knowledge I should know about language learning

[@la-go-xy]

Which Spanish is the most universal (globally)?

[@sebastianhama5624]

ive been to oktoberfest in fredericksburg texas and saw actual germans. its pretty german.