Talk:Pennsylvania Dutch

Family of Elon Musk?

The section talking about famous folks of PA Dutch decent says family of Elon Musk. Is this correct? Can this be substantiated with any evidence? If not it should probably be removed. 2600:4040:71CC:1600:483C:2AC2:C28F:1104 (talk) 23:15, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

It takes a "special" person to ignore the citation that's already present on the article, and a lazy person to not take it upon himself to make quick a google search.

Here's your lazy special:

[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/hannahelliott/2012/03/26/at-home-with-elon-musk-the-soon-to-be-bachelor-billionaire/

At 6-foot-1, with broad shoulders and legs that match his first name (Elon is Hebrew for “oak tree,” although Musk’s family comes from Pennsylvania Dutch stock, not Jewish), he fills out the burgundy Tesla Roadster—which he chose over his Audi Q7 and Porsche 911—for the 20-mile drive to the Hawthorne-based headquarters of SpaceX.

[2]https://www.industrytap.com/profile-billionaire-entrepreneur-elon-musk-i-would-like-to-die-on-mars-not-just-on-impact/2618

Born in South Africa in 1971 Elon Musk was raised in Pretoria by a South African engineer father, Errol Musk, and Canadian born Pennsylvania Dutch, nutritionist and author mother, Maye. As he grew up he dreamed of moving to the US where he believed “anything is possible.” His first stop though was Canada where he spent two years at Queens University in Kingston Ontario.

[3]https://forward.com/culture/500869/elon-musk-twitter-jewish-hebrew-name/

As for Musk’s ancestry, a 2012 Forbes profile noted that while Musk’s Christian name means “oak tree” in Hebrew, he is not Jewish, but of Pennsylvania Dutch and British extraction, the scion of a South African engineer-emerald miner father and a model-dietician mother born in Canada.

[4]https://vocal.media/humans/elon-musk-l91j20u7u

Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, one of the capital cities of South Africa and was baptized into the Anglican church. Musk has British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. His mother is Maye Musk (née Haldeman), a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in South Africa. His father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer, who was a half-owner of a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika. Musk has a younger brother, Kimbal, (born 1972) and a younger sister, Tosca, (born 1974).

[5]https://www.elonmuskforkids.com/know-the-elon-musk-family/

Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa. His mother is Maye Musk (née Haldeman), a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada, but raised in South Africa. His father is Errol Musk, a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer. He has a younger brother, Kimbal (born 1972), and a younger sister, Tosca (born 1974). His maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was an American-born Canadian. His paternal grandmother had British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. Aearthrise (talk) 16:43, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

RfC about the quote in the "Fancy Dutch religion and Anglo-American prejudice" section

Should the "Fancy Dutch religion and Anglo-American prejudice" section contain a quote from 1903 in which the Fraktur typeface is used instead of the standard Wikipedia font? Thanks in advance to all those leaving their comments. Vlaemink (talk) 17:41, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

• Regular font. Fraktur is not an alphabet, it's a Latin typeface, a font. Fraktur was not and is not exclusively used for the Pennsylvania German language, nor is it common in English (or German) professional literature or English/German/Pennsylvania German Wikipedia to cite primary source material in Fraktur. Vlaemink (talk) 17:48, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

• Fraktur as this is how this language was designed to be rendered. This is a variant of Pennsylvania Dutch specifically used in Fraktur script, the source of the Fraktur (folk art). This script is culturally significant to the Fraktur Pennsylvania Dutch language ("Pennsylvania High German"), used by the Fancy Dutch. Vlaemink's argument is based on semantics and is trying to treat Pennsylvania Dutch like it is the same as standard German. This is wholly incorrect, and this variant of Pennsylvania Dutch should be treated differently. It's a classical variant of Pennsylvania Dutch specifically written in Fraktur, as opposed to the contemporary form written in an English way and script, known as the "Englisha rule". Aearthrise (talk) 18:34, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

The quote is from a book published in 1903 when Fraktur was still commonly used in the German language area, the quote does not concern a piece of art or calligraphy.Vlaemink (talk) 21:46, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

You deleted my response here earlier for discussing here, yet as a hypocrite you started a discussion here yourself.

I will respond to you here in kind: you are still making the mistake of treating the Pennsylvania Dutch language the same as standard German by speaking about "German language area", and further your interjection that this conversation does not concern art or calligraphy didn't need to be said; it's just extra information pertaining to the topic.

Your commentary makes you seem like the type who doesn't like learning, nor wants to learn (the whole purpose of Wikipedia), and is evident based on all of the thin arguments you've proposed. Aearthrise (talk) 23:32, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

• Regular font, Fraktur is not an alphabet, not by any stretch, this feels like a pretty clear WP:MOS violation. Allan Nonymous (talk) 21:20, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

Note: The previous, unsuccessful, discussion on this matter can be found here. For those unfamiliar with the 16th-1941 script known as Fraktur; 𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔰 𝔦𝔰 𝔴𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔉𝔯𝔞𝔨𝔱𝔲𝔯 𝔩𝔬𝔬𝔨𝔰 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢. Vlaemink (talk) 17:53, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Note: Vlaemink attempted to delete the response I posted above, so I moved it here and left one sentence above:

This is a variant of Pennsylvania Dutch specifically used in Fraktur script, the source of the Fraktur (folk art). This script is culturally significant to the Fraktur Pennsylvania Dutch language ("Pennsylvania High German"), used by the Fancy Dutch. Vlaemink's argument is based on semantics and is trying to treat Pennsylvania Dutch like it is the same as standard German. This is wholly incorrect, and this variant of Pennsylvania Dutch should be treated differently. It's a classical variant of Pennsylvania Dutch specifically written in Fraktur, as opposed to the contemporary form written in an English way and script, known as the "Englisha rule". As Ralph Charles Wood explains this form as a dead language:

Pennsylvania “High German”, Ralph Charles Wood, Pennsylvania State College, 2016 pg.299-314:

Pennsylvania Germans who know some literary German, have one of two possible pronunciations. The first is the pronunciation of ordinary American school-German, and may be as un-German as any schoolboy's pronunciation, or quite idiomatic, according to the native ability of the speaker, the throroughness of his instruction, and contact with native German. The second is something quite Pennsylvanian, a kind of German that older ministers and laymen understand.

This second form is so uniform that it must have fixed traditions. It must be the German of the Nineteenth Century after the decline of German instruction in the elementary schools, which many ministers, laymen- yes, even German newspaper editors- learned in the home and in Sunday schools through the medium of hymn books, Bibles, and newspapers.

In this study I have established how High German sounded in the mouths of Pennsylvania Germans one hundred years ago, at the time of the unsuccessful attempt to maintain adequate German instruction in Pennsylvania schools. I have also proven that is the same "Pennsylvania High German" still heard, but practically a dead language.

Now, we can say axiomatically that the Pennsylvania Germans came in contact, in school and church in the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth centuries, with a High German such as that spoken and written in their home area, the Palatinate, and adjoining sections of the language area.

Fraktur was definitely a part of the elementary education for Pennsylvania German children, who in the Eighteenth century were raised as miniature adults, and the adult themes expressed in most examples of fraktur, were, therefore, appropriate.

Margaret Shepherd indicates that Fraktur was stigmatized and lost due to anti-German sentiment:

Learn American Calligraphy: The Complete Book of Lettering, History, and Design, Margaret Shepherd, 2024, pg.102:

Outside influences inevitably weakened the roots of Fraktur. Eventually, German Americans began to assimilate and move on from the customs of their immigrant ancestors. The brief popularity of Gothic letters in Nazi Germany during the 1930s stigmatized Germanic letter styles everywhere for a decade.

Further Vlaemink wrote "𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖎𝖘 𝖜𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖋𝖗𝖆𝖐𝖙𝖚𝖗 𝖑𝖔𝖔𝖐𝖘 𝖑𝖎𝖐𝖊" in English attempting to ridicule its usage, as his whole argument centers on how Fraktur is "ludicrous", but English is not the the language at question of Fraktur writing. Aearthrise (talk) 18:34, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

For the sake of readability and clarity, I'll try to keep this as brief as possible. No, I did not ″attempt to remove your comment″ [6], and no, I did not add an example of Fraktur to ″ridicule″ it. I ask you once again, to stop making this discussion unnecessarily personal.

For those here to give a comment; the discussion can be found here in its entirety, but the argument presented by myself and Theodore Christopher comes down to the fact that is not only extremely uncommon to use Fraktur when quoting primary sources which use the Fraktur font in either scholarly publication or English, German and Pennsylvania German Wikipedia, it also unnecessarily complicates reading the original quote for the average and modern reader of Wikipedia. Fraktur is a font, it is not a different alphabet and even if it were, which it is definitely not, a quote would typically be romanized when quoted in modern professional literature or in a encyclopedic entry. Using Fraktur for a 245 word quote (longer than the subsection it's in) in Pennsylvania German serves no purpose, it needlessly complicates and obscures this particular quote, the desirability of which is another matter in and of itself, for the reader. I think this a very commonly held and very reasonable view. I know you do not agree, but I would very much like to hear from other editors what they think. Vlaemink (talk) 21:24, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Your whole desirability is based on what you consider "ludicrous", and you claim to speak on what is "extremely uncommon", but you don't even have the knowledge of the Pennsylvania Dutch language to say what is common, or what is not. Your whole argument revolves around how we treat a separate language, standard German, the same argument Theodore wanted to make. I keep repeating, the Pennsylvania Dutch language is different, and this variety was purposely written in Fraktur, as an opposition to combat the contemporary "Englisha rule", at a time when the Pennsylvania Dutch were trying earnestly to protect their culture.

I mentioned other languages that have similar properties, like Egyptian Greek language variant used in the Coptic Church that uses Coptic typeface to write Greek (Coptic typeface is just Ancient Greek font, used to write Greek, and when writing Coptic language itself only includes 4 extra letters); it's rendered in Coptic font because that's the authentic way it was portrayed.

You claim that Fraktur unnecessarily complicates reading the quote for the average and modern reader of Wikipedia; I tell you again I can read it, and that this the authentic way it was portrayed. There is no English translation, so the source language should be included, the source being Pennsylvania Dutch Fraktur.

You speak about how the average reader of Wikipedia operates, but the average reader doesn't speak Pennsylvania Dutch (neither do you). Modern speakers, mostly Amish and Mennonites don't use Wikipedia, and I doubt they have knowledge classical Fraktur variety used by the Fancy Dutch, those who abandoned their culture due to anti-German sentiment.

You want to talk about what Pennsylvania German Wikipedia does, but this is not the same language. It's written in a separate variety that records the spoken language of the Amish and Mennonites today, using a different orthography invented much later, and has different rules.

Your "very reasonable view" is based on what you claim is ludicrous and what you think is common for standard German language; these are your opinions, which are of someone who doesn't have an intimate knowledge of Pennsylvania Dutch culture, history, language, or customs, and it shows in your arguments treating the Pennsylvania Dutch language and its variants the same as standard German. Aearthrise (talk) 23:18, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I was unfamiliar with you until the discussion on this page, but I've noticed the above ″tactic″ in multiple discussions on this page since. I hope others will see through these attempts to portray users who disagree with you as unknowledgeable/ignorant and mispresent their words — and stick to the facts. Your aggressive style of communication (for example ″your thoughts are not worth very much″, ″shows you lack knowledge/basic understanding″, ″your words are all vapid nonsense″, ″your words are based in ignorance″ to name but a few on this page) or suddenly being half Pennsylvania Dutch and claiming to speak the language [7] ... it's all not very convincing. Vlaemink (talk) 08:19, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

You're just repeating the same sentences from before, and not even making an argument about the content being discussed. You do this, because you don't have a true response to any of the points a laid out, and you've done this before earlier where I had to ask you three times to produce evidence. Here again you didn't even attempt to address anything I said above.

This is your problem- you want to operate on ignorance and your emotions rather than from evidence and knowledge, and you've shown that time and time again. Even now, you're showing how your feelings were hurt and trying to use that to win the argument. You have a bruised ego. Aearthrise (talk) 17:02, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

RfC about the portrayal of multiple views in the "Etymology" section

Should the "Etymology" section also include the (validly sourced) theory that the "Dutch" in "Pennsylvania Dutch" is an Anglicization of "Deutsch" as was previously the case? Thanks in advance to all those leaving their comments. Vlaemink (talk) 17:41, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

• Yes. In line with WP:NPOV, ″all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic to be fairly represented within an article″. The view that the "Dutch" in "Pennsylvania Dutch" is an Anglicization is both significant and validly sourced and should hence be included within the section alongside alternative theories, as was previously the case. Vlaemink (talk) 17:51, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

• No, not as an equal explanation as he's trying to purport. Vlaemink's whole argument is based on anecdotes filled with doubts and "probablies" from a folk etymology with no supporting evidence, and is trying to pass it off as an equal argument to the well established consensus of Dutch's historical use. The consensus has an abundance of hard evidence: dictionaries, newspapers, books, historic documents, etc. all show that Dutch was earlier used in English to refer to Germanic speakers, summed up in the sentence "Dutch is an older use of the term, which earlier referred to any speaker of a Germanic language on the European mainland." Aearthrise (talk) 18:34, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  @Vlaemink I see you finally made the revision I asked for. Thank you. Aearthrise (talk) 00:08, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

No. The use of Dutch as a generic term for continental Germanic languages is well attested in Middle English— the distinction between Dutch (Netherlands) and Dutch (all west Germanic languages spoken on the continent, including Dutch, Low German, High German, etc.) is a modern and relatively recent phenomenon. Mutspelli (talk) 05:06, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

Note: The previous, unsuccessful, discussion on this matter can be found here. Vlaemink (talk) 17:52, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Note: Vlaemink attempted to delete the response I posted above, so I moved it here and left one sentence above:

Vlaemink's whole argument is based on anecdotes filled with doubts and "probablies" from a folk etymology with no supporting evidence, and is trying to pass it off as an equal argument to the well established consensus of Dutch's historical use. The consensus has an abundance of hard evidence: dictionaries, newspapers, books, historic documents, etc. all show that Dutch was earlier used in English to refer to Germanic speakers, summed up in the sentence "Dutch is an older use of the term, which earlier referred to any speaker of a Germanic language on the European mainland."

To assign the same weight to the folk etymology anecdote is wrong, as there is no evidence to support the anecdote beyond an appeal to ignorance. Vlaemink claims "that the Dutch in Pennsylvania Dutch is an Anglicization is both significant and validly sourced", but all of his sources are anecdotal.

Vlaemink wants to make it seem like linguists are confused on how Dutch was used historically and ignore all of the evidence; we can clearly see the ancestors of the Pennsylvania Dutch in the 1600's and 1700's were called High Dutch, and Palatine Dutch at the same time as the English world internationally used High Dutch and Low Dutch terms. For example, The oldest German newspaper in Pennsylvania was the High Dutch Pennsylvania Journal in 1743. The first mixed English and German paper, the Pennsylvania Gazette of 1751, described itself as an "English and Dutch gazette," in reference to the High Dutch language spoken in Pennsylvania.

The following is an example of the High Dutch / Low Dutch usage just one year before the first unified Germany:

The Living Age, volume 105, E. Littell & Company, 1870, pg.76:

We may here remark how everywhere on the Continent, except in Holland, the Low-Dutch is a struggling tongue. In one region, as we have seen, it has to struggle against French; but it has a harder struggle to wage against the High-Dutch in all the remaining extent of its territory. The process through which Low-Dutch is vanishing before High-Dutch is a different and a much subtler kind. High-Dutch represents itself to the speakers of Low-Dutch, not as a foreign speech, but as the best, the most polite, the most refined and classical and cultivate form of their own speech. One in short is "good German," the other is "bad."

The oddest case is undoubtedly to be found in the Duchy of Sleswick. That Duchy is the borderland of Low-Dutch and Danish, and the two may fairly fight for the supremacy. But, while they are fighting, a third champion, the High-Dutch, steps in, and under cover of the ambiguous word "German," displaces that one of the two contending elements which it professes to defend. People whose native tongue really comes near to Danish than it does to High-Dutch, are bidden to take up High-Dutch as the ensign of "German" against Danish nationality. The very name of the country has been changed. It used to be "Sleswick," a Low-Dutch form. I doubt whether you would find it written in any other way in any English book or map forty years old. But of later times we have been taught to change the natural name of the country into the High-Dutch "Schleswig." Aearthrise (talk) 18:34, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

For the sake of readability and clarity, I'll try to keep this as brief as possible. No, I did not ″attempt to remove your comment″ [8].

For those here to give a comment; the discussion can be found here in its entirety, but my argument essentially comes down to this: we, as anonymous editors, do not decide what is ″the truth″ or not. We rely on published materials, preferably by scholars. If a substantial amount of professionals ascribe to a particular theory/hypothesis, then it merits being mentioned in an article here; it's WP:NPOV 101. The facts are clear in this regard Mark Louden (who, mind you, doesn't agree with the Anglicization theory) explicitly notes that eventhough he considers it false, it is nevertheless ″a widespread belief among both nonscholars and scholars″ (Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language″, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016, pp 2) to further support the notion that this view is held by scholars, I cited two professors, Nicoline van der Sijs (an etymologist and historical linguist) and Sally McMurry (a cultural and social historian). Their work is cited in full in the earlier discussion for those interested, but in short: they explicitly state that the ″Dutch″ in ″Pennsylvania Dutch″ is (probably) an Anglicization of ″Deutsch″. My position is not, nor has it been, that this view is correct. Nor is it the goal of this RfC to determine wether it is. The point of this RfC is to ask other editors if this information should be included per WP:NPOV, which clearly states that representing all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic should be included. I think it should be re-included, as it this view has been part of this article for a long time prior to your removal and I think the sources mentioned and the argument made is sound. I know you do not, but I would very much like to hear from other editors what they think. Vlaemink (talk) 21:01, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

For those interested: This is what the German language Wikipedia, which strongly encourages scholarly sources, currently states:

It is not entirely clear why the Pennsylvania Dutch are referred to with the English word “Dutch,” which today usually means “Dutch”. One explanation attributes this fact to the original meaning of the word, which in Middle English (“duche”) still referred to all High German, Low German and Dutch dialects, but from the 16th century onwards was increasingly restricted to the Netherlands. In the 17th century, the word "German" came into use in English for the Germans, while the word "Dutch" now only took on the meaning "Dutch" in English. In American English, however, “Dutch” remained ambiguous for longer than in Europe (e.g. in the opposite pair High Dutch “German” / Low Dutch “Dutch”), especially in colloquial speech. Some linguists are therefore of the opinion that the old meaning has continued in the name “Pennsylvania Dutch”. Other researchers, however, assume that it is a linguistic and economic corruption of the Pennsylvania German self-name “deitsch” (or "deutsch").

This is what the English-language article used to state as well, prior to the removal by Aearthrise, and this is how it should be: providing multiple points of view supported by reliable sources instead of presenting the personal preference of a single user as ″the truth″. Vlaemink (talk) 21:39, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

This is not at all what the article used to state, until you added it on the 12th of May, and I subsequently reverted it on the 25th of May when I returned to editing Wikipedia; your inclusion added false, unsourced information like "High Dutch was a calque of Hochdeutsch invented by Americans", and also attempted to make the anecdotal folk claim of the term Dutch equal to the explanation that is backed by an abundance of hard evidence. Aearthrise (talk) 22:17, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

The history of this article as well as that of the Pennsylvania German language-article, speaks for itself. That history, goes back further than when you started editing this article less than two years ago and became responsible for over 80% of the edits to this page since.

Also, you keep repeating that there supposedly exists a consensus on this subject — when there really isn't, and the source material clearly states this. Mark Louden (as cited above) unequivocally makes clear that many scholars subscribe to the Anglicization theory, whereas the historian Don Yoders suggestion (first formulated in a 1980 journal article) seems to have primarily gained traction among his acolytes, Louden included. Like I've said many times before now, it's not important which side you consider to be right or wrong, it's about academic representation. There is no consensus and a Wikipedia should represent all scholarly supported views on a matter. Vlaemink (talk) 08:52, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

There is a consensus on how Dutch was used historically; your attempts to rebut them are just two people, a professor of Netherlands Dutch linguistics who included a short sentence about the Pennsylvania Dutch on how she won't include more information about them because they're a German ethnicity, writing in a book about the Netherlands Dutch impact on the United States; at the same time, she goes into great depth on subjects like Jersey Dutch (a Netherlands Dutch language once spoken in the United States); the other is Sally McMurry who in a 2011 article about architecture emphasized that of Pennsylvania German is the only correct name, and waves the Pennsylvania Dutch term away in a quick sentence by saying how it probably originated as a corruption, and further says that Pennsylvania Germans felt insulted by the use of Dutch. Throughout the article she only uses Pennsylania German or Germans of Pennsylvania, and only uses Dutch or Pennsylania Dutch with quotation marks indicating that they're an incorrect usage.

In the 2017 book Pennsylvania Farming: A History in Landscapes, however, McCurry backpedals on this idea, saying "I have used the term "Pennsylvania German" as if it needed no explanation, but actually that assumption is problematic. In the colonial period, we have seen, at least a third of the population had come from German-speaking Europe; they spoke varying dialects and represented many social and religious groups, with "mainstream" German Protestants (not Plain Sects as many assume) dominating in numbers. Over time these "Germans of Pennsylvania" became "Pennsylania Germans." The question is, just how did they become "Pennsylvania German" and just what does the term signify? Today popular notions of the Pennsylania Germans mix together elements from twentieth-century tourist productions (think whoopie pies) with remnants of earlier stereotypes. Class divisions within the group also play a role; some preferred the label "Pennsylvania German" to the supposedly lower-status "Pennsylvania Dutch" tag. To make things even more complicated, modern academic thinkers have questioned the assumptions about ethnicity in general, arguing it is not an inherent social or personal quality but is instead socially constructed and constantly changing."

Further, you're making a bad point about Dr.Louden: Mark Louden, an expert on Pennsylvania Dutch culture clearly says "Contrary to a widespread belief among both nonscholars and scholars, though, the Dutch in Pennsylvania Dutch is not a historical mistranslation of the native word Deitsch, as originally pointed out by Don Yoder.″, demonstrating the falsity of that claim.

Now you're also making a false claim about Don Yoder, another expert on Pennsylvania Dutch culture, by saying his suggestion about the origins of Dutch only was formulated in 1980. This is Dr. Yoder: Dr. Don Yoder, father of American Folklife Studies, and co-founder of the Kutztown Folk Festival, tackled this question in 1950 for previous generations: “When they stepped off the boat at Philadelphia, they were called by the English-speaking people ‘Dutch’ and ‘Dutchmen.’ This term was not, as you often erroneously hear, invented in America as a mispronunciation of the German word ‘Deutsch’ which means ‘German.’ No, ‘Dutch’ was in 1750 already an ancient and well-established term. It has been traced by the Oxford English Dictionary as far back as the late Middle Ages.”.

Further from your claim of 1980, the Pennsylvania German society clearly debunked this in 1910:

The Penn Germania ...: A Popular Journal of German History and Ideals in the United States, volume 11, 1910, pg.745:

The "Dutch" themselves made a distinction. It was by no means that between "Dutch" and "German"... It was a distinction between "Nederdiutsch", meaning the people of North Germany, including Flemings, Hollanders, and those to the eastward, as far as the Baltic provinces of Russia who speak Low-German dialects; and "Hoogdiutsch", referring to all people to the South; who speak High-German dialects, like the Palatine from which "Pennsylvania Dutch" developed.

In England, the term "Germans" has in the meantime become the accepted literary name for all who had formerly been called Dutch, except for the people of the Netherlands, for whom the old word is now exclusively reserved. But in America, the old usage has persisted for a long time. Even Washington Irving still speaks of the settlers in the Mohawk Valley as "High Dutch."

Dr. Thomas Adam, professor of German and transatlantic European history at the University of Texas at Arlington clearly lays out the history of Dutch and speaks about how the word "German" gained a new light after the formation of the first unified Germany in 1871:

Germany and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History, Thomas Adam, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2005, pg.287:

It is often said that the use of the word Dutch by English-speaking people to refer to Germans was the result either of a confusion of identities or an attempt to pronounce the German word Deutsch, which, it is assumed, the Germans used to describe themselves. These explanations do not hold up under scrutiny. In the seventeenth century, when German settlers began to arrive in substantial numbers in Britain's North American colonies, the term Dutch still had meanings that have disappeared and are forgotten today.

Prior to the nineteenth century- and even prior to the unification of Germany in 1871- many migrants from the German states were not prone to describe themselves as Deutsch, even to strangers. They were more likely to refer to the territorial state from which they came. The "Pennsylvania Dutch," the German Americans whose ancestors came mainly from the Palatinate and Lower Rhine regions and settled mostly in eastern Pennsylvania in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, often did not recognize the term Deutsch as applicable to themselves, even after the unification of Germany. With sarcastic wit they referred, in their Germanic dialect, to the new arrivals as Deitschlänner (Deutschländer in standard German); that is, people who were constantly talking about Deutschland, a political entity created long after the ancestors of the Pennsylvania Dutch departed for the New World.

The use of Dutch as a synonym for German antedates British settlement of North America. In the late Middle Ages and early modern period, Dutch included both Germans and Dutch. It referred to people speaking a group of closely related Germanic languages. This usage pertained mainly to inhabitants of the Holy Roman Empire and distinguished two kinds of "Dutch" people on the basis of geography, culture, and critically, language: "High Dutch (Hochdeutsch)," or "High German" in today's English usage; and "Low Dutch (Niederdeutsch)," or "Low German" in today's usage. The English language did not distinguish Netherlanders from other speakers of "Low Dutch," except by specifying the province, locality, or region. Aearthrise (talk) 17:21, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

It is author Mark Louden, not me, who wrote that the idea that the ″Dutch″ in ″Pennsylvania″ was (and I quote) ″originally pointed out by Don Yoder″. The accompanying footnote to this statement (Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language″, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016, pp 2) refers to a 1980 publication by Yoder. Its right there in the citation, which has been quoted three times already. And no, Louden doesn't ″demonstrate the falsity of that (that ″Dutch″ is an Anglicization, red.) claim″, he mentions he concurs with Yoders view. That's not why I quoted him though, I quoted him because he explicitly notes that, even though he considers it false, this view is nevertheless ″a widespread belief among both nonscholars and scholars″. WP:NPOV states that representing all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic should be included. By noting its widespread among scholars, Louden shows it's a significant view and the other authors mentioned show it's represented in reliable scholarly publications.

You keep spamming these green copy-pastes from Google-searches trying to prove why you are right, but I fear you're completely missing the point: this RfC isn't about being right, or which view has the most copy-pastes from 100 year old books ... it's about conforming to Wikipedia's principle of verifiability and NPOV. Vlaemink (talk) 17:47, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

You just attempted to delete my arguments again! You are a hypocrite and are playing a game to get your way.

Wikipedia is about proving what is truth, based on hard evidence, reliable sources, historic documents, and that makes the quality of the material in the article good for users. This whole discussion has come about, because you wanted to promote an idea that's not based on hard evidence and say it's a point of confusion for linguists, when it's not. The consensus clearly shows what linguists know of the term "Dutch", and our point of contention was the way you added this information made it equal to the established information about Dutch, which is why I said it's misleading. You also added false, unsubtantiated information at the same time, so you're claim about view points is nothing more than wanting your beliefs validated. Aearthrise (talk) 18:26, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Comment: I suggest that all of the above be deleted. This is far too much discussion from the original disputants in a request for comment. Editors commenting should be able to engage the process in an orderly away, referring back to the original debate rather than a new debate in the RfC. This has become unwieldy to follow. Pathawi (talk) 03:26, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

Very serious problems with the reliability and validity of the sources used

Over the past months serious reliability and content issues have been raised by several users, which led have me to do take a closer look at the references this article mentions. As of June 2024 this article lists 130 references [9], the vast majority of these references were added within the last two years, when the article only had 40 references [10].

I did a survey on the first 50/130 references used in the article. In total 22 out of these 45 (5 references were of publications used multiple times) are either untrustworthy and/or self published and/or more than a century old. In 6 cases, a false date was given making the publication appear far more recent than it actually was. Some of the websites given were personal or family homepages or tourist websites. Some references had simply been copy-pasted from other Wikipedias, for example Kohn (1951) is still in German, meaning that it hasn't actually been read by the editor who added it to the article.

I've provided an overview below, but will add the Unreliable-template to the article page in light of this and the obvious failure to comply with Wikipedia standards. I ask all involved users not to remove the template until all issues with these and remaining/unaccounted for unreliable sources are resolved. Vlaemink (talk) 19:21, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Self-published family biographies or websites:

• https://homepages.rootsweb.com/~brobst/chronicles/chap2.htm
• Everton's Family History Magazine Volume 57. Everton Publishers.
• Merritt George Yorgey: A Pennsylvania Dutch Boy And the Truth About the Pennsylvania Dutch. United States of America: Xlibris US.
• Newman, George F., Newman, Dieter E.: The Aebi-Eby Families of Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and North America, 1550–1850. Pennsylvania: NMN Enterprises.

Untrustworthy websites:

• https://www.discoverlancaster.com (tourist website)
• https://www.Germanheritage.com (defunct)

Outdated publications / (Outdated) publications with false dates:

• Oscar Kuhns: The German and Swiss Settlements of Colonial Pennsylvania A Study of the So-called Pennsylvania Dutch, incorrectly dated to 2009; actual date of publication 1901.
• United States. Department of Agriculture. Weekly News Letter to Crop Correspondents. U.S. Government Printing Office, date of publication 1918.
• Fred Lewis Pattee: The House of the Black Ring: A Romance of the Seven Mountains. Penn State Press, incorrectly dated to 2015; actual date of publication 1905.
• E. H. Rauch: Rauch's Pennsylvania Dutch Hand-book: A Book for Instruction, date of publication 1879.
• George Reeser Prowell: History of York County, Pennsylvania. Vol. 1. Cornell University, date of publication 1907.
• Oscar Jewell Harvey, Ernest Gray Smith: A History of Wilkes-Barré, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania From Its First Beginnings to the Present Time, Including Chapters of Newly-discovered Early Wyoming Valley History, Together with Many Biographical Sketches and Much Genealogical Material, Raeder Press, date of publication 1909.
• Matthias Henry Richards, Henry Melchior Muhlenberg Richards: German Emigration from New York Province Into Pennsylvania, incorrectly dated to 2009; actual date of publication 1899.
• John Thomas Scharf and Helen Long: History of Western Maryland Being a History of Frederick, Montgomery, Carroll, Washington, Allegany, and Garrett Counties from the Earliest Period to the Present Day, Including Biographical Sketches of Their Representative Men, incorrectly dated to 2009; actual date of publication 1882.
• New York (State). Legislature. Senate. Proceedings of the Senate of the State of New York on the Life, Character and Public Service of William Pierson Fiero, date of publication 1915.
• Robert Baird: Religion in America, Or, An Account of the Origin, Progress, Relation to the State, and Present Condition of the Evangelical Churches in the United States With Notices of the Unevangelical Denominations, date of publication 1844.
• William Brisbane Dick: Dick's Dutch, French and Yankee Dialect Recitations A Collection of Droll Dutch Blunders, Frenchmen's Funny Mistakes, and Ludicrous and Extravagant Yankee Yarns; Each Recitation Being in Its Own Peculiar Dialect. Dick & Fitzgerald, date of publication 1879.
• Frank Trommler, Joseph McVeigh: America and the Germans, Volume 1: An Assessment of a Three-Hundred Year History--Immigration, Language, Ethnicity. University of Pennsylvania Press, incorrectly dated to 2009; actual date of publication 1990.
• Henry Blackman Plumb: History of Hanover Township: Including Sugar Notch, Ashley, and Nanticoke Boroughs : and Also a History of Wyoming Valley, in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, date of publication 1885.
• Gerald Shaughnessy: Has the Immigrant Kept the Faith? A Study of Immigration and Catholic Growth in the United States, 1790-1920, date of publication 1925.
• University of California: Commercial and Financial Chronicle Bankers Gazette, Commercial Times, Railway Monitor and Insurance Journal. National News Service, date of publication 1907.
• Clayton Colman Hall:The Lords Baltimore and the Maryland Palatinate, Six Lectures on Maryland Colonial History, J. Murphy Company, date of publication 1902.

Vlaemink (talk) 19:21, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

For a claim of "very serious problems with the reliability and validity of the sources used", you propose an extremely thin argument based on nitpicks, being 6/130 quotes you call questionable and untrustworthy, and fifteen others only because they're published before World War 2.

The following is what you name as "questionable sources": four quotes you call "self-published":

Three quotes about Palatine genealogy (which has very sparse information online except from genealogical sources), and one that mentions the loss of German education for the Pennsylvania Dutch community (Meritt Yorgey). I agree that Yorgey's book should be paired with another quote.

Two quotes you call "untrustworthy" one being already present from a section copied from Hessian (soldier) about how Hessians settled in Lancaster (this is the article link, and it shows its sources at the bottom of the page), and the other you claim because the domain is defunct (which is not a good reason, because it was linked with the date of retrieval).

All the other fifteen you push aside only because they're older publications claiming they're "outdated" (and include "(Outdated) publications with false dates" while only naming one, published in 1990 instead of 2009). The nature of this ethnic group, however, is that much of the detailed information published about them was written between before the American Revolution and World War 2. Modern sources mostly speak on the Amish, and indeed before the addition of these sources this article only included information on the Amish. Aearthrise (talk) 15:47, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

It's time to stop doubling down, to stop twisting words and to stop defending what cannot be defended and to get back to reality.

You cannot bluff yourself out of the serious sourcing issues described above: I've very clearly stated that of the 130 sources in the article, I've only been able to take a look at the first 50. Discounting sources used multiple times, effectively half of these references were unacceptable by Wikipedia's standards with regard to valid and reliable sources. You're now actively trying to misrepresent the facts by speaking of ″fifteen sources published before World War II″ — which is absurd and extremely misleading, given the fact that these invalid sources include material published over a decade before the start of the American Civil War and leaves out untrustworthy (personal) websites, self-published books, falsified publication dates and copy-pasted references from other Wikipedias! And no, this didn't ″just″ involve one publication from 1990 which you dated to 2009, but includes publications where you gave the dates as 2009 (1901, 1892, 1899) and 2015 (1905) which can clearly be read in the above summary.

This is not the first time your sources have been questioned and found to be totally unsuitable for a serious and reliable encyclopedic article. Take for example your 240 word by Daniel Miller from 1903 — for which you still, despite unanimous pushback from all users involved so far, refused to accept that the Fraktur font is unwanted — which was shown to be both outdated and incredibly biased; or in the words of SnowFire ″the good professor was deluded″.

You need to take a critical introspective look at both your attitude towards sources and other editors. You constantly talk about ″winning″ arguments, unilaterally declare that others ″have failed to convince you″ and are downright rude towards others. The sources you spam every time you are questioned look AI-generated and often have little or nothing to do with the issues being discussed. There are a great many recent and reliable academic sources on just about every aspect of Pennsylvania Dutch culture, past and present, and these can be found and used by just about any editor. To try and defend the above ″sources″ as reliable is to lose any credibility you might have left. Vlaemink (talk) 19:11, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

This last response is just another attempt at character assassination, and an inaccurate regurgitation of what has been said from your complaint on the Administrator's noticeboard. I'm not twisting words, I'm informing you how your initial argument reads, and I gave my response to them.

I don't have a problem with improving the quality of articles, and I welcome it; this last response does not prove anything you said, that this article has "very serious problems with the reliability and validity of the sources used." It has not proven anything beyond showing what you consider "defensible".

You claim 50 quotes are unacceptable, but you didn't make a post including 50 examples, you only showed 15 of what you call outdated sources (you didn't address why their information is wrong, which is what you need to prove), and 6 others that you claimed were unreliable (which I challenged two ['untrustworthy websites']- you didn't add clear reasoning why their information is wrong other than writing 'defunct' and 'tourist website', agreed with one [Yorgey's book], and made an explanation of three [genealogy books/sites on the Palatine diaspora]). These are 21 quotes in total, for which you need to provide evidence.

I've already given a response to what you've posted, and you're refusing to acknowledge them. You mention you didn't read all the earlier quotes; you should have posted them all if you wanted a full discussion. Nevertheless, if you want to have a discussion, i'd be happy to respond to them, but an outburst like this is not conducive to anything more than an ad hominem attack. Aearthrise (talk) 19:43, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Update: I see that I read your initial post wrong; I was confused by the language of what you call "cases" and what you call "references". I recommend simplifying the language, so we can all be on the same page.

You posted 21 examples of references you claim are unreliable sources, which i've responded to. You need to address those points rather than pontificating what can or cannot be defended, as you're making claims about them being invalid sources. Only evidence and well-reasoned arguments can decide what is "defensible". Aearthrise (talk) 20:02, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

If you feel a personal attack has been made, you should report this to the administrators.

As for your rather strange demand: Wikipedia is very clear on what constitutes a reliable source and all of the sources mentioned above obviously failed those criteria. It is not my or any other editor's task to try and convince you of the unreliablity or unsuitability of these sources, but rather up to you to prove that the sources conform to Wikipedia standards. If you're determined to use a publication from 1844 or a text found on https://homepages.rootsweb.com/~brobst/chronicles/chap2.htm in a 2024 online encyclopedia, then it is up to you to prove that source is reliable and valid; that's how Wikipedia works, not the other way around. Vlaemink (talk) 21:09, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Showing proof is not a "strange demand"; You talk about how it's not an editor's task to prove the unreliability or unsuitability of sources, but that's totally incorrect. You made the claim, so you need to back it up with evidence.

You made the argument that these sources are outdated, but you don't provide any evidence that their information is outdated beyond your word.

The way to prove your argument that these sources are outdated is to show, with evidence, that the information they provide is outdated; until you do, you're just making claims without proof.

As for webpages you mentioned as "untrustworthy", you haven't given a reason why, beyond writing "defunct" and "tourist website". You need to prove how these sources' information is unreliable. You need to do the same for the https://homepages.rootsweb.com/~brobst/chronicles/chap2.html link, which clearly shows its sources at the bottom of the page.

Until you prove it, your argumentation here is based solely on your word. Aearthrise (talk) 09:10, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable Sources is extremely clear on what constitutes a reliable source and with whom the burden of proof rests and I'm not going to debate these community standards with you. You are not in any position to make any demands: you've added a huge amount of unreliable, questionable and/or outdated sources, in several cases even falsifying their dates of publication or misquoting the source material, and it is highly likely that most if not all will be removed from this article within the next couple of weeks because of this. The quality standards apply to all and to all equally. Vlaemink (talk) 10:54, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

You're not making a discussion; you're just saying what you believe is unreliable with no evidence and refuse to address the points I made in my rebuttal, and continue to make character attacks rather than directly prove what you're saying. Aearthrise (talk) 16:06, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

You haven't ″rebutted″ anything, you've simply done what you always seem to do: you state you don't agree and wasn't personally convinced, despite the crystal clarity of Wikipedia policy with which you've now been presented more often than should be neccesary. I hope my request on Administrators' noticeboard will be closed shortly and I hope SnowFire's proposal is taken up by the admins, that way you are either forced to play by Wikipedia's rules instead of your own — or find another article to edit. Vlaemink (talk) 17:08, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

You're still not making a case for why you claim the information is outdated or why the other information from the websites is untrustworthy. Until you prove it, it's just an empty argument. Aearthrise (talk) 00:01, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

You can repeat that as much and as long as you want, but it doesn't change the fact that you are going against WP:SOURCE, which is not an opinion, but policy. Your use of unreliable sources and falsifying of sources (claiming they supported your claim, when in fact they did not) has already resulted in the deletion of one of your articles [11]; do not remove the unreliable-template again before using proper, contemporary and reliable sources. Vlaemink (talk) 12:38, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

You made a witchhunt against me, launching a big smear attack against me on the Administrators noticeboard page trying to get an administrator to ban me from working on this article by making some of the worst character attacks i've seen.

You say I had an article deleted? That was by your own doing, under the same witch hunt, where you made the same claim that the sources were outdated (because they were from 1901, 1911, 1892, other dates earlier), and that German Pennsylvania never existed.

I proved otherwise that German Pennsylvania did indeed exist with showing those same citations; here you're doing the same thing with citations, saying that these tags can only be removed when all of the sources are replaced what you call "proper, contemporary" sources.

This is social history, and the social history doesn't change like physics or an applied science. Indeed, the older sources are the best for this culture, as its cultural height was written about mostly before World War 1 and 2.

Sources don't need to be contemporary to be valid. They only need to be true, so you need to prove that they're untrue or unreliable; just making a claim from them having an older publication date is not a valid reason to say they're unreliable.

I recommend you read WP:AGE MATTERS to understand what categories are time-sensitive. Aearthrise (talk) 22:02, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Adding of bias to revised autonym section

In wake of developments related to a request to intervene on Aearthrise's behavior on this article (WP:OWN and civility issues) as well as the extremely concerning use of sources by Aearthrise, which has already resulted in a deletion request for a related article, which, judging by the current tally, is likely to succeed — I've recently edited the article's autonym/etymology section to reflect both recent and valid publications as well as a neutral POV, resulting in the following text:

Several authors and etymological publications consider the word “Dutch” in “Pennsylvania Dutch”, which in medieval times could also be used to refer to speakers of various German dialects, to be an archaism specific to 19th-century American English, particularly in its colloquial form. An alternative interpretation commonly found among laypersons and scholars alike is that the “Dutch” in “Pennsylvania Dutch” is a anglicization or corruption of the Pennsylvania German autonym “deitsch”, which in the Pennsylvania German language refers to the Pennsylvania Dutch or Germans in general. Some authors however, have described this hypothesis as a misapprehension.

This text is in line with the sources given. It's also mirrored by the article's version on German Wikipedia (the only other WP project where a substantial article on the Pennsylvania Dutch exists) where the inclusion of multiple theories on the etymology of Pennsylvania Dutch has never been controversial.

Aearthrise has long sought to exclude alternative etymologies from this article, and, despite paradoxally thanking me for "finally made the revision I asked for" [12] he subsequently nevertheless tried yet again to add non neutral POV and unreliable sources to the above text by explicitly positioning "Mark Louden, Don Yoder and Thomas Adam" (authors who support his preferred theory, red.) as "experts", by including a reference to the Oxford Etymological Dictionary (which, as has been made very clear to him, is outdated due to not being revised since 1897 [13]) and by adding personal argumentation into the article, again, based on thoroughly antiquated (1882, 1883, 1743, 1751) and/or primary sources [14] [15].

@Aearthrise: You need to stop this and you need to stop this now. Wikipedia is about a neutral point of view and you need to stop adding unwarranted bias. Wikipedia is about valid and reliable sources and you need to stop trying to add thoroughly outdated, 19th or 18th century publications or primary sources into this article. Given the two recent AfC's and the very long Administrators' noticeboard discussion on you I urgently advise you not to revert this section again and to discuss any changes you want on the talk page supported by adequate sources.

If you are not willing to do not this and continue by reverting and adding bias in the manner described above, I will have no other option than to report you to the AN again and begin preparations for requesting the Arbcom to stop you from editing this article in the future — and I will do so if you choose to continue like this. Vlaemink (talk) 06:57, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

None of the additions I added give unsourced information, and these authors I named are experts on German American history; everything I wrote was accurate to what the sources said (which can be also be found on this page). All I added was an expansion on what you wrote. This is what the article read before your most recent reversion:

Differing explanations exist on why the Pennsylvania Dutch are referred to as “Dutch”, which typically refers to the inhabitants of the Netherlands or the Dutch language, which is only distantly related to Pennsylvania German.

Experts on German American history such as Mark Louden, Don Yoder, Thomas Adam, and etymological publications such as the Oxford dictionary consider the word “Dutch” in “Pennsylvania Dutch” an archaism from 19th-century American English. Since medieval times, Dutch referred to speakers of various German dialects differentiating them with the terms "High Dutch" and "Low Dutch", particularly in its colloquial form. This is corroborated with evidence, such as the oldest German newspaper in Pennsylvania being the High Dutch Pennsylvania Journal in 1743. The first mixed English and German paper, the Pennsylvania Gazette of 1751, described itself as an "English and Dutch gazette," in reference to German spoken in Pennsylvania.

An alternative interpretation commonly found among laypersons and scholars alike is that the “Dutch” in “Pennsylvania Dutch” is a anglicization or corruption of the Pennsylvania German autonym “deitsch”, which in the Pennsylvania German language refers to the Pennsylvania Dutch or Germans in general. Some authors however, have described this hypothesis as a misapprehension.

The migration of the Pennsylvania Dutch to the United States predates the emergence of a distinct German national identity, which did not form until the late 18th century. The formation of the German Empire in 1871 resulted in a semantic shift, in which "deutsch" was no longer principally a linguistic and cultural term, but was increasingly used to describe all things related to Germany and its inhabitants. This development did not go unnoticed among the Pennsylvania Dutch who, in the 19th and early 20th century, referred to themselves as "Deitsche", while calling newer German immigrants "Deitschlenner" meaning "Germany-ers".

You've deleted the evidence, because you still want to equate the two arguments without acknowledging the evidence for it. And beyond that, you haven't shown how the information is outdated, beyond saying their date of publication.

You can expand the other argument too, but to remove it all is not helpful to Wikipedia nor people reading the article. Aearthrise (talk) 07:37, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

I will try to keep this reply short, because I think more than enough has already been said on this matter by more than enough users: this is not a crime scene, this is an encyclopedic article: editors do not provide "evidence", they list sources. Published authors substantiate their claims in academic works, we cite these. Wikipedia users do not add "evidence" to these claims and certainly do not expand beyond the claims on their own. This is called original research and it is strictly forbidden.

Your way of ″sourcing″ information up until now has not only been biased, it is incompatible with Wikipedia standards: this has pointed out to you on several occasions by many users. You use completely outdated publications, many of which have false dates (which you continue to propagate) and combine these with primary sources and material (e.g. articles and maps) that you've made yourself.

You are welcome to edit this article based on the principles of NPOV and reliable sources, but if you do not and again start a revert war where you again try to add biased, outdated or self-fabricated material to this article; I will do exactly as I promised you in the first comment and issue a second complaint with the admins and if this fails to resolve this matter, I will request an intervention by the Arbcom and request that you'll no longer be allowed to edit this article. Vlaemink (talk) 08:56, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

You're not addressing what I said, but instead made another personal attack, followed by a threat to make more complaints to administration. Aearthrise (talk) 11:19, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

If you feel a personal attack has been made, you should report this to the administrators. Vlaemink (talk) 12:50, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

@Vlaemink To further give an example of Dutch/German transition, a street in my town in 1894 was named Dutch Hill Rd. it was later changed to German Hill Rd. as it was originally MEANT to be Deutsch Hill Rd. 24.101.215.195 (talk) 16:45, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Vlaemink, I won't abuse the Administration system like you did to solve article content conflicts; you need to learn a better way of cooperating instead of making threats to solve conflicts. Aearthrise (talk) 00:16, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

References