Max Kade Institute Virtual Lecture: “How Swiss German is Amish Shwitzer?”

Adams County, Indiana, is home to the Swiss Amish, a population that does do not speak Pennsylvania Dutch, but Shwitzer. The language sounds surprisingly familiar to speakers of modern Swiss-German dialects – and very different at the same time. Amish Shwitzer has preserved much of its original Bernese-Swiss-German vocabulary, but its grammatical structure has changed drastically. Rather than converging to American English, though, it has taken on elements of Pennsylvania Dutch. This presentation will examine the fascinating evolution of one of America’s unique minority languages.

Guido Seiler is a professor of Germanic Linguistics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. His research specialization lies at the interface between historical and variationist linguistics and theoretical modeling of grammatical structure and language change.

Anja Hasse received her Ph.D. Germanic Linguistics and is now a postdoctoral researcher working on the “Amish Shwitzer” project. She is interested in non-standard Germanic varieties, their grammar, and contact between them.

This virtual lecture is free and open to the public!

To receive a link, contact Antje Petty: apetty@wisc.edu

For more information go to the Max Kade Institute website: https://mki.wisc.edu/event/virtual-lecture-how-swiss-german-is-amish-shwitzer/