Pennsylvania Deutsch is NOT Dutch.

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]The Amish are German or Dutch. You realize some dialects of German like Palatinate or Frisian sound like Dutch.

[00:00:06]First of all, it's clearly a South German dialect with an American accent.

[00:00:10]So, I would say that's pretty fair. When I was in the Amish community, I did not know that my language wasn't Dutch. You know, I knew it wasn't like the standard German that was in the Bible and the the hymn books and stuff. I knew it we didn't speak the same as uh what I thought was German.

[00:00:25]But, I didn't know. I thought Dutch was just a dialect of German. Like it was real close. Turns out Dutch is not even close to what we speak at all. I would have a hard time understanding anything in Dutch, and I can understand a lot of German, you know.

[00:00:38]But, it's only here since I've been doing social media for like 3 and 1/2 years now is when I've learned the most about my language from people commenting on it.

[00:00:48]You know, I've gotten more more comments on it from all across the world. And it's really helped me narrow down what it actually is. It turns out it's a a German slang. It's like a dialect of German that's not written down anywhere.

[00:01:01]And just people in certain regions of Germany, they speak different dialects than what we speak is like a combination of a lot of those.

[00:01:10]So, I've learned a lot and I appreciate all the feedback from people. Like I said, when I was a kid, I thought we spoke Dutch. When we'd be out talking in Amish, we'd be saying "Oh, mich was a Datch." You know, we would call it Datch, not Dutch. But, the only English translation I knew was Dutch.

[00:01:27]And nobody really cared.

[00:01:30]You know, cuz nobody actually spoke Dutch. So, it was really hard to find somebody to tell you, "Hey, that's not actually Dutch." God bless you all. Stay safe.