Language
The Germans from Russia originally spoke German or Mennonite Low German (Plautdietsch) at home. Since the villages in Russia often were populated by settlers from a particular region and were isolated from Germany, they maintained their regional dialects long after Germany standardized the language. Depending on their specific origin, Germans from Russia had difficulty understanding Standard German. It was only after emigrating from Russia to the Americas that the Germans lost their German dialects, generally within a few generations in their new countries. In the 1950s it was still common for the children in the Dakotas to speak in English and the parents and grandparents to use German. Songs in church would be sung in two languages simultaneously. Probably the person best known for having a "German from Russia accent" in English (a result of having learned English as a second language) was Lawrence Welk.
Read more about this topic: Germans From Russia
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“I now thinke, Love is rather deafe, than blind,
For else it could not be,
That she,
Whom I adore so much, should so slight me,
And cast my love behind:
I’m sure my language to her, was as sweet,
And every close did meet
In sentence, of as subtile feet,
As hath the youngest Hee,”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
“Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.”
—Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)