Texas has a rich and varied history and I find it fascinating. Texas is the one state that lives up to the advertising hype. It really is "like a whole other country".
Posted on 08/26/2007 2:04:22 PM PDT by Dysart
AUSTIN --Although stories of der Cowboy and die Stinkkatze mayno longer get told in Texas, Germanic linguistics professor Hans Boas wants to make sure nobody forgets them.
Boas, an assistant professor at the University of Texas, is the founder and manager of the Texas German Preservation Project. Every month or so Boas ventures forth from his campus office in Austin to small towns like Boerne, Fredericksburg and Crawford to conduct interviews with the dwindling number of old-timers who speak the odd mixture of English and 19th-century German.
It's a dialect unique to the Lone Star State, and most of the 8,000 or so remaining speakers are in their 60s, 70s or 80s. Their numbers are expected to dwindle precipitously over the next few years, and Boas says that by 2040, the dialect will probably be gone.
And so die Stinkkatze -- the Texas German word for skunk -- and der Cowboy will become just a memory.
"The Texas German Dialect Project I started right after I got [to the University of Texas] in September 2001," Boas said. "The main reason was because no one else has been interested in Texas German from an academic point of view. But there are fewer and fewer speakers, and in 30 years it will be gone. I thought it would be a good idea to record the remaining speakers who are left."
Boas says he has interviewed more than 200 Texas German speakers and recorded more than 350 hours of the conversations. Interviewers are typically UT students who ask about childhood memories, games, social interactions -- anything, really, that will get Texas German speakers to provide a window into their lives.
'The culture's legacy'
Boas has preserved audio recordings of these interviews on an Internet database, which also includes video recordings and written text. Besides helping to preserve the dialect, the archive will allow further study of the linguistic features and grammar of Texas German. "It also is important to create a popular account of Texas German to share with local schools, preservation societies and museums -- the dialect is part of the culture's legacy, but it is rapidly eroding," Boas said.
Der Cowboy is Texas German for "cowboy" -- it's basically the English word spoken with a German accent. "Die Stinkkatz" literally means "stinky cat"; that is, it's the Texas German word for "skunk." Boas explains that because there were no skunks in their native country, German immigrants invented their own word.
The word "Luftschiff" is also unique to Texas German -- or at least, it's unique the way Texas German speakers use the term. During a vacation some years back in Germany, New Braunfels resident Bill Moltz used "Luftschiff" to describe his long flight across the Atlantic. For speakers of Texas German, "Luftschiff" means airplane.
But in modern German, "Luftschiff" means "airship." Texas Germans have been using the word since before the invention of the airplane and never updated it to reflect a post-Wright Brothers world.
"I remember people looked at us in Germany like we were nuts -- they said you flew here in a dirigible?" recalls Moltz, 68, still laughing about the incident. "But that's what happened. We use those terms."
Although fewer than 10,000 speakers remain, at one time as much as 20 percent of the Texas population may have spoken the language. Moltz said that many German settlers arrived in Galveston and spread out during the mid-1800s, and now a swath of German communities can be found running north and south down the middle of the state.
The immigrants settled in dozens of towns like Fredericksburg, New Braunfels and Boerne. At one time there were more than 150 German-language newspapers in Texas, and in many towns German was spoken almost exclusively.
Wars brought decline
But the dialect began to fade during World War I, Boas said.
"A little before World War I, there was a big nativist movement in the U.S. and [the idea] was that if you're in the United States, then you better speak English -- there just wasn't a lot of tolerance for people who speak differently," Boas explained.
He said there was another steep decline during World War II and that the last of the monolingual Texas German speakers are pretty much gone. Those who are left -- fifth-generation Texans like Moltz -- spoke the dialect as kids, but also speak English.
The Texas German Dialect Project has been funded through grants, although that funding expired at the end of last year, Boas said. He said it costs about $35,000 a year to maintain the program.
It also accepts contributions though a University of Texas endowment.
"Every time we lose a language, we lose a data set -- if researchers have more data, we can create and test theories about how language works more accurately," Boas said.
Texas German Dialect Project: www.tgdp.org
A different dialect
A sampling of unique Texas German words and their translations in European German and English:
Airplane
das Luftschiff -- Texas German
das Flugzeug -- European German
Blouse
die Taille -- Texas German
die Bluse -- European German
Car
die Car (pronounced Kaa) -- Texas German
das Auto (pronounced otto) -- European German
Little town
die kleine Stadt -- Texas German
das Dorf -- European German
Piano
das Piano -- Texas German
das Klavier -- European German
Truck (semi)
der grosse Truck -- Texas German
der Lastwagen -- European German
Skunk
die Stinkkatze -- Texas German
das Stinktier --European German
Squirrel
die Eichkatze --Texas German
das Eichhörnchen -- European German
Socks
die Strumpf --Texas German
die Sökchen -- European German
Source: Texas German Preservation Project
Well up to WWII, there was still background animosity between some German communities in Texas, and their English speaking neighbors, over the Civil War. Germans in Texas, as in Missouri, were largely pro-Union, and opposed to secession. Texas held a plebicite on the question of secession, and a number of Counties, often largely German, voted to remain in the Union.
The pro-Union residents of those counties, easily identifiable by looking at the vote returns, were looked on with suspicion by the (new) Confederate governemnt of Texas, and some communities were actually placed under martial law to curtail recruiting of troops for the Union.
The troops sent to perform those duties, not infrequently REMFS bent on proving to themselves that they were just as tough as the real combat troops off doing the fighting, behaved about like the Union occupation troops did in conquered Confederate communities, and caused the same lingering resentments.
This thread made me think of Marta, and I hadn’t thought of her in years. She was from one of these little German communities. She had an apartment next to mine her freshman year at A&M. Boy, was she eager to make up for lost time! It seems that adventurous young ladies could get a bad reputation if they were too friendly with boys. But once removed from the threat of gossipy neighbors....
The real conflict came with WWI. That’s when the”English” took over San Antonio for sure. Until the war. there was a lot of emphasis on “Kultur” and all that/ The war ended that. German was bannedfrom the schools and every German’s patriotism was suspect. Such was the situation that my grandmother, who was about ffity at the time. who had come a small German farm town, and had spoken English only when she had to, thereafter refused to speak German in public. It was pretty bad and it didn’t end with the war. Anyway, the German institutions just began to wither away. Where we have Hemisphere now, used to be a large chunk of the German community down town. By the end of WWII, that area was already pretty run down, which is the reason why in the ‘60s it was bull-dozed to make room for the fairgrounds.
Beethoven Hall is still there!
Yeah, that they saved. It is even fixed up now. You should have seen it in 1947. though. What I am talking about is the row of businesses right across the Street from St.Joseph’s Church (where my Dad was baptized in 1893.) Even after WWII there was still a German language paper there. The whole block was cleared for Hemisfair in 1967.
Very solid folks. I hunted the area great deal in the 70’s
One farmer/rancher was in his 90’s and would talk about running cattle from Mezicoo to St Looie as kid and dem durn peskie Komanchies and apachies down Mezicoo.
He alway carried a 10 gauge in his pickup as he was sure some would show up but this time with the Russians.
Texas has a rich and varied history and I find it fascinating. Texas is the one state that lives up to the advertising hype. It really is "like a whole other country".
My husband's great great grandfather Jacoby helped settle Fredericksburg. His name is on some kind of paper there in Fredericksburg. My husband, who was born at home at Hye, couldn't speak english when we went into the first grade and had to be held back because of that. He was born in 1944. Boy howdy, do I know about Tex/German! My husband told his parents to speak english when I was around so I would know what was being said. I did learn some of it. Oma (his mom) finally passed away two years ago at 96. She and Opa ate some crap that, according to todays experts, will kill ya. He ate that slimy/gooey fat in a roast. They all ate loads of "cholestral causing" lard, fats etc. Opa died at age 89 of emphysema from smoking so many years. Oma died from a fall in a nursing home and subsequent pneumonia.
Yes, they're potato dumplings, but the only recipes I can find online are wierd variations, including bread and stuff. I will try this evening and put into words what I learned by hand from a lovely Frau in Bonn many years ago.
Re: spaetzle -- I made it last night -- tossed it with caramelized onions and mushrooms, and served it alongside sliced steak. It was heaven!
Thank you - I would appreciate it and I want to make them!
Mmm, yumm! Love caramelized onions. Even keep some in the freezer, “just in case” I need them, lol. Looking forward to your knodel directions!
ping
Ebonics is what needs to die out, no whut ah'm say'n?
Texas Czech is probably in a lot more trouble.
Hey, I’m finally having my spaetzle, after thinking about them all week, lol.
We’ve had thunderstorms and power outages every day, including one that left me without A/C for 30 hours or so - and I didn’t want to stand over a pot of boiling water!
I’m having them with meat loaf gravy and just sampled, yum! Had to get busy replacing my hurricane meat loaf, because I’d eaten it all. I always keep a sliced one frozen, in case of hurricane or no power - because it tastes good without heating and can be used cold in a sandwich.
Made extra gravy just for the spaetzle and glad I did. Happy Labor Day weekend to you!
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