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
The Pennsylvania German language is alive and well, I can report. The Amish girls at the farmer’s market I go to every Friday talk to each other exclusively in German.
Mine, too! Ernest Tubb, the Texas Troubadour, was my fave. Mickey Gilley did a good one, too.
About 20 miles rom me....great food!
Many of the German immigrants to Texas were recruited by noble land developers like Prince Solms with leaflets describing the great potential for them in a new free land.
A lot of them left Germany during the 1840s as a reaction to the militarization of the Prussians. Some of the liberal Germans that immigrated were so highly cultured that among the first organizations they started in those frontier villages were string quartets and mannerchoirs.
By 1860, the largest ethnic population in Texas was of German extraction, most of it centered in San Antonio and the Hill Country northwest. One town, Fredericksburg, made a treaty with the Comanches who controlled that area of the state that was never broken.
In the 60s I used to be approached on the streets of some of the old German towns like New Braunfels and Fredericksburg by older residents who would speank to me in German because my appearance made them think I was of local German extraction.
Wonderful festivals full of ‘gemutlichkeit’ in those old German towns.
Thanks so much, I’ll try it.
My mother’s family traces its history to the Prince Solms colony (mid 1800s) - they are Bavarian.
It’s a country beer joint, I sure was fooled for many years.
Y’all are a fountain of historical enlightenment. Vielen Dank.
Thanks for the tip. Thanks for your service. And thanks for that great tagline!
Gar nichts.
However, it is imperative that you leave your mark - be sure to sign or carve your name onto or into something for posterity, a wooden beam or an outside wall. *I’m there* - several times, lol.
Here’s something else kind of unique about Fredericksburg and the Hill Country’s German population - I posted about Sunday houses when we had some threads on “Katrina cottages”:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1735172/posts?page=15#15
Yes, you are correct, though I have found out that several of my “cousins” now live south of the boarder in mexico, poor suckers
That’s the great thing about Texas, you can get a taste of Germany in Fredericksburg, a taste of Czech culture at WestFest, and go to Panna Maria, the first permanent Polish settlement in the United States.
Funny you should mention that, but on my 3 or 4 greats grandfather Etienne, the 1st to come to the US on his country of origin it say Empire of the Germans.
I don't care what John Edwards says.
I attended the same school as my mother did. It was a three room country school. However when she was attending it was taught in German and Spanish Hence the need for three rooms.
When my brothers attended it was taught in English and Spanish. By the time I attended it was only English. It was thought natural for children to learn in their native languages in pre-WWII Texas.
I later spoke with a Spanish descent friend. His comment was, That it was very hard for rural Spanish speakers to learn English in that day. Most of the Germans spoke all three languages,. They conducted business with the Hispanics in Spanish. I know my father was highly regarded for his ability to speak Spanish.
I, myself, speak German very well and would often do the translating for my Army unit in Germany. One of the few extra duty jobs I actually relished.
Oh! and FWIW, My family is listed in the 1880 census as being here since 1873. For those who wonder about loyalties due to our being capable of speaking another language. We have been involved on the U.S side in every war since arriving.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
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