#Pensylvania Dutch

[lailoken]

Hello! I recently came across your post about pennsylvania dutch folk magic being a closed practice. I obviously agree with this but I was hoping you could help me in a bit of a personal journey if you have the knowledge or know where to find it.

My family, maternally, comes from germany and immigrated to the pennsylvania dutch area. I was wondering it you knew if this blood connection to the culture would be enough to warrant looking into the culture's traditions? I spent much of my life talking to my great grandma from PA and spend as much time as possible talking to my grandma and great-aunt (her daughters) and while we discuss their culture, i believe much of our knowledge died with my great grandmother.

If you have any thoughts or advice I would love to hear them. Thank you very much 💕🌿✨

Hello there. 🌱

In all honesty, I don't feel like I'm the best authority on this. But, to me, if you have Pensylvania Dutch ancestors in living memory—especially if at least some of their traditions have been passed down to you—then it doesn't seem unreasonable to explore that some, so long as it's done steadily and respectfully. For myself, I have never felt like I was really being called to fully "embody" my Penylvania Dutch heritage, and I would never try and call myself a Braucher or anything like that, but the traditions that I did inherit are very dear to me.

If you're wanting to explore Pennsylvania Dutch traditions in a serious way, your best bet is probably seeking someone who is actually part of that tradition, and doing your best for prove yourself worthy of learning some from them. Of course, there's no guarantee that someone would be willing to share with a person from outside of their direct community.

Best of luck moving forward!

[grox]

I have a bottle of pensylvania dutch chocolate liquor in my fridge that I kee0 crawling back to thinking itll taste good I keep drinking it and making half life scientist hurt sounds and its hurting me its hurting me bad

[bzkr]

I think he‘s talking about pensylvania germans, who are speak pensylvania dutch - a dialect of german(it‘s called dutch because back in the day dutch=deutsch/now:german and lower dutch=niederländisch/now:dutch

And i gotta agree with him. The same way that swiss germans or transylvanian germans(don‘t know if any are left) can be considered germans. In this case we‘re talking about culture not nationality.

'yeah im german' (is a usamerican born and raised in usamerica with a german ancestor)

[kissimirrit]

one thing i love learning from people who speak yiddish or have family that speak yiddish is that yiddish has so many words in common or are similar to pennsylvania dutch, because they both derived from the central rhines valley in the german palatines before modern german evolved to what it is today. so there’s quite a bit a mutability!!

i love sharing the pensylvania dutch equivalent of yiddish words if/when i remember them. xD i wonder if there’s a yiddish equivalent of ladvarik (apple butter) or if that one is just uniquely ours haha.

[agents-of-frickle-frackle]

I’ll outen the lights after youse guys redd up the living room

an ancient pennsylvania dutch saying