Talk:Texas German

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The German word for "mile" is "Meile", or is it supposed to be "Meil" in this case? /arnewpunkt

It might just be a loan from English. Either way, it's pronounced like "Meil". Also, almost everything about this article is either wrong or misleading. I'll fix and expand it when I get some time. /jimblor

It's Meile, ultimately from the Latin mille, a thousand fathoms. Nowadays it does indicate a British Mile, a few hundred meters longer than a traditional Roman mile. de:Meile has some interesting comparisons of Prussian, Saxon and other historical mile lengths. Roman measurements had a way of sticking around as the only real international standard available, so I'd guess it passed to German directly from a Romance language rather early. — Laura Scudder ☎ 22:05, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Anglicization

I've had conversations, in German, with several native speakers of this dialect in Fredericksburg. They all seemed to prefer to pepper their speech with English constructions. For example, one individual said, "Das war pretty okay!", referring to my accent. At one point, when my group arrived at a small heritage site, the curator asked if we had "die greene Tickets." None of this really belongs in the article, but I include it here for anyone who might be interested.--5th Angel 21:02, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Texas German has unrounding of the ü and ö vowels to i and e, so die grünen Tickets would come out sounding like "die greenen Tickets", even without English lexical influence. And Tickets is used in Germany by people who speak no English at all. —Angr (talk) 13:43, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Fayette County

There is still a considerable amount of German spoken in Fayette County as well. I am not sure that the dialect is exactly the same as in Fredericksburg, but it is German.

--F3meyer 12:40, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Luftschiff

A "Luftschiff" is a Zeppelin, not a "Flugzeug". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 89.14.24.237 (talk • contribs) 22:30, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

In Standard German, yes. But in Texas German, as pointed out in this article, Luftschiff in Texas German means "airplane". —Angr 22:51, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

all/alle

I don't get the distinction between the use of "all(e)" in Texas German as opposed to modern. "Der Kuchen ist alle" means "The cake is all (gone)" in most every dialect region except for Bavaria and Austria.Janko (talk) 22:58, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I think what it's trying to say is that in Standard German it's "Der Kuchen ist alle" but in Texas German it's "Der Kuchen ist all". +Angr 09:21, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Based on a particular dialect?

Is Texas German based on a particular German dialect (like other "diasporan" German dialects)? -- megA (talk) 13:01, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Apparently not. According to the Spiegel article linked at the bottom of the page, "Es ist auch einzigartig, weil es ein Mischdialekt aus mindestens fünf verschiedenen Dialekten ist, da die Immigranten aus verschiedenen deutschen Gebieten kamen." ("It's unique because it's a mixed dialect of at least five different dialects, since the immigrants came from different German areas.") —Angr (talk) 13:38, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps this should be pointed out as an outstanding feature? -- megA (talk) 19:32, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Maybe, but I'd prefer a better source than Spiegel for it. The popular press has a habit of getting linguistic facts wrong. —Angr (talk) 20:04, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Not only linguistic ones, and especially the Spiegel, as I noticed some days ago... -- megA (talk) 10:34, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Now that's pretty self-evident...

"Almost all of these speakers are in either the 18-64 or the 65+ age groups." -- megA (talk) 13:02, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

I've removed it as unsourced, but in fact I would suspect almost all of the speakers are in the 65+ (or even 85+) age group, not 18-64. —Angr (talk) 13:34, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

I suspected as much... -- megA (talk) 19:33, 26 February 2011 (UTC)