Wisconsin German
German spoken in Wisconsin, USA / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The term Wisconsin German refers to both Wisconsin High German and to heritage dialects of German spoken in Wisconsin.[1]: 5 By 1853, a third of Wisconsin's population was coming from German-speaking lands; by the end of the 19th century, Wisconsin's largest minority of non-English speakers were German speakers.[2]: 37 Unlike other heritage languages, which tend to become moribund by the third generation, Wisconsin German speakers have maintained their heritage language(s) alongside English for multiple generations,[1]: 5 from the 1840s to well until the mid-20th century. This is due in part to their immigration patterns: the German immigrants tended to settle within ethnically homogeneous (or similar) communities,[3][4] with similar linguistic, cultural, and geographic backgrounds.[1][4]: 119–120 Additionally, the maintenance of the language was supported by German being taught and used in many local churches, schools, and the press.[3] While Wisconsin German retains many standard and/or dialectal features of German, it has not only incorporated some linguistic elements of English, but also developed unique and innovative (morphosyntactic,[1] syntactic,[5] lexical[6]) characteristics of its own. By the early mid-20th century, social, political and economic factors such as urbanization, contributed to a general shift from German to English[citation needed].[4]
Wisconsin German | |
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Native speakers | 36,443 (2013) |
Indo-European
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Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | – |
IETF | de-u-sd-uswi |
Languages | |
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English, Wisconsin High German, Low German, Kölsch, Swiss German, Luxembourgish |