Since 1997, the Pennsylvania German newspaper
"Hiwwe wie Driwwe" allows dialect authors (there are still about 100 dialect writers) to publish Pennsylvania German poetry and prose. The newspaper is published two times a year (2,400 copies per issue).
Pennsylvania German can be said to be
Dying in at least two ways.
First, while it was once used as an everyday language in many parts of southeastern Pennsylvania, today it is not. There are still many among the older generations who speak Pennsylvania German; however, their grandchildren know only English. Second, the
Amish , who do speak the language every day, use many English words in their Pennsylvania German.
Because of this transformation, there is a fear among some that the Amish are gradually losing the language as they slowly replace Pennsylvania German words with English ones.
Another concern is that this process may be quickened as land in many larger Amish communities becomes more scarce, which will force more Amish to look for jobs outside of farming and in factories where they may be exposed to English much more than before.
Only Amish and Old Order Mennonites, i.e. the
Plain People , are passing the language along to their children in the current generation, although they were originally minority groups within the Pennsylvania German speaking population. According to the
Johns Hopkins University sociologist John A. Hostetler, fewer than 10 percent of the original Pennsylvania German population was Amish or Mennonite.
However, there is no sign that the Old Order Amish or the Old Order Mennonites who still use the language are about to give it up. In these cultures, the language is a sign of ''Demut'' or humility, and the language serves as a barrier against the outside world. Furthermore, with the high birth rate in Amish communities, the possibility is great that the language will survive at least in the short term. In fact, the Old Order Amish population which numbered only about 5 000 in 1900 has been doubling every 21 years. If this pace were to hold up, the number of Pennsylvania German speakers could rise quite rapidly in the coming century.
In Canada, the Amish, Old Order Mennonites, and many middle-aged and older Mennonites who do not belong to the Old Order, and whose ancestors came from Pennsylvania, speak Pennsylvania German. There are far fewer speakers of Pennsylvania German in Canada than in the United States; however, at least one Canadian Mennonite group has been slower at abandoning the language than their American counterparts.
Such is the case with the automobile Old Order Mennonites, whose members in Canada have continued to use Pennsylvania German in the home, whereas the Old Orders who use automobiles in the United States are making the switch to English.
In the United States all Old Order and New Amish and almost all horse and buggy Old Order Mennonite groups speak Pennsylvania German (the Shenandoah Valley's Old Order Mennonites are the exception, they have many families who speak only English, and their Sunday meetings are conducted in English only). As for the Beachy Amish, there has been a move towards English in many families. There are also diverse groups of those who can speak the language:
Lutheran s, members of Reformed churches, Moravians, Schwenkfelders, and members of the
Church Of The Brethren . Together, these people once represented the vast bulk of Pennsylvania German speakers.
These communities are also making efforts to re-teach the language in evening classes; however, as every year passes by fewer and fewer in these particular communities speak the language.
There is still a weekly radio program in the dialect whose audience is made up mostly of these diverse groups, and many Lutheran and Reformed church congregations in Pennsylvania that formerly used German have a yearly service in Pennsylvania German.
Other non-native speakers of the language include those persons that regularly do business with native speakers.
A fair estimate of the speaker population today would be between 150,000 (a very conservative estimate) to 250,000, although many, including some academic publications, may report much lower numbers, uninformed of those diverse speaker groups.
Among them, the Amish population is probably around 150,000 to 200,000; the Old Order Mennonites population is several tens of thousands, and there are thousands of older, less conservative Mennonites who speak the language, and thousands among older Pennsylvanian non-Amish and non-Mennonites. The Grundsau Lodge, which is an organisation in southeastern Pennsylvania of Pennsylvania German speakers, is said to have 6,000 members.
The number of Amish community members is not easy to estimate. In many cases, what is referred to as the Amish population represents only the
Baptized members of the community, which does not include younger members of the communities in their mid-twenties or younger. A better estimate is achieved based on the number of ''gmayna'' (church districts) and the average size of each ''gmay'' or church district. Furthermore, while there are large communities of speakers in the states of Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, there are smaller speaker groups found in and outside those states, and in Canada, scattered among English speakers.
There are no formal statistics on Amish population, and most who speak Pennsylvania German on the Canadian and
US Census would report that they speak German, since it is the closest option available.
