[HN Gopher] The ancient Germanic history of Groundhog Day
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The ancient Germanic history of Groundhog Day
Author : Thevet
Score : 32 points
Date : 2024-02-04 07:20 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| hprotagonist wrote:
| and Feb 2 is because of Candlemas, and has some associated
| winter-prognostication lore: 'If Candlemas be
| fine and clear There'll be two winters in that year';
| jayknight wrote:
| The one I've heard is If Candlemas Day be
| fair and bright, Winter will take another flight;
| If Candlemas Day be foul and rain, Winter is gone
| and won't come again
| Aaronmacaron wrote:
| As a native swiss german speaker it was relatively easy to
| understand the poem in the article. Definitely easier to
| understand for me than modern Dutch. Also the word "gluschdich"
| that was mentioned at the beginning of the article seems highly
| swiss to me.
|
| Could anyone with more linguistic knowledge than me shed some
| light on whether Pennsylvania Dutch is really closely related to
| Dutch or if it's more closely related to German / Swiss German as
| I suspect?
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| No need for linguistic knowledge, I once had the chance to read
| some Pennsylvania Dutch texts stored in a library at a
| university in Central PA, and it was all Swiss German. "Dutch"
| is just the Americanization of "Deutsch," which is why they
| often call them the "Pennsylvania Deutsch" instead.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| It's regularly spelled "daitsch" by the speakers themselves.
| chucksta wrote:
| Grew up in SE PA, i've heard it called old german or high
| german but I don't know what that means. PA Dutch is just an
| americanization
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| What is old german / high german / low german?
| chucksta wrote:
| I don't know, I just know "is it dutch or is it german?" is
| a common question and that's the answer. I think high/low
| is a geographic indicator of where it's spoken in germany.
| esrauch wrote:
| The Pennsylvania Dutch's historic linage is mostly from
| southern Germany (like Baden-Wuertemberg-ish). Dutch is
| something of an English language misnomer in this context.
| zwieback wrote:
| I grew up in Stuttgart (although I don't speak the dialect)
| and to me the poem read like someone from Frankfurt wrote it,
| so maybe a hair north of Baden Wuertemberg?
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Hoi! It's german, but a more northern dialect (Palatinate):
| compare https://als.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Houptsyte with
| https://pdc.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haaptblatt
|
| (note that most L1 speakers of Pennsylvania Dutch have
| religious reasons not to use the internet, let alone wikis, so
| I have no idea who contributes to the latter)
|
| If you have blue/yellow tractors in your neighbourhood, see
| https://pdc.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Holland_Machine_Company
|
| The Amish who originally came from the Bern area eventually
| (over several generations) wound up in Pennsylvania because
| they refused military service and hence had to emigrate; I
| guess they didn't have Zivildienst back then.
|
| PS. compare the Zuri equivalent to the groundhog:
| https://www.blick.ch/schweiz/zuerich/detonation-im-video-nac...
| wolfi1 wrote:
| the "gluschdich" got me, usually such words have some
| resemblance to a word from standard German but in this case it
| doesn't sound familiar to me but then again the Alemannic
| German isn't my strong suit. Can anybody shed some light on
| this?
| Aaronmacaron wrote:
| In Swiss German I would spell it "glustig" or "gluschdig". I
| would "germanize" it as "gelustig". If you are "glustig uf
| oppis" it means you have "Lust darauf", often used in the
| context of food. "glust" on its own just means "Lust" as in
| "Geluste". As explained in the article if you are "glustig"
| you are not necessarily hungry but you just crave some food.
| "Ich hab zwar schon gegessen aber irgendwie hab ich voll Lust
| auf nen Doner!"
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| It's not (directly) related to Dutch at all, the "Dutch" thing
| is just an English spelling of "Dietsch", same word as Deutsch.
|
| The article also seems to mix Mennonite German speakers up with
| Pennsylvania Dutch speakers, which isn't correct AFAIK.
|
| I think on the whole? Mennonite German ("Plautdietsch") is not
| the same as Amish (I can't be certain, we don't have Amish here
| in Canada)... and their language I believe is more closely
| related to Low Saxon than to Low Frankish (Dutch). So closer to
| Plattdeutsch in northern Germany. But I also think it has many
| High German words and pronounciations borrowed-in as well
| (along with English, and other languages).
| jbaumg wrote:
| It is "Pfaelzisch", South West German dialect. It's not related
| to the Alemannic dialects such as Swiss German. They start
| geographically further South. See a map here:
| https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fo...
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Yeah but pretty sure Amish dialects have drifted pretty far
| on their own, as well.
| oniony wrote:
| I was completely convinced Groundhog Day was something that was
| made up for the film! Had no idea it was a real thing.
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(page generated 2024-02-06 23:01 UTC)