roger.pape Site Admin
Joined: 17 Mar 2009 Posts: 414 Location: Liverpool, NY
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Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2014 10:56 am Post subject: Audio Recording of Concordia Low German |
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As noted in earlier postings, there were a number of Low German dialects throughout Northern Germany that varied from region to region. The emigrants that came to America brought these variations with them. So the Low German spoke in one German-American settlement will be different from that in another. It can also vary within a given area where the immigrants came from different parts of Germany.
Low German was not a formal written language. To study the differences between the various locations, one typically makes audio recordings of phrases spoken by natives of the area. Leland Steinkuehler produced an audio recording of dialects of the language as spoken in three different communities in Missouri, namely Concordia, Loose Creek (Tipton, MO area), and Westphalia (Osage County, MO). The Concordia recording was spoken by Wilmer (“Wimpy”) Ziegelbein.
The Ziegelbein family emigrated from the vicinity of Detmold, Germany so their dialect was from the eastern part of Westphalia, i.e. adjacent to the Province of Hanover. It represents one of the three different dialects spoken in the Concordia area. This version is distinguished by those who keuren (“coy-yen”) Plattdietsch, rather than sprechen ("sprecken"), from the vicinity of the city of Hannover (e.g. Esperke), or schnacken Platt (from the more northerly area between Bremen and Hamburg).
Click on the following link to play the recordings:
Spoken Low German |
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