Mennonite Low German
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Mennonite Low German, also known as Plautdietsch, is the name given to those dialects of Low German spoken in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Honduras, Belize, and Argentina by over 300,000 Mennonites, members of a religious group that fled from Holland and Belgium in the 1500s to escape persecution, and who eventually resettled in these areas.
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[edit] Grammar
Low German Grammar resembles High German , as the Syntax is nearly the same as High German's, and so is the Morphology . Over the years, Low German has lost many inflections, with a greatly simplified Mennonite Low German being the result. It is still moderately inflectional though, having two numbers, three genders, two cases, two tenses, three persons, two moods, two voices, and two degrees of comparison.
[edit] Nouns
Like High German, Mennonite Low German nouns inflect into two numbers: singular and plural, three genders:masculine, feminine, and neuter, and the two cases Nominative, and Dative.
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| Feminine || Masculine || Neuter || |- | Singular ||dee Sonn || de Maun ||det Hüs ||Nominative |- |Plural ||dee Sonnen ||de Mensch || det Hiesa ||Nominative |- | Singular ||dee Sonn ||dän Maun ||det Hüs ||Dative |- | Plural ||dee Sonnen ||dän Mensch ||det Hiesa ||Dative {I WANT TO MAKE A TABLE.}
[edit] Verbs
Mennonite Low German verbs have five tenses. The present and first past tenses are inflected, while the second past and future tenses are different words marked by auxiliary verbs. Verbs can have two moods: Declarative and Imperative, two voices: active and passive, and three persons:1st pers. sing., 2nd pers. sing., 3rd pers. sing., and plural.
Present
I find
Ekj fing
Thou findest
Dü fingst
He finds
Hee fingt
We find ] Wie fingen
You find
Jie fingen
They find
Dee fingen
First Past
I found
Ekj fung
Thou foundest
Dü fungst
He found
Hee fungt
We found
Wie fungen
You found
Jie fungen
They found
Dee fungen
Imperative
[edit] Adjectives
Mennonite Low German also shows a rich inflectional system in its adjectives. Although once even richer, simplification has done its work here too, leaving Mennonite Low German with only three genders: feminine, masculine and neuter, and two comparison degrees: Comparative and Superlative.
[edit] Syntax
Mennonite Low German also shows similarity with High German in that it has SOV word order, in stark contrast to English which has SVO word order. An Englishman would put the object last, but a Mennonite would put the verb last, as shown in the following:
Mennonite Low German word order: James the horn made.
English word order: James made the horn.
In embedded clauses, words relating to time or space, would be placed at the sentence's beginning. This pattern is demonstrated here:
Mennonite Low German word order: Now am I happy.
More Examples: Then gave the king the dish.
Also, effects tend to be placed last in the sentence.
Example: In the cup, there was so much water, that it overflowed.
However, Mennonite Low German also has syntactic patterns not found in High German, or at least not as often, such as the repetition of a subject, by a pronoun.
Example: My hat it has three corners.
[edit] References
Kjenn jie noch Plautdietsch, Herman Rempel, 1987
De Bibel, United Bible Societies, 2003
