confounded with the Pennsylvanian German) spoken by millions of -
mostly uneducated - Germans in America, immigrants to a great
extent from southern Germany. Their English has not yet become a
distinct dialect; and it would even be difficult to fix at
present the varieties in which it occurs. One of its prominent
peculiarities, however, is easily perceived: it consists in the
constant confounding of the soft and hard consonants; and the
reader must well bear it in mind when translating the language
that meets his eye into one to become intelligible to his ear.
Thus to the German of our poet, kiss becomes giss; company -
gompany; care - gare; count - gount; corner - gorner; till -
dill; terrible - derrible; time - dime; mountain - moundain;
thing - ding; through - droo; the - de; themselves - demselves;
other - oder; party - barty; place - blace; pig - big; priest -
breest; piano - biano; plaster - blaster; fine - vine; fighting -
vighting; fellow - veller; or, vice versa, he sounds got -
cot; green - creen; great - crate; gold dollars - cold tollars;
dam - tam; dreadful - treadful; drunk - troonk; brown - prown;
blood - ploot; bridge - pridge; barrel - parrel; boot - poot;
begging - peggin'; blackguard - plackguart; rebel - repel; never
- nefer; river - rifer; very - fery; give - gife; victory -
fictory; evening - efening; revive - refife; jump - shoomp; join
- choin; joy - choy; just - shoost; joke - choke; jingling -
shingling;, &c.; or, through a kindred change, both - bofe; youth
- youf; but mouth - mout'; earth - eart'; south - sout'; waiting
- vaiten;' was - vas; widow - vidow; woman - voman; work - vork;
one - von; we - ve, &c. And hence, by way of a compound mixture,
we get from him drafel for travel, derriple for terrible, a
daple-leck for a table-leg, bepples for pebbles, tisasder for
disaster, schimnastig dricks for gymnastic tricks, let-bencil for