Heritage Languages Compared


What This Is

On this page, you will find various aspects of my heritage languages. Most of it will deal with vocabulary lists, but not exclusively. Most grammar is found on the page devoted to that particular language.


Which Languages Are They?

My heritage languages are the languages my ancestors spoke. The ones they spoke when they emigrated are these:


All ancestors spoke in dialect regardless of language. To the extent that any of them spoke or wrote in a standardised version of their respective languages is largely unknown to me. The amount of education they had varied. Further, it's not clear to me to what extent a standard language even existed at the time of emigration.


Criteria for Inclusion

Generally, the reason for inclusion on the official list is for learning the languages of my ancestors but this number had to be brought down to a manageable number. This was done by using these reasons:

  1. The language must be spoken by an ancestor as a mother tongue. This is the reason for all of them or else it's not a heritage language. My ancestors did not speak Swahili, Ancient Greek, or Chinese.
  2. The language must have been spoken as a mother tongue by an ancestor when they came to America . This brings the number down quite a bit. But there are problems: Much information about immigrant ancestors is uneven and often unknown. French may not qualify here, and Sorbian may qualify here. German dialects are here. Pennsylvania German does not really fit of course, although ancestors spoke it. "Old Languages," that is, older versions of languages (like Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Gaulish) do not fit. This tends to be my most important reason for including anything on the official list.
  3. The language must have speakers today. It would be nice to actually talk to distant relatives—living ones. The Old Languages again do not qualify.
  4. It's the standard language that must be learned. This basically knocks out the dialects. I don't really like doing this, but there are simply too many of them.
    On the other hand,
    • the dialects my German ancestors spoke don't vary very much from one another. Pennsylvania German descends more less from West Pfälzisch, for example. And West Pfälzisch is essentially the same dialect my ancestors spoke in northern Alsace. The Manx ancestors spoke a form of Northern Manx, but it varies little from Southern. Little is known about which dialects the French and Welsh ancestors would have spoken in any case.
    • little in the way of textbooks, tapes, and CDs can be found in these dialects, regardless of language. They are not used in broadcasting or in books, generally. Alsatian and Pennsylvania German are exceptions.
    • trying to speak to someone in dialect is a little silly and a lot prententious.


What Is Known About What My Ancestors Spoke

In most cases, the language an ancestor spoke is known simply from the country they were from. The English speakers came from England, and the German speakers came from Germany, Alsace, or Switzerland.

The Manx speakers are not known to be Manx speakers directly, but in-laws from the same parish wrote letters back to the Isle of Man in English and Manx. Some of these letters were later reprinted in Manx newspapers. My Manx ancestors were born at the latest in the 1810s. Those born on the Isle of Man in the 1850s were generally the last people to know Manx as their first language.

My French ancestors, having taken refuge in Germany for being Huguenots, emigrated from Germany. Some adopted German versions of their names. They may have been German speaking though it seems some did retain French.

The Welsh present the biggest problem. They can be traced reliably only to the 1790s in Kentucky. It's thought they came to Kentucky from Pennsylvania by way of Virginia, but there is really little evidence of it. There was a Welsh community in southeastern Pennsylvania, of course, that was Welsh speaking. In any case, given the time period (maybe early 18th century), they were probably Welsh speaking when they came over.


Ugh, Languages from Before Emgiration

Then there are the languages that my ancestors spoke even before the ones they spoke when they emigrated. Many have developed into another language or are extinct. These are heritage languages for me but learning all of these gets to be a problem. These are the "semi-official" languages:

  • Upper Sorbian—sometimes gets into the "official" category. Ancestors could conceivably have been Lower Sorbian, Czech, Polish, Polabian, or even Yiddish speakers. My guess, and it's only that, is that they spoke a Slavic language (at the latest) into the early 17th century. According to the criteria above, it can't be readily dismissed from inclusion into the "official" list.
  • Old West Norse (Speakers' descendants became Manx speakers, but linguistic descendants include Icelandic, Faroese, and western dialects of Norwegian.) It's not spoken now, but Icelandic is very close linguistically. That is, it fits No. 1 and, in a sense, No. 3. above.
  • Polabian—one surname is Brandenburg (can be from branibor).
  • Flemish—very poor documentation of these ancestors
  • Walloon—very poor documentation of these ancestors
  • Anglo-Saxon, Old High German, Latin, etc...
These ancestors have surnames or histories which seem to indicate they came from other ethnic groups, but little more can be said. They present the biggest headache.


So What in the Hell Is the Reason For All of This?

The reason for all of this is that I've always liked learning languages but I could never decide on which languages to concentrate on. One criterion that I thought might be useful is to learn the languages of my ancestors. BUT, after all of this, when a person looks closer at what they spoke, well, it comes down to this: My German ancestors spoke all sorts of German (Pennsylvania German, Alsatian, Württemberger, Swiss, etc...). Some of the Manx ancestors have Norse ancestors. They would have spoken Old West Norse. The Sorbians were almost certainly German speaking when they came here. But little is known of this family. A century or two before they came here they might have spoken some form of Sorbian.

And if one studies these languages, would one study the eighteenth century version of it? That's about the time a lot of them came to America. And Old West Norse became Icelandic, Faroese, and (Nynorsk) Norwegian. Or one could even throw in the "Old Languages" like Anglo-Saxon, Old French, Latin, or even Gaulish, I suppose. How 'bout Proto-Indo-European? So, consider all the variations and time periods. Learning all of these sounds needlessly difficult and more than a little silly. We have entered the realm of the absurd.

We have also returned to the realm of too many languages and dialects. Why, I just went into a circle!

So all the above paragraphs mean is that I will limit myself to learning the languages at the top of this page. Except, unfortunately, I probably won't. Here are some other languages that hold an interest for me. I don't know why some get included on the list and some 6,000 other languages in the world don't, except that they tend to be languages not particularly closely related to anything else and/or they seem exotic in some way to me and/or they have few speakers and/or it's a challenge to find anything in or about them (though once I find something, the interest kind of wanes):

  • Most European languages, especially:
    • Autochthonous minority languages (like Frisian, Breton, Basque)
    • Balkan languages, especially Albanian, but also Macedonian and Bulgarian
    • Armenian, Georgian, and Greek
  • Native American languages, especially ones that have been spoken in Ohio
  • Polynesian languages and Malagasy
  • Punjabi
Oddly enough, languages from Africa (with the exception of Swahili, Nyanja, or other Bantu languages) generally don't interest me. And I can't seem to really get into Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and so on. Like I said, I have no idea why.


Numbers

EnglishGermanManxFrenchWelshUpper
Sorbian		 Lower
Sorbian		Polabian
oneeinsnaneununjedynjadenjadån
twozweijeesdeuxdaudwajdwadåwo
threedreitreetroistritřitśitåri
fourvierkiarequatrepedwarštyristyriciter
fivefünfqueigcinqpumppjećpěśpąt
sixsechssheysixchwe(ch)šěsćšesćsist
sevensiebenshiaghtseptsaithsydomsedymsidem
eightachthoghthuitwythwósomwosymwisem
nineneunnuyneufnawdźewjećźeẃeśdiwąt
tenzehnjeihdixdegdźesaćźaseśdisąt

Notes:

EnglishUses singular after one and plural after two or more.
GermanEins is used for counting. Ein is used before sing. masc. and neut. nouns. Eine is used before fem. sing. nouns. The plural is used after all other numbers.
ManxJees is used for counting. 'Two' is usually daa.
FrenchUn is used for masc. sing. nouns, and une is used for fem. sing. Plural nouns are used after other numbers.
Welsh
Upper SorbianThe numbers 5-100 take the genitive plural.