Name: The Writings of Ernest Waldo Bechtel, Vol. III: Weekly Dialect Columns, Part I: 1970-1973: edited by C. Richard Beam and Jennifer L. Trout: 9781601262479: Masthof: Books
Brand: edited by C. Richard Beam and Jennifer L. Trout
Price: 27.00 USD
Availability: InStock

The Writings of Ernest Waldo Bechtel, Vol. III: Weekly Dialect Columns, Part I: 1970-1973

edited by C. Richard Beam and Jennifer L. Trout

27⁰⁰

ISBN/Barcode:

Ernest Waldo Bechtel wrote a weekly Pennsylvania German dialect column from 1970-1988 in The Ephrata Review in Ephrata, PA. In his columns, he writes about his barbering experiences and what he sees when he observes people. He also writes his columns about holidays, such as Gedechtnisdaag and Grischtdaag. This volume presents the first four years of Bechtel's Dummheide columns in the original Pennsylvania German language. (426pp. color illus. Center for PA German Studies, 2010.)

Reading the Pennsylvania German Dialect

One of the challenges of studying the Pennsylvania German dialect, aka, PG or PA Dutch, is the lack of a widely available reading corpus. PG has always been primarily a spoken language, and when literature began to be produced in the 19th century, there was no standardized system for spelling. Much of the output of the 20th century is buried in newspapers; it can be found on the Internet, if you know what to look for and where to look for it. Retrieval of old PG newspaper columns is very time intensive. Beam and Trout's editions of the Writings of Ernest Waldo Bechtel provide an extensive source of material that can be read and studied by those interested in the PG dialect.

Dr. Beam spent his life in the scholarship of promoting a greater appreciation of the dialect, and his greatest legacy is, perhaps, his set of the Comprehensive Pennsylvania German Dictionary. The writings of Ernest Waldo Bechtel are a major source of citations in Dr. Beam's dictionary and having the fascicles of the Beam's dictionary available, along with a set of Bechtel's writings, will provide the student of PG with an essential corpus of material for their studies.