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The Pennsylvania Dutch live primarily in the Delaware Valley and in the Pennsylvania Dutch Country, a large area that includes South Central Pennsylvania, in the area stretching in an arc from Bethlehem and Allentown in the Lehigh Valley westward through Reading, Lebanon, and Lancaster to York and Chambersburg.
These European Germans immigrated to Pennsylvania Dutch cities, where many came to prominence in matters of the church, newspapers and urban business. [13] [12] After the 1871 unification of the first German Empire, the term "Dutchlander" came to refer to the nationality of people from the Pennsylvania Dutch Country. [1] [2] [3]
Previous immigration had mostly come from western and northern Europe, but during this period Pennsylvania experienced heavy immigration from southern and eastern Europe. [44] As many new immigrants were Catholic and Jewish, they changed the demographics of major cities and industrial areas.
Pennsylvania (/ ˌ p ɛ n s ɪ l ˈ v eɪ n i ə / ⓘ PEN-sil-VAY-nee-ə, lit. ' Penn's forest country '), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania [b] (Pennsylvania Dutch: Pennsilfaani), [7] is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States.
Dutch diaspora – the Dutch originally came from the Low Countries and northern France. Millions of Dutch descendants have traditionally lived in the United States ( Dutch American ), Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia , Sri Lanka , Africa ( Afrikaners ), the Caribbean ( Aruba and Netherlands Antilles ), and Suriname , and some Dutch ...
Many Pennsylvania Dutchmen are descendants of Palatines who settled the Pennsylvania Dutch Country. [6] The Pennsylvania Dutch language, spoken by the Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch in the United States, is derived primarily from the Palatine German language which many Mennonite refugees brought to Pennsylvania in the years 1717 to 1732. [65]
The continued use of "Pennsylvania Dutch" was strengthened by the Pennsylvania Dutch in the 19th century as a way of distinguishing themselves from later (post 1830) waves of German immigrants to the United States, with the Pennsylvania Dutch referring to themselves as Deitsche and to Germans as Deitschlenner (literally "Germany-ers", compare ...
A linguistic map of West Germanic dialects on the European mainland prior to World War II: High German is yellow and orange, including Pennsylvania Dutch and Palatine.. The ancestors of Pennsylvania Dutch speakers came from various parts of the southwestern regions of German-speaking Europe, including Palatinate, Electoral Palatinate (German: Kurpfalz), the Duchy of Baden, Hesse, Saxony ...