From: Rick McCallister
Message: 63489
Date: 2009-02-27
I'm using my office machine --which only lets me respond backwards, sorry about the previous dud.
I imagine that Dutch probably did influence NYC English, but not in ways that made it into General US English. Maybe it's responsible for "de", "dem", "dese" and "dose", perhaps /th/ > /t/ in "tink", "toidy-toid street," etc. But I don't think NYC began to grow until after Dutch died out and it was swamped with settlers from the UK, France and Germany in the 1700s
Migration and genealogical records show that most of the US west of the Appalachians was settled through Philadelphia to Lancaster Co PA and especially up the Shenandoah Valley, then down the New & Kanawha Rivers to the Ohio Valley to the rest of the US. Some also went down the Monongahela.
Dutch surnames are not particularly common in the west, south and midwest. Most Dutch surnames in my family were Pennsylvania Dutch (i.e German) settlers with Dutch names. Only one, Pieter de Keyser, came from New Amsterdam.
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