Re: American Dutch dialects

> > They might have been home-spun, but they were refined elsewhere. A
> > Midwest professional would never be more that a couple of steps
> > (and down the ladder) away from his colleagues on the East
> > Coast. They had conferences then too.
>
> I don't think so. Except for immigration, the itinerate (i.e. the
> homeless such as loggers, field hands and miners) and the military,
> only the wealthy traveled.

That's right. Doctors did. At least once in their lives. From the city where they studied, and possibly to it before that. And school marm were about the minimum level for a doctor to marry if he didn't want to spend his life getting bored stiff.

> A trip to the state capital took all day for grandfather in his
> Model A. It now takes 20 minutes for my uncle.

But I'm talking about you great-grandfather on the train.

> Except for WWI in France and Germany, my grandfather's only trip
> outside the state was to visit us in Ohio.

What was his profession?

> There were no conferences for schoolmarms that I ever heard of.

I didn't claim there were. Their husbands, that was another matter.

> Until WWII, if people had a farm or a stable profession, they
> stayed put.

After they acquired the requisite education, and that, if it was sufficiently important, they would have been done elsewhere.

> My grandfather lived in a relatively cashless society
> and only bought things that couldn't grown on his farm.
>
> >
> > > > > > And since the Sinter Klaas -> Santa Claus plays a large
> > > > > > role in the American pantheon (just kidding), the channel
> > > > > > which brought that deity from the Dutch would be
> > > > > > conducive to language peculiarities too.
> > > > > > Remember that similar religions imply cultural influence.

> It may, or it may have seeped down from Canada --Andrew would know
> about it.
> >
> > OK, so that's a local custom, but Santa is as Generally
> > American as the language we were discussing.
>
> But Santa hit the scene thanks to the Saturday Evening Post and
> other such New York based magazines --not through oral culture. It
> seems to have spread through the US around the time of the Civil
> War, c. 1860. Before that, he was called Father Christmas.

You are now in the unenviable position of having to defend the proposition that central cultural features of the Midwest came from New York, but no linguistic features did. That is difficult.

> We also use the term Chris/Kris Kringle, from German

German Christkindl.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus

The story of the Da. nisse or Sw. tomte needs some clarification: the nisse or tomte was originally a house spirit, a leprechaun-like small imp to whom you should set out food or he would sour the cows' milk, burn down the farm or whatever mischief he could think of. Andersen has one story about a nisse at Christmas. You used to by cut-out cardboard nisser (kravlenisser) to put on top of paintings or mirrors or wherever you might stick them at Christmas time.


Torsten



Torsten