5 Amish Communities & Linguistic Walls that Bind Them Together

Anabaptist Amish are one of the most unique communities within Indiana. They deliberately shun modern technology, wear plain clothing, and even adopt unique haircuts in order to identify themselves as a community apart. It is this precisely this devotion to remain apart that makes the Amish unique. Anabaptist Amish not only desire separation, it is a requirement within the community. This deliberate firewall has allowed the Amish community to retain their German language, conservative faith, and lack of technology which has allowed the Amish to fight off outside forces that have assimilated other immigrant communities in the United States.

In order to maintain their identity as a community, the Amish have kept as much separation from the outside civilization as possible. Famously, the Amish wear plain clothing and have deliberately avoided vehicular transportation and electricity in their homes. However, the Amish’s devotion to the German language may best provide insight into their devotion to their community. Much like earlier immigrant communities in the United States, the Amish have deliberately held onto their own language, speaking German despite nearly 200 years of cultural pressure from living in the U.S. They have also held onto their language and resisted Anti-German sentiment during both World Wars. “During World War I, German was forbidden in schools, churches, over the telephone, and in semipublic places” (Kopp 36). Despite exterior pressure, the Amish retained their unique language.

Deliberate maintenance of language within a particular community is not unique to the Amish community. This is one facet of the Amish that is shared with immigrant communities. “The Amish … serve as an example of the strong connection between language maintenance and the maintenance of ethnicity” (Keiser 3). This tendency to marry language and the idea of belonging to a greater community is not limited to the Amish. This is something that is also seen within immigrant communities including modern Latinx communities.

“For immigrants, and especially undocumented immigrants, belonging to community mattered deeply. The collective ‘we’ and the politics of determining who belonged to local and national ideas of an ‘us’” (Vega 217).

There is one difference between the Amish community and the Latinx immigrants cited by Vega – Amish people have been in the United States for hundreds of years. While both the Amish and Latinx immigrant communities retain the idea that shared language and a shared identity is of utmost importance, the Amish see their ‘separation’ from the greater community of outsiders as something that also binds their community together.

“In light of the moving cultural fence…it seems reasonable to propose that Amish … [would] accommodate a shift to English. Crucially, however, there must remain, then ‘inside the fence’ sufficient other means to define oneself as separate, as Amish” (Keiser 5).

This desire for separation mirrors the same desire for separation from German immigrants from the early 20th Century. As Vega remarks, during its founding, St. Boniface Catholic Church in Lafayette, Indiana served as a microcosm for this Amish desire for separation. However, instead of Anabaptist Amish, the community that desired separation was German Catholics in the 19th and 20th Centuries – only to be supplanted by Mexican Catholics in the 21st Century:  “Founded by German Catholics who were seeking to preserve their particular religious identity, St. Boniface was established in 1853 as a sanctuary for religious, linguistic, and ethnic traditions” (Vega 22). It is the final two aspects that mirror the Amish community at large.

Vega tied the Catholic community to the early 20th Century Mexican immigrant community that replaced the German immigrants, but by extension, they also mirror other religious communities like the Amish community that fought specifically to keep their faith and language. “Pennsylvania German thrives in Old Order Mennonite communities without overt language maintenance efforts … loss of language means loss of separateness, which means…loss of faith” (Keiser 4). The Anabaptist Amish’s desire for separation is even stronger than other immigrant communities since it extends beyond language and includes both dress and mode of transportation. Authors claim that the Amish are “Among the most self-consciously engineered of all societies … The Amish, far from being a static community, continually redefine what it means to be Amish and thus separate from the rest of society” (Keiser 4). Unlike other communities that desire to emulate the greater society, there is no such desire for the Amish, and therefore, a greater protection against the loss of their individual language.

The Amish’s steadfast devotion to the usage of the German language is hardly unprecedented. The devotion of early 20th Century German immigrants and 21st Century Spanish-speaking immigrants to maintain fluency in their native language parallels that felt by Anabaptist Amish. Kopp explained what the Amish were fighting against: “The widespread anti-German attitude in the United States in connection with World Wars I and II made a great number of families raise their children in English rather than Pennsylvania German” (Kopp 36). The Amish weren’t just fighting against a nebulous “Anti-German Attitude;” they were fighting against the Klu Klux Klan and its English-only messaging. “The Klan’s early-twentieth-century rhetoric of ‘100 percent Americanism’ provided disturbing parallels to contemporary anti-immigrant messages in 2006” (Vega 26). While Kopp does not provide information on the KKK, he does report the effects on the Amish and the greater society within Indiana during the First World War. Despite all of this, German is maintained as an important part of the Amish society. Again, this is most likely to retain the “walls” between their society and the greater “English” society.

“In the nineteenth century many people spoke Pennsylvania German, and the dialect was hardly exclusive to the Amish. … In many ways a Pennsylvania German ethnicity set the Amish apart in ways that often paralleled their religious separation” (Nolt, Meyers 63).

During this time period, there were some concessions made to the greater society. During this anti-German immigrant time period, Amish immigrants did indeed adopt the English language in order to assimilate – to a point. There was a period of transition for the Pennsylvania German, showing a slow transition between languages.

“During a time of transition in the early nineteenth century, some tombstones were inscribed in both German and English. However, there are no stones inscribed in Pennsylvania German, which used to be a spoken language only” (Kopp 38-39).

While Amish struggles to keep their own language is not unusual compared to other immigrant communities, their ability to keep it after nearly 200 years within the United States is.

Anabaptist Amish’s ability to keep their language separate from greater society is insulated by the number of aspects of daily life that the Amish have kept separate from greater society. Beyond language and conservative faith, there are more aspects of their community that sets them apart including their plain clothes and deliberate avoidance of technology. While these choices have become continually more difficult as time and the greater civilization moves on and becomes more technology-dependent, conversely, it feeds into hundreds of years of Amish doctrine. “Unlike the dominant culture that invests power in the promises of a technology-filled tomorrow, the Amish grant authority to tradition” (Nolt, Myers 21). While this separation might weaken a standard, internet-savvy member of modern civilization, again, it is specifically this separation that makes the Amish community even stronger. “The ability of these communities to maintain Pennsylvania German in the face of long-term, intense cultural pressure … stems from their religious commitment to live as a separate … rural-oriented society” (Salmons 337). Illiteracy would be a major problem for a member of the greater society, making a person unable to function on the internet. However, for the Amish, this is championed. Their specific language is only spoken, and deliberately remove their children from school after the eighth grade. “Literacy in midwestern Pennsylvania German-speaking communities is exclusively in English – a direct result of the consensual practice among Amish that instruction in Amish schools be entirely in English” (Salmons 337).

In order to remain a community, Anabaptist Amish keep their language, clothing, and lack of technology as a deliberate firewall from the greater society. The amount of “pieces” that the Amish have to give allows this community a stronger firewall than other immigrant communities that enter the United States. Even if the Amish were to assimilate and allow for modern technology or standard clothing, their usage for old German and conservative faith would be protected. This may be what sets the Anabaptist Amish apart and has allowed for their community to remain largely untouched in the United States for nearly 200 years.

Works Cited

Keiser, Steve Hartman. “Pensnsylvania German and the ‘Lunch Pail Threat’: Language Shift and Cultural Maintenance in Two Amish Communities” When Languages Collide: Perspectives on Language Conflict, Language Competition, and Language Coexistence. 2003. Obtained from: https://books.google.com/books?id=EnEFNOcYIrUC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=amish+maintenance+of+german+descent

Kopp, Achim. The Phonology of Pennsylvania German English as Evidence of Language Maintenance and Shift. 1999. Obtained from: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Phonology_of_Pennsylvania_German_Eng/i2QrW23jcOkC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=amish+maintenance+of+german+descent+indiana

Nolt, Steven M. & Meyers, Thomas J. Plain Diversity: Amish Cultures & Identities. 2007. Obtained from: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Plain_Diversity/rAcj10mFGeMC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=indiana+amish+german&pg=PA63

Salmons, Joseph. “Religious German” from The American Midwest: An Interactive Encyclopedia. 2006. Obtained from: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_American_Midwest/n3Xn7jMx1RYC?hl=en&gbpv=1

Vega, Sujey. Latino Heartland: Of Borders and Belonging in the Midwest. 2015.