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The frozen language of settlers (I): Ryan Dux, ‘Wisconsin Pomeranian Low German’, YGAS Supplemental Issue 6, 2025, pp. 5-36

28Jul25

Excerpt: The U.S. state of Wisconsin is well-known for its rich German (broadly speaking) heritage and culture, yet the number of competent German speakers has drastically decreased over the past century. Here, I discuss the present state of the German language in Wisconsin, with a particular focus on the moribund Pomeranian Low German dialect spoken in Marathon and Lincoln counties in the central area of the state. The primary data for the linguistic analysis come from interviews conducted by the author in 2013 and 2014 with the last generation of German speakers in this area. “Wisconsin German” differs from other German-American varieties such as Texas German and Pennsylvania German in that immigrants from different German dialect areas formed small, relatively isolated communities and largely maintained their regional varieties, and these varieties did not mix or coalesce into a unified, mutually intelligible koiné. Thus, the moniker “Wisconsin German” is less appropriate than community-specific terms such as “Central Wisconsin Pomeranian,” “Dane County Kölsch,” or “New Glarus Swiss German.” Like most German-American varieties, Wisconsin German has undergone drastic language shift since around 1940 and is nearing the point of language death, as most competent speakers are well over the age of 65. The Pomeranian Low German community of central Wisconsin is representative of this linguistic situation: the immigrants formed a small community in a rural area centered around small country churches and most speakers had some command of both the regional dialect and standard High German, resulting in a unique situation of language contact. In this paper, I first provide a general overview of German(s) in Wisconsin (Section 2), before discussing the sociohistorical background (Section 3) and structure (Section 4) of Central Wisconsin Pomeranian.


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