The frozen language of settlers (II): Karen A. Rösch, ‘The Texas Alsatian Dialect in Medina County, Texas’, YGAS Supplemental Issue, 6, 2025, pp. 191-227 | settler colonial studies blog

The frozen language of settlers (II): Karen A. Rösch, ‘The Texas Alsatian Dialect in Medina County, Texas’, YGAS Supplemental Issue, 6, 2025, pp. 191-227

28Jul25

Excerpt: The Alsatian dialect was transported to Texas in the early 1800s, when entrepreneur Henri Castro recruited colonists from the French Alsace to comply with the Republic of Texas’ stipulations for populating one of his land grants located just west of San Antonio. Castro’s colonization efforts succeeded in bringing 2,134 German-speaking colonists from 1843-47 (Jordan 2004: 45-47; Weaver 1985:109) to his land grants in Texas, which resulted in the establishment of four colonies: Castroville (1844); Quihi (1845); Vandenburg (1846); D’Hanis (1847). Castroville was the first and most successful settlement and serves as the focus of this chapter, as it constitutes the largest concentration of Alsatian speakers. This chapter provides both a descriptive account of the ancestral language, Alsatian, and the current Alsatian language as spoken today, as well as a discussion of sociolinguistic and linguistic processes (e.g., use, shift, variation, regularization, etc.) observed and documented since 2007.

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