[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] dialects

[Carolyn Schott]

I'd be cautious about this approach - especially using the dialects that
currently living (although older) family members speak.  I'll admit that my
ear for German is not finely attuned enough to differentiate the dialects (I
just know that they're not the Hoch Deutsch I learned in school!) - but I'm
told that my grandfather Schott definitely spoke the Schwaebisch
dialect...because that was what was common in Hoffnungstal, Bessarabia where
he grew up.  

But I've traced my Schott family back to Germany using church records, and
the family came to Russia from the Rheinland-Pfalz area, and before that
were in Hessen...neither of which would typically speak Schwaebisch I
believe....  So if I'd tried to use dialect as an indicator, I would have
been led astray.

Carolyn

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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 16:03:37 -0700
From: Ron Neuman <ron at neuman.ca>
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] dialects
To: Jerry Frank <FranklySpeaking at shaw.ca>, Verna Hutchinson
	<verna2k5 at shaw.ca>,	ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.0.20060207155755.01cae138 at mail.neuman.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

Verna - In my previous involvement with the AHSGR and in 
attending various AHSGR conventions, I seem to recall that Dona 
Reeves-Marquardt had an ongoing project for a number of years 
that dealt with the topic of tracing your ancestors to villages 
in Germany based on dialects.  I think that she required oral 
interviews in German (based on a prescribed list of questions) 
with older family members, and the tracing was based on quite a 
variety of linguistic attributes.  She may also have made 
presentations at several conventions on this topic.

I don't have an Email address for her, but I suspect that you 
could contact her by means of GR-GENEALOGY at LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU

If you have any success in contacting her, it would be 
interesting to hear her thoughts.