ABSTRACT
Language variety in North America based on Middle German dialects, spoken today by approx. 700,000 descendants of German immigrants who came to America in the eighteenth century from the Rhine valley and the Palatinate. It is used as the colloquial and ritual language, but also as the spoken and written poetic language. The American term Dutch is an incorrect rendering of deutsch ‘German’; it has nothing to do with Dutch as the name for the language spoken in the Netherlands.
