SPRECKEN SIE PENNSYLVANIA(ISH)
By Cindy O. Herman
FEBRUARY, WITH ITS SHTIVERS, HAS ARRIVED, and soon March winds will be roaring over the hills and rattling your windows. And that is the time when you might hear a Pennsylvania Dutch person say, "I hope the wind lays itself overnight." You can almost picture the wind curling into itself like a warm, contented cat, can you not? Those March winds will bring April shar-ers, of course. If you're not from rural Pennsylvania, it might wonder you - excuse me, you might wonder - what a shar-er is, until the sky erupts in great big drops of rain and your Dutchified neighbor says, "It wondered me if it would give a shar-er."
April shar-ers will bring May flar-ers. Many gardeners grow competitive with their flar-er beds, wanting their tulips to be taller than their neighbor's. Or, as a Dutchified person might say it: to have more heighth. It may not be the correct word but you have to admit - length, width, heighth - it makes sense. Describing distance can be equally puzzling when talking to a Pennsylvania Dutch person. Is it farther, further, or futher? The family I'm neighbors with lives futher down the road. They sell flar-ers at their produce stand, which is a little futherer along, just past their house. If you go all the way to the futherest house on the road, they sell flar-ers, too. But theirs don't have much heighth to them.
This and that usually suffice for most people's conversational needs, but many Pennsylvania Dutch folks like to help the words out with a here and a there. Thus, "This here snow pile on the south side of the barn will melt fast, but that there pile on the north side could last till the flar-ers start to bloom." And sometimes, this here and that there become so joined together that they seem to need another here and a there to show emphasis: "This here here gets a lot of sun, but that there there is in the shade all day." Once is another word that gets a little Dutch help. It usually indicates something that occurs one time. The Pennsylvania Dutch, however, like to tuck it on at the end of a sentence, for no particular reason. And they like to add a T to it, too. For the same reason.
We still have quite a few cold, wintry days ahead of us, here inside Pennsylvania, but spring will come. We just have to wait for the March winds to lay themselves and the April sharers to give us some good rain, and then you'll see: the flar-ers will start blooming. And this here snow will be melted into that there river. Who knows? It might even break a record for the futherest heighth the river's ever reached. We'll just have to wait and see, wunst.
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