Missouri's paw-paw French dialect fading into silence

[warwickland]

OLD MINES, Mo. — In hand-painted yellow letters on an old shack next to St. Joachim’s Catholic Church just off Route 21 are a few simple words, “Bienvenue a la Vieille Mine” — Welcome to the old mine.

It’s a salutation to the past in a place peppered with historic artifacts, in a dying dialect.

In this place just a stone’s throw from St. Louis, there are still tree markers left by the Cherokee as they passed through on the Trail of Tears.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2 ... lence.html

[chingon]

Wow. That's awesome. When I was young, there were still a few communities in central Kansas in which elderly people spoke with an identifiably German accent, despite being native English speakers with little or no knowledge of German. I think they're all gone now.

[chaglang]

That was probably part of the Volga German community that immigrated to central Kansas and Oklahoma in the late 19th c.

[heatherkay]

That was the deal with Lawrence Welk. He was born in the US, but everyone in his town in North Dakota was German. Even after two or three generations, everyone either still spoke German or spoke it with a German accent.

[kboish]

That was probably part of the Volga German community that immigrated to central Kansas and Oklahoma in the late 19th c.

Thems my people

[chaglang]

That was probably part of the Volga German community that immigrated to central Kansas and Oklahoma in the late 19th c.

Thems my people

Nice. Very interesting history!

[chingon]

That was probably part of the Volga German community that immigrated to central Kansas and Oklahoma in the late 19th c.

'Twas. Though, obviously there were significant Czech and German/German communities in central Kansas as well. Growing up in urban NE Kansas, I always thought of the state as being predominantly British Islanders (WASP/Irish/Scottish). It wasn't until I got a car that I really discovered how overwhelmingly central European KS, especially rural KS, is. I thought it was just a lot of Joneses, Scotts and Reillys, then I went west of Manhattan and...bierocks!