But from the description in the article, it is clear they are at the liberalising end of the Amish.
And one thing that almost certainly follows from their liberalisation, is their TFR is going to gradually converge with mainstream society – not necessarily with the very low levels associated with the completely secular, but at least with the levels associated with mainstream conservative evangelicalism – modestly above the secular average, a lot lower than the Old Order Amish average.
By contrast, groups at the most conservative end of the Amish–e.g. the Swartzentruber–have a very high TFR, and it seems unlikely it is moderating to any significant degree; and also I'm sure their Pennsylvania Dutch is much healthier as a language.
Comparing Pennsylvania Dutch to Yiddish, I think the fact that Yiddish-speaking Hasidic communities (e.g. Kiryas Joel) use it as a written language, e.g. for their newspapers and community notices, and also a language of instruction in schools, puts Yiddish on a much more secure footing. I wonder why the Amish have never made much effort to write their distinctive language down? As far as I know, there isn't any theological objection, just a cultural habit they've stuck with. (They could keep standard German for their liturgy, just as the Hasidim use Hebrew not Yiddish for theirs.) I wonder if at some point, any of them will realise that investing in their distinctive language would be conducive to their long-term prospects of surviving the forces of assimilation.
Honestly, I was triggered to correct this comment mostly because it illustrates how we tend to explain away mistakes made by an LLM. It's not about subtle 'connotation', but the meaning is just incorrect. No offense meant to the poster, this is a trap the world has been falling into at scale for the past few years.
“hooche Leit” is PA dialect for standard German “hohe Leute,” literally “high people” in the sense of “fancy” people as opposed to plain people, as there used to be “plain Dutch” and “fancy Dutch” to refer to plain (Anabaptist) Pennsylvania Germans as opposed to other (now basically assimilated) German people in Pennsylvania. Commonly what her community and many other Deitsch-speaking communities call “hooche Leit” in Deitsch, they will often simply call “English” in English. From her description that’s probably fallen mostly out of use in her Libby community given their religious abandonment of the Ordnung.
I wonder what it says about a community that its language has no word for "love".
It’s certainly true that Amish much less the small and peculiar Libby community (which isn’t representative of wider Amish culture although part of it) have different ways of expressing feelings just as Germans are different from Americans and have very different ways of relating.
Bear in mind that she went from a remote group of emergent Amish to UC Berkeley, she is a fairly young writer and obviously still processing her background.
It would be more correct to say that there is no direct translation for the English word "love". Lots of languages fall in that category. Languages are complicated.
I'd recommend giving it a squiz. (I assume Amish has a large corpus)
> I grew up using this term, but upon encountering Louden’s work, I learned that “dialect” often functions more as an insult than a linguistically useful designation.
A shprakh iz a dyalekt mit armey un flot!
Funny. That's how (swiss) german gen z sounds to me.
The first Duden was published in 1880 and helped standardize German language a lot, even though local accents and dialects still persist. But speaking in dialect is considered somewhat low-brow in German language space, unless you are Swiss; even there, people will code-switch all the time.
(E.g. during class, both the professor and the students would speak High German, but during recess, they would switch to Swiss dialect.)
A rural language of peasants who do not use even old tech such as newspapers and radio and reside on a huge territory will necessarily diverge into a barely mutually intelligible family of local dialects, at least in the spoken form. Basically the Medieval or Early Modern standard situation.
Maybe its just human nature to try and rationalize the world around them? (using whatever framework they have a available)
There should be more, not less, experiments in alternative ways of life. I wish there was a lot more examples because we desperately need to change some things and some people need to be first.
As a non-American I don't know much about amish and there could be atrocities I am unaware of, but from what little I know I have always respected Amish for daring to be different, and for living sustainable and not contributing to climate change.
If you trade their belief in God with increased CO2 emissions -- why would that be a rational change to their culture?
So who are really misdirected humans? I would say those who sacrifice the planet on the altar of numbers stored in computer systems in banks...
Reading tip for you is "Sapiens" of Harari. Don't worry, he's an atheist, but he may contribute a more nuanced view on the role of religion in human culture (and he names capitalism as a religion too).
I don't think the current nuclear doctrines are anywhere close to perfect or best possible. There is surely room for improvement. But I vehemently oppose more countries innovating on nuclear doctrine, because the average outcome of innovation is likely to be worse than the current equilibrium, for bystanders and innovators alike.
Medieval Europeans knew that the fallow-field system was imperfect, but many simultaneous experiments on alternatives would have led to famine, not viable alternatives. Careful experimentation in some monastery gardens is a good thing, but wagering everyone's supper on untested ideas isn't.
The same applies to our own civilization. Western capitalist culture has flaws aplenty. But this does not mean we should throw open the gates to every, or even any, alternative group that comes along.
Minorities are, well, in miniority. Noone is at any point waging "everyone's supper" by trying out alternative ways of farming within their small miniority. (Meanwhile the majority IS risking everyone's supper in some decades).
Nuclear is different from your other examples because the choices of a small minority can drastically affect the vast majority.
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