How to write in Plautdietsch?

Abstract

The article raises issues related to written fixation of the oral Mennonite language called Plautdietsch. The Mennonites -- members of one of the Protestant churches, established first in Holland and northern Germany -- changed their place of residence over the centuries. The Mennonite language emerged in Prussia and later in Ukraine, where their large colonies had lived. Being a striking feature of this specific ethno-confessional community, Plautdietsch was and still is used almost exclusively in oral communication and does not have any established written standard. The phonology of Plautdietsch may be identified, in general, as Low German, although there is a number of significant phonological features are not characteristic of Low German area.
Now the Plautdietsch native speakers live all over the world: in Canada, Germany, Russia, in particular, in Siberia, where their own, yet unstable, written standard of the language is being formed. One of the main problems concerning its fixation is caused by the complicated vocalism and high instability observed in the pronunciation of many vowels and diphthongs, the main source of difficulties preventing elaboration of the means for writing.

In this paper, we focus on these unstable features of the vocal system. It provides a brief overview of currently available written samples of Plautdietsch, produced in Canada, Germany, and Russia. Some of them are based on the Latin alphabet and norms of the German spelling. Others, on the contrary, depart from it, using specific letter combinations, unknown earlier, introducing geminates (double consonants), refusing to spell nouns with a capital letter or to use umlauts (for technical convenience). Developments and tentative approaches of some Germanists from Russia who introduced their own ways of writing Plautdietsch in their research papers are presented. As an illustration, the samples of such a graphic system, elaborated by the linguist from Novosibirsk I.A. Kanakin (1940 - 2018), are given. They were not published and are kept in the personal archive of the author of the article.

Our own principle of writing is presented too, and this as a part of the project implementation – compiling and publishing a small handbook for reading in this language, which is addressed to children, whose native language is Plautdietsch and who study literary German at school. Taking this into account, the most appropriate ad-hoc solution seems to use a form of writing that is close to German spelling and is accepted today in Germany.

Keywords: Plautdietsch, Мennonites, Low German, vocalism, orthography.