Fieldwork

Due to travel restrictions we couldn't conduct any fieldwork during the first one and a half year of the project. Thanks to a National Interest Exception granted by the US embassy we finally could travel to the US in summer 2021. Travelling with Guido Seiler and Anja Hasse were also Elvira Glaser and Coralie Aschwanden. We had nearly two weeks to collect data of Amish and ex-Amish speakers in Adams County, IN, and of Mennonite speakers in Wayne County, OH. The ten interviews with Amish Shwitzer and the nine interviews with Mennonite speakers allow for direct comparisons between a rather archaic variety of Shwitzer and the very innovative variety spoken by the Amish.

In July 2022, Guido Seiler, Anja Hasse, Coralie Aschwanden and Tobias Frick travelled to Indiana for the second field trip. Guido Seiler and Anja Hasse first flew to Pennsylvania to attend the Amish Conference in Elizabethtown and later drove to Wayne County, OH, where they interviewed seven Mennonite Shwitzer speakers. Coralie Aschwanden and Tobias Frick went directly to Berne, IN, to begin with the data collection. During the three week stay, it was possible to collect interview data from twenty-six Amish Shwitzer speakers in Adams and Allen County, IN.

The first of several fieldtrips in the new project Variation in Amish Shwitzer took place in June 2024. The team flying from Zurich to Indiana consisted of Guido Seiler, Tobias Frick and Leonie Strickler. In Adams County, Prof. Dr. Mark Louden (University of Wisconsin-Madison) joined the group from Zurich for the first week of the fieldtrip and helped with data acquisition. After this first week, Prof. Dr. Theres Grüter (University of Hawai’i at Manoa) took Marks position in the team. Under her supervision, linguistic data from families and children was collected.

After two weeks of data collection in Adams and Allen County the team of four moved to the north of Indiana where they stayed in Goshen. Unlike in the other two counties, Pennsylvania Dutch is here the majority language of the Amish population. With this in mind, the focus of the researchers shifted to accommodation phenomena occurring due to the contact between Amish Shwitzer and Pennsylvania Dutch Amish.

The second field trip of the new project started in mid-February 2025. While Guido Seiler stayed at the University of Zurich, Tobias Frick and Leonie Strickler flew to Indiana together with Theres Grüter, where Mark Louden was already waiting for us. The temperatures were well below freezing, but we still encountered many Amish buggies on the roads. After a few days in Elkhart-LaGrange, we traveled on to Allen County. There we had the opportunity to meet new speakers who gave us fascinating insights into their language (Amish Alsatian) and their settlement. After this stay, we traveled even further south to Adams County. After a little more than two weeks, the successful field trip came to an end.

In June 2026, we went on the next fieldtrip. This time, our research began in Seymour, Missouri, a settlement we had never visited before but about which we had heard a great deal. Seymour is a daughter settlement of Berne, Indiana, founded in 1968. The Amish in Seymour, MO, are very plain. We even met a carpenter whose workshop is still powered by horses. After a long drive across Missouri and Illinois, we arrived at the next settlement for our second week: Daviess County in southern Indiana. We found this settlement to be significantly more progressive. The dialect spoken there also differs greatly from that in Missouri: In Daviess County, the Amish speak with a Southern slang. After two weeks in settlements we had never visited before, the trip continued to Allen County, which we were already familiar with. Although we had been to this settlement in previous years, we met several new informants there as well. After our stay in Allen County, the field trip ended in Adams County. Once again, we encountered both familiar and new faces. In July, a successful field trip ended with a large amount of new and interesting data.

Since this year’s field trip lasted longer, our team was on site in staggered groups. We traveled in groups of two to four at a time. From Zurich Guido Seiler, Tobias Frick, Leonie Strickler, and Alessia Nussbaumer were present and once again, Mark Louden and Theres Grüter supported us with their valuable assistance.