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and soon forget their native patois. But so recently as the eighties of the last century, two hundred years after the coming of the first German settlers, there were thousands of their descendants in Pennsylvania who could scarcely speak English at all.

An interesting variant dialect is to be found in the Valley of Virginia, though it is fast dying out. It is an offshoot of Pennsylvania German, and shows even greater philological decay. The genitive ending has been dropped and possession is expressed by various syntactical devices, e.g., der mann sei buch, dem mann sei buch or am mann sei buch. The cases of the nouns do not vary in form, adjectives are seldom inflected, and only two tenses of the verbs remain, the present and the perfect, e.g., ich geh and ich bin gange. The indefinite article, en in Pennsylvania German, has been worn away to a simp&pgr;’n. The definite article has been preserved, but das has changed to des. It is declined as follows:

Nom.	der	die	des-’s	die
Dat.	dem-’m	der	dem-’m	dene
Acc.	den-der	die	des-’s	die

In brief, this Valley German is a language in the last stages of decay. The only persons speaking it are a few remote country-folk and they have reduced it to its elements: even the use of polite pronouns, preserved in Pennsylvania German and so important in true German, has been abandoned. It has been competently investigated and described by H. M. Hays, 8 from whom I borrow the following specimen of it:

’S war wimol ei Mätel, wu ihr Liebling fat in der Grieg is, un’ is dot gmacht wure. Sie hut sich so ang gedrauert un’ hut ksat: “O wann ich ihn just noch eimol sehne könnt!” Ei Ovet is sie an ’n Partie gange, aver es war ken Freud dat für sie. Sie hut gwtünscht, ihre Lieve war dat au. Wie freundlich sie sei hätt könne! Sie is ’naus in den Garde gange, un’ war allei im Monlicht khockt. Kschwind hut sie ’n Reiter höre komme. ’S war ihre Lieve ufm weisse Gaul. Er hut ken Wat ksat, æver hut sie uf den Gaul hinner sich gnomme, un’ is fatgritte….

The German spoken elsewhere in the United States is much less decayed. The hard effort of German schoolmasters and the extensive

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