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Comment by jmadsen | Hacker News Reader

A curious side note - hardly a language or even dialect, really - is the effect that having a large number of immigrants from one country can have on a region's language.

For example, in my own eastern Wisconsin, a large part of "Wisconsin-ese" is nothing more than German translated directly into English. So many people settled Eastern Wisconsin from Germany at the same time that their efforts to learn English all had the same mistakes, and became our local "pidgen".

For example -

- to soften an imperative in German, add "mal" - short for "einmal" (once) - there is only one word for borrow or lend - "leihen".

And so "Leih mir ein dollar mal" is "Could you lend me a dollar?" in English, but,

"Borrow me a dollar once"

in Wisconsin "accent". Many other small examples of this.

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That's called a calque, I believe.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque

Hiberno-English (the English dialect in Ireland) is similar. Lots of grammatical influence from Irish. e.g. plural you, additional tense ("do be"), verb repedition instead of yes/no.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-English

Growing up in Ohio, we always said "Gesundheit" in my house when someone sneezed.

When I was a kid, I asked my mom, "What does it mean? Is it another language or something?" She said, "It's just something you say when someone sneezes."

I have similar experience. My father's German-descended family lives in St. Louis, and they still say it. I asked my mother as a child, and she had a similar answer to your mom.

Also, the use of "by" in "Wisconsinese" seems inspired by German "bei" (at) -- as in "I'll meet you by the club tonight" meaning at the club, not nearby as the sentence would suggest.

The exact same thing is observed in Belgian French (wallonian) where they use "une fois" (same thing as "once") because of the dutch speaking influence locally.

Also in standard mandarin, where you can soften an imperative (I am told that the intuition is that the duration of such a modified verb is short) by adding 一下 "one time".

As far as I know (not authoritative), the construction is native.

"Une fois" means "once" in standard French ("il y avait une fois..."). Is there a specific context you're thinking of where it's used in a non-standard way?

But is it used to soften an imperative? "Once" is is not used that way in English, except aparently in Wisconsin.

Though I find it ironic, that in this context "mal" translates to "once". Since "mal" actually means "multiple times".

Oh, you mean like "Donne-moi une fois quelques minutes" - the exact same construction as the parent was pointing out exists in Wisconsin. Fascinating. Thanks for clarifying.

"Mal" means "time" (singular)

"mal" means time(s), but used that way in German is a shortened form of "einmal" (once)

Similar to Texa-duetche https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_German ... Contributed words like skunk to English.

Sounds like Penna Dutch... Sag mal -> say now (would cha have any ring bologna?)

Would like to add that Pennsylvania Dutch actually refers to Deutsch (i.e. German), not the language spoken in The Netherlands. The Dutch phrase for "sag mal" is "zeg eens".

Nitpick: Position of "mal" in the German sentence is wrong. "Leih mir mal ein Dollar" is the right one.

> our local "pidgen"

"pidgin"?

"pidgen" is "pidgin" in his pidgin.

:-)

it was late...

yep, another example of this is when Wisconsinites talk about visiting someone. "Let's go to Jeremy's house" becomes "Let's go by Jeremy", which is correct in German.

Though "Let's swing by Jeremy's" would be AFAIK pretty common across the US--although I suppose in that case there's a [house/place] implied by the possessive.

Make it possessive ("lets go by Jeremy's") and it would be perfectly normal English in my native south-east of England too.

I think it's just a more just an archaic usage in American English.

To which correct German sentence does "Let's go by Jeremy" correspond? Closest I can come up with is "Lass uns bei Jeremy vorbeischauen". Though in this case 'bei' has more of the meaning of 'at' and 'vorbeischauen' is an integral part of the sentence.

> "Let's go by Jeremy"

Non-native English speaker living in California. I've heard that construct in CA quite a bit.

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