The uniqueness of the situation is perhaps amazing to a European, but hardly to an American. Here in the greatest melting pot culture in the world it is no new thing to find widely diversified groups leveling off their ways and their speech to form a common American denominator. In the Pennsylvania Dutch country we have by far the most widely diversified folk culture in America and at the same time a unity of language which astounds the scholars of linguistic science. There has never really been any such thing as a ‘united front’ among the Pennsylvania Dutch people—no nationalistic-political ties, no yearning for some once-deserted-now-idealized ‘fatherland,’ no dominant (nor domineering) religious body. Hence, our language has never taken on any ‘standardizing’ regulations, has never been given a hard and fast orthography, has never been elevated to the position of a subject in the public school curriculum, has never enjoyed the so-called dignity of great oratory, classic literature or even journalism. It has always been and always will be only FOLK SPEECH. As such it is the perfect oral expression of our Pennsylvania Dutch folk and their rich folk culture. But as such it has also suffered greatly—mocked and despised and branded as ‘only a dialect,’ ‘a corrupt form of German,’ ‘a kind of Pennsylvania hog Latin’ by all those in the past who, not appreciating nor even knowing what folk culture really is and means, could see no good in a language which according to their puny and narrow educational background ‘did not even have a grammar or a dictionary’! Only very recently have those of us who are interested in the study of folk cultures and folk linguistics seen the real and underlying values in the language—now, at a time when it is very rapidly dying out, when hardly any member of the new generation speaks anything but English (though that with often a heavy Pennsylvania Dutch savor), when the near future will witness the almost complete disappearance of this interesting, humorous, beloved folk speech except for its persistent employment by the Old Order Amish in their religious services and most of their everyday conversations. No grammar? EVERY language has grammar—Pennsylvania Dutch has its share to be sure. There are ten parts of speech, three genders of nouns (and you can’t hang a feminine article on a masculine noun!). ‘_Outen the light_’ is our common Lancaster County way of saying ‘turn out the light,’ and it is simply a short and efficient expression for getting the deed accomplished. The same is true of the shortened form ‘_this after_’ instead of ‘this afternoon’—an expression you’ll hear from the lips of every Lancaster City and County inhabitant.