JINNY WILT Adams Co. Correspondent MILL CREEK (York Co.) - Lee Thierwechter pages through his loose-leaf notebook filled with Pennsylvania Dutch stories and sits down m his lawn chair which is set among a grove of trees by York County’s Mill Creek. Gathered in a circle around him are members of the Pennsylvania Dutch Heritage Group who have come to their annual picnic at the home of member David Sipe with the added attraction of listening to Thierwechter of Belleville, Huntingdon County, read his stories. He reads mostly in English with a Pennsylvania Dutch accent - letter v comes out as a w - for those m the group who cannot understand the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect, but a word or phrase of the dialect still creeps m Writer of a column in the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect for a weekly newspaper near his home, Thierwechter has also published a workbook for those who want to learn more about the language A retired manager of an Agway store in Belleville, he also teaches classes near his home and will be announcing new sessions in the fall. Thierwechter is like many of the members of the group who spoke the dialect until they reached school age. Not only did they learn reading, writing and arithmetic when they entered school, these students also need ed to learn a second language - English The language is a dialect from the Palatinate region of Germany and was brought to the United States by the early Lee R. Thierwechter of Belleville, Huntingdon County, reads Pennsylvania Dutch stories to members of the Pennsylvania Dutch Heritage Group. Thierwechter writes a column in the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect and was speaker at the group’s annual picnic. Group Treasures Pa. Dutch Dialect settlers from that part of the world. There are several dialects under the umbrella of Pennsylvania Dutch, or as some prefer Pennsylvania German. When members of the York group from different areas of the Commonwealth converse they will often note that they use a different word for the same object. Orpha White of York, presi dent of the group when it orga nized in the mid 1990 s in an effort to bring people who spoke or were interested in Pennsylvania Dutch together, said, as a child growing up in the northern Dauphin County, the dialect was spoken at home. “It was all I knew when 1 went to school,” she said. At the time of the group’s organization many people who attended the first meetings said they no longer had anyone to speak Pennsylvania Dutch with because the use of the dialect was dying out. Many said their parents frowned upon their use of the dialect because it showed you were poorly educated. But today some of those who never learned to speak the dialect, even though it was spo ken in their homes, are joining the group to learn more about the language. One of those is Ruth Gingrich, of Mount Wolf, presi dent of the group. Ruth said, “We read about the meetings in the newspaper and my sister Rachael (Gromling) and I were very interested. We had very much background because our grand parents and my father and his brother always talked Dutch when they ■were together. And daddy’s relatives are all from Lancaster County and they are PJOMESTEA 4 ' the River Brethien and a lot of them still use the language so we were interested, but I can’t speak it.” Although the two sisters have taken classes to learn the dialect, they can’t hold a conver sation in it. Ruth said she gives her time to the group because the mem ber’s goal is to preserve the lan guage. “We don’t want to see it fall by the wayside,” Ruth said. She noted that the group meets the third Saturday of each month at 2 p.m. in the commu nity room at York’s Galleria Mall in Springettsbury Township. All sessions are open to the public. Speakers are often on the agen da and present information about Pennsylvania Dutch and its origins. Members also attend Pennsylvania Dutch activities held throughout the Commonwealth. Sipe, the group’s treasurer, said he too joined the organiza tion because of his interest in the dialect. “My grandmother spoke the dialect, but when we’d go to town she’d say ‘speak English.’ They didn’t want the people to know we were dumb Dutchmen,” he said with a laugh. “Our parents didn’t want us to speak Dutch, but it was all right for them to speak Dutch because then we didn’t know what they were saying,” he con tinues. “I’ve been in and out of it. When I was in the Air Force in the mid-50s, I met a first lieu tenant from Lehigh County and he could speak Dutch. I got back interested in it again, then I got transferred and he got trans ferred,” he said. Once back home over the years he has taken classes whenever he found them avail able. “I’m still not as fluent as I’d like to be. I can read probably a lot better than I can speak it because I don’t converse with somebody everyday, but I read it everyday.” “Very faithfully ever night I head up the wooden lane and after I take a shower I’ll lay in bed and even if it’s just one page I’ll read,” from publications writ ten in the dialect, Sipe said. He keeps a Pennsylvania Dutch- English dictionary by the bed to look up words he doesn’t know. He hopes to see a teacher offer classes to area people who are interested in the dialect and one of the goals he wants the group to reach is continued preservation of the language for the younger generations. *«« -rrw r«r t ijr»n4 • *•*»**«•«*, David, who is often mistaken for C. Everett Koop, former head of the . Food and Drug Administration, first grew his Amish-style beard 26 years ago. His beard, straw hat, and sus penders give him the look the movie moguls wanted when they Members of the Pennsylvania Dutch Heritage Group gather at a picnic at the home of David and Shirley Sipe, Mill Creek Road, in York County. jin