Great, in depth article. I know almost nothing of Franklin as I'm not American and learned nothing beyond casual reading about him. But I'm descended from two different Germanic "Altstämme", and have travelled to both Heimaten to understand my ancestors.
It's interesting that Franklin refers to Germans as a whole more often than he does to specific ethnoses of German(ics?) such as Palatines and Saxons. Did Franklin consider these two groups similar enough in their general German-ness but separate enough in the location of their homeland?
I wonder if it's because the Rhineland was the origin for almost all emigrants to America at the time. Emigration to America from Swabia, Bavaria, Brandenburg etc. hadn't begun yet.
And he would have been familiar with Saxons as one of the three Germanic groups comprising the English at that time. Also there was no politically unified German state until over 100 years later.
He does both in his writings, referring to Germans as an ethnic group united by their language or by their specific sub-Germanic identities. That's a good point, that it is interesting that he often refers to Germans as a nationality in a time period where a single German identity hadn't fully been realized yet. It's likely because of his exposure to the German-speaking population of Pennsylvania, which is where the vast majority of Germans were at the time. My assumption is that because so many of the Germans who came to America at the time retained their language they formed a German identity within the United States since they were cleaved together.
A similar thing occurred in French-Canada. The French that came to Canada came there before the France truly nationalized as a country via the French Revolution. Quebecois French retains a lot more essentially archaic words compared to the the French in France as the French there were cut off from the mother country after the Seven Years War, so they didn't go through the same standardization and nationalization that France had. Additionally, French Canada had been settled largely by French from the West and North during a time when those regional identities would have been stronger, but despite that owing to the pressures placed upon them by becoming subjects to the British and then a sovereign Anglo Canada, those regional identities coalesced into a French-Canadien identity, much like the Germans in the USA.
French colonisation was quite a bit different though. Cartier, Champlain, etc, they came as direct agents of the French crown at the time and claimed land for France. France had already been a full national entity for at least several hundred years starting with the Capetians who gradually extended their hold outward from Paris to the takeover of Burgundy in 1477.
You're right about Quebecois dialect, it has many archaic features to it that aren't part of metropolitan french anymore. Similar relationship as Dutch and Afrikaans. As a French girl once haughtily told me, "in France, we do not swear on ze church!"
Great article. As always, John Chapman delivers his works to the highest standard.
Thank you very much. I missed doing research that I was proud of and I'm here to stick around.
Sending you some of those positive vibes.
Great, in depth article. I know almost nothing of Franklin as I'm not American and learned nothing beyond casual reading about him. But I'm descended from two different Germanic "Altstämme", and have travelled to both Heimaten to understand my ancestors.
It's interesting that Franklin refers to Germans as a whole more often than he does to specific ethnoses of German(ics?) such as Palatines and Saxons. Did Franklin consider these two groups similar enough in their general German-ness but separate enough in the location of their homeland?
I wonder if it's because the Rhineland was the origin for almost all emigrants to America at the time. Emigration to America from Swabia, Bavaria, Brandenburg etc. hadn't begun yet.
And he would have been familiar with Saxons as one of the three Germanic groups comprising the English at that time. Also there was no politically unified German state until over 100 years later.
He does both in his writings, referring to Germans as an ethnic group united by their language or by their specific sub-Germanic identities. That's a good point, that it is interesting that he often refers to Germans as a nationality in a time period where a single German identity hadn't fully been realized yet. It's likely because of his exposure to the German-speaking population of Pennsylvania, which is where the vast majority of Germans were at the time. My assumption is that because so many of the Germans who came to America at the time retained their language they formed a German identity within the United States since they were cleaved together.
A similar thing occurred in French-Canada. The French that came to Canada came there before the France truly nationalized as a country via the French Revolution. Quebecois French retains a lot more essentially archaic words compared to the the French in France as the French there were cut off from the mother country after the Seven Years War, so they didn't go through the same standardization and nationalization that France had. Additionally, French Canada had been settled largely by French from the West and North during a time when those regional identities would have been stronger, but despite that owing to the pressures placed upon them by becoming subjects to the British and then a sovereign Anglo Canada, those regional identities coalesced into a French-Canadien identity, much like the Germans in the USA.
French colonisation was quite a bit different though. Cartier, Champlain, etc, they came as direct agents of the French crown at the time and claimed land for France. France had already been a full national entity for at least several hundred years starting with the Capetians who gradually extended their hold outward from Paris to the takeover of Burgundy in 1477.
You're right about Quebecois dialect, it has many archaic features to it that aren't part of metropolitan french anymore. Similar relationship as Dutch and Afrikaans. As a French girl once haughtily told me, "in France, we do not swear on ze church!"
First