Mixing High German and Low German

My main genealogy project right now is translating Abraham F. Reimer's #3945 (1808-1892) diary. Like most Mennonites from the late-1700s to the mid-1900s, he wrote in High German but spoke Low German. Low German and High German are distinct languages, not dialects of each other; so he really spoke one language and wrote another one. But there are times when his spoken language, Low German, crept into his written language, High German.

The Text.
This mixture of languages can complicate translation since sometimes I'm not sure which language an odd word comes from. Here are a couple examples from his diary entry for 16 April 1871:

Abraham F. Reimer (1808-1892) diary, Steinbach, Borosenko Colony, South Russia, 1870-1874, Mennonite Heritage Centre Archive, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Kleine Gemeinde collection, vol. 5907, item 3, p.32.

Here is the transcription:
16. F.[reitag] Des margens so 6 grad warm, des Tages so 14 grad war oft dünkel etwas geregent da haben wir das Ertoflen setzen nach zu hause und Egden ganz verichtet auch hat Tövs des Säen und Pflügen verichtet.

And the translation:

16. Fri. Morning 6 degrees [46° F.], day 14 degrees [64° F.]. Often cloudy, rained a little. Set out potatoes at the house and completely finished harrowing. Toews finished plowing and sowing.

Potatoes.
'Let's look at the words that I highlighted. First potatoes. Reimer uses the word Ertoflen, which is neither High nor Low German. The standard High German word for potato is Kartoffel, which comes from the Italian word tartufalo and means roughly "land truffle." (A good source for German etymologies is the translation of Friedrich Kluge's etymological dictionary into English that can be found at this link.The standard Low German word is Ieedschock. The first part of the word means "earth" and is related to the Dutch aarde, High German Erde, and English earth. (I don't know what "schock" means - maybe someone can tell me in a comment.) This is a case where the Low German word is more closely related to English and Dutch than to High German.

So Abraham Reimer has combined the Low German Ieed and the High German tofflen and come with Ertoflen. It took me a while and looking through dictionaries to figure what he was setting out.

Harrow.
The second word is harrow. The High German verb "to harrow" is eggen, and the Low German is äajden. According to Kluge's etymological dictionary, this is a case where High German borrowed a word from Low German. Abraham Reimer used the word Egden, which is the way he spelled the Low German word since Low-German speakers pronounce the letter g with an English y sound. Again it took a bit of searching in dictionaries to find the right word and to realize that Reimer's Egden was just a variant spelling of äajden.

The moral is that it can take a bit of searching and imagination to figure out some words, especially if you are not fluent in both High and Low German, as I unfortunately am not.

BTW, my favorite German dictionaries are
Reverso  Easy to use, gives suggestions if you don't spell exactly right, easy-to-follow layout of definitions, gives translations of phrases in context.
LEO Not laid out very clearly, but it has more words and definitions, you have to spell the word correctly to find anything, but it does give you a list of suggestions once you type in three letters, which can be really handy.
Koehler-Zacharias Plautdietsch Lexicon By far the most comprehensive dictionary of Low German. Both Low German-English and English-Low German. Spelling is a problem with any Low German dictionary, and he uses something similar to High German spelling, which makes the dictionary easier to use.
Kjenn Jie Noch Plautdietsch is a decent alternative, but it doesn't contain nearly as many words and goes much further toward a phonetic spelling, which can be hard to use.

Transcription of Yesterday's Diary Entry

Here's transcription from the diary entry that I posted yesterday.

27. M. Des Margs wol 18 grad warm. Des Tages so 24 grad wa: war ich in Nicopol auf den Markt
war ich auch in Apoteck waren das al vor 11 Tage reife Arbusen und Milonen gewesen.
Da hat es viele Stelen geregnet, auch in Rosefelt, und vor über 3 Wochen al Gurcke.

And now for a literal translation:

27. Monday. In the morning will 18 degrees warm. In the day about 24 degrees warm. Was I in Nikopol' on the fair.
Was I also in pharmacy. Was the for 11 days ripe watermelons and muskmelons was.
Also had is many places rained, also in Rosenfeld. And for over 3 weeks had cucumber.


And now for the polished translation:

27. Mon. Morning 18 degrees [72° F.], day 24 degrees [86° F.]. I was in Nikopol’ for the fair [Markt]. I also went to the pharmacy. Have had ripe watermelons and muskmelons for eleven days. Rained in many places, including in Rosenfeld. And had cucumbers for more than three weeks. 

Here are some comments on the translation:

a) He doesn't spell out morning and also spells it like it would be pronounced in Low German - at least the way I have heard my parents pronounce it - "maryens."
 b) To me wol seems like he's saying wollen, i.e. the temperature will be 18 degrees, but that doesn't make sense, so I dropped that word in the polished translation.
c) He abbreviates warm as wa:. He shortens lots of words.
d) I chose to translate Markt as "fair" instead of "market" because I don't think he would go to Nikopol' just for the daily or weekly market.  Most likely it was the annual fair, but I don't know for sure, so I put the original German word "Markt" in brackets so that readers could judge for themselves.
e) Apotheke is misspelled.
f) Arbus is a Low German word borrowed from Russian and not in standard German dictionaries.
g) Melone is misspelled. I chose to translate it "muskmelon" instead of "canteloupe" because Wikipedia says that muskmelon is the more general word in English, and I understood the German word Melone also to be general.
h) Stelle is misspelled, but he always spells it Stele, so I've gotten used to it.
i) The village of Rosenfeld is misspelled.
j) He frequently uses the particle or abbreviation al, and I can't figure out what that means.
k) I'm not sure who has had cucumbers for three weeks - the sellers in the fair in Nikopol', the people of Rosenfeld, or in his own garden, so I tried to leave it ambiguous.

My German, especially grammar, is at a fairly basic level; so feel free to comment if you see mistakes.

Is it Mr., Mrs., or the whole family?

When you're translating Mennonite German text, there is an important but subtle distinction between the ways the husband, the wife, and the whole family are named.

If the word refers to the husband, it will say, for example, "Abraham Reimer."

If it refers to the wife, it will say, for example, "Abraham Reimersche."  Married women are almost always called by their husbands' name with the -sche suffix added, except in formal records.  Sometimes even in formal records, such as church books, the wife will be called "Abraham Reimersche," especially if scribe doesn't know her actual first name.  This might occur if the wife in question is an older woman and the scribe is a younger man who has never heard her called by her first name.  It was considered disrespectful in the extreme to refer to a married woman by her first name.

If it refers to the the whole family (or to the couple, depending on the context), it will say, for example, "Abraham Reimers."  Also, there are a few surnames that take the -en suffix, for example, "Johann Koopen" would refer to the whole Johann Koop family (or to the couple, depending on the context).

Motivation When Translating German Script

Translating German script can get really discouraging and frustrating.  I sadly did not learn German as a kid, so not only do I have to fight through the Gothic script but also I have to read words and sentences that are foreign to me.  I imagine most of you are in the same position.  Here is what motivates me:

1.  There really is genealogical gold in there.  Maybe not in the sentence you are working on, but if you keep going, you will find one nugget, and then another, and then another.  Think of the gold miners in the Old West who dug away tons of dirt and rock and sifted through one pan of gravel after another until they found one nugget.  We're doing the same thing!

2.  The cryptanalysts in World War II who broke the German and Japanese ciphers were not only trying to break into cipher systems with millions of combinations.  But also they were doing this with a foreign language, German or Japanese.  And they had an enemy that would change the ciphers whenever they realized that they had been broken.  Our task is much easier.  Our authors were trying to communicate something and they did it in plain language without encryption.  If the cryptanalysts in World War II could break the German and Japanese ciphers, surely we can figure out what our ancestors were trying to say - we have a much easier task.

3.  Even when your pace starts veeeeeeerrrrrryyyyy slowly, if you keep at it, you will get faster.  If you don't give up, you will learn how the author makes his letters.  You will start to recognize one word after another.  You will get faster and faster at it.  By the end of the document, you may almost be able to read it directly without a dictionary.

If the Gothic script sometimes seems like your enemy, I'll leave you with the immortal words of Winston Churchill, "Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."

Sometimes Gothic script seems to have the overwhelming might of an enemy; but if you take Churchill's advice, you will someday declare victory over that church record or diary page and come away with a full sack of genealogical gold nuggets.