The History of the German Language in Texas

About the Presentation

Dr. Boas will explore the roots of the German language in Texas which stretches back nearly two centuries. The dialect spoken by the earliest known German settlers, who arrived in the late 1820s and the linguistic diversity introduced by German-speaking immigrants under the auspices of the Adelsverein (“Society of Noblemen”) beginning in the 1840s formed the beginnings of Texas German. The various dialects gradually blended over time, forming a unique linguistic tapestry that also incorporated a substantial number of English loanwords. Dr. Boas will also cover the relationship between this emerging Texas German dialect and Standard German, which maintained a presence in schools, newspapers, and churches, as well as the steady decline of Texas German throughout the 20th century, analyzing the key factors contributing to its near extinction today.

About the Speaker

Hans Boas is the Raymond Dickson, Alton C. Allen, and Dillon Anderson Centennial Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies and the Department of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2001, he founded the Texas German Dialect Project to document and archive the remnants of Texas German for future generations. From 2012 to 2020, he served as the Director of the Linguistics Research Center and from 2018 – 2023 he served as the Chair of the Department of Germanic Studies at UT. Before coming to Austin, he was a postdoctoral researcher with the Frame Netproject at the International Computer Science Institute and a research fellow in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, funded by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (‘German Academic Exchange Service’). Prior to that, he studied law and linguistics at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany. Dr. Boas received both his M.A. and his Ph.D. in the Linguistics Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.