When our eldest daughter was in high school, she worked at the village's general store. Every Friday and Saturday night, young Amish fellows would come in to buy cigarettes and rolls of caps.

That's right. Caps....to hit....with rocks and hammers....the way we did as kids years ago.

It was that time known as "rumspringa," when Amish kids give in to the world's temptations before committing to the responsibilities of family, church and community.

"What are they saying?" she asked.

"No sense repeating that. When they come around again, just go, 'Forsicht, buva!''"

"What's that?"

"You're a female contemporary telling male adolescents, 'Watch out, boys!' I guarantee that testosterone dripping off their shirtsleeves will quickly dry up."

Up they came. Talkin' tough. Amish homies.

And she let them have it.

Then they turned to me with an embarrassed look on their faces.

I couldn't resist laughing. "Ja, buva, un ich ken aa dei daadi. Tzeit tzu g'heema." ("Yeah, boys, and I know your daddy, too. Time to go home").

They spoke English at the counter after that. And minded their manners a little more.

Language provides an interesting, though often neglected, insight into our customs and attitudes. History's road to hell is littered with a host of well-intentioned attempts to justify social and political control. The pressure to industrialize cultures by unifying diverse peoples has threatened many of the world's languages and dialects.

The act of conversing in Welsh, Gaelic, Catalan, and Polish was once considered subversive and illegal. Until recently, many Native American schoolchildren were physically punished for not speaking English in reservation schools.

Dialects, or regional pronunciations, have evolved and survived by "borrowing" words from the neighboring tongues. They also help pinpoint the speaker's geographic or ethnic roots. The rhythmic "miner's brogue" of Pennsylvania's coal regions, for example, reflects that dialect's mixed Irish and Slavic origins. Yiddish, a hybrid of Hebrew and German, was spoken for centuries in Europe's "shtetls" before moving to the New World's urban enclaves.

Then there's that language once spoken throughout "Aaronshtottle," "Rabershtottle," "Madisonshtottle." It was a peculiar brew of seventeenth-century German peppered with English called "Pennsilfawnisch Deitsch."

"Deitsch" or "Dutch" is a misnomer. It all stemmed from a linguistic misunderstanding, something lost in translation. Germans do not call themselves "German"; they are "Deutsch" (roughly pronounced as "Doytch"). But people of the Palatinate, that region along the French-German border where many of the immigrants originated, pronounced the word "Dytch." So British colonial registrars began calling these first foreigners "Dutchmen."

Close enough for government work.

Until the Civil War, Pennsylvania Dutch was spoken, not written. A number of influences over time almost led to the dialect's demise. Public education required instruction in English. Churches gradually abandoned the Sunday German sermon. Middle class households, increasingly literate, wanted reading material less prosaic than Bibles and almanacs. More and more English words crept into everyday use. Unlike the French, Dutchmen had no "academie" to rule on threats to linguistic purity.

The opening of the railroad in the 1870s further shattered Penns Valley's relative isolation. Parents no longer wanted their children stigmatized as "dumb Dutchmen." Household discussions in dialect were limited to "adult" pasttimes: gossip, profanity, politics, or insulting "outsiders."

One of the first to stem the decline was Thomas Harter, a Penns Valley native and turn-of-the-century newspaper editor. Under the pen name Gottlieb Boonastiel, he published a series of wry commentaries in Pennsylvania Dutch on the human condition.

The last generation of native Dutch conversationalists is just about extinct here in the valley. One only hears exercises in English stirring ancient Teutonic echoes: "The pie is all." "Do you want to come with?" "It wants rain." "He's full of himself." Instead of asking, "Ya know what I mean?," Dutchmen end their statements by tacking on an all-purpose "Not?" or "Say?" or "So it is."

All languages - whether they are human utterances or hand signals, the dolphin's squeals, or foot-stomping by ants - have their own innate beauty and complexity. Every loss is another light extinguished by the world's forces of conformity and efficiency.

Unfortunately, though, some things are best left alone, such as translating Hamlet into
Pennsylvania Dutch.

"Sei odder nix sei?" instead of "To be or not to be?"

Sorry, but the Bard's glory and majesty is missing here.

The final hoot came when the phone rang one day last summer.

"Our professional association's upcoming banquet has a Pennsylvania Dutch theme," the caller said. "We want a banner with the Dutch equivalent of 'Bon Appetit' printed on it. How did they say it?"

(Let's hope his unconscious use of the past tense is premature.)

"That 'Bon Appetit' sounds too dainty for stout-hearted, table-pounding, down-to-earth Dutch farmers," I replied. "How about 'Uff fresse!!!!'?"

I had visions of this banner, stretched above these high-class diners, not merely suggesting - but demanding - that everyone "Eat yourself full!!!!"

Ach, yo!

Bruce Teeple is a free-lance writer, speaker and local historian and is writing a book about Prince Farrington. He lives in Aaronsburg, Centre County and can be reached at mongopawn44@hotmail.com