The language traditionally has been spoken by the Pennsylvania Dutch, who are descendants of late 17th- and early to late 18th-century immigrants to Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina, who arrived primarily from Southern Germany and, to a lesser degree, the regions of Alsace and Lorraine in eastern France, and parts of Switzerland.

The ancestors of Pennsylvania Dutch speakers came from various parts of the southwestern regions of German-speaking Europe, including Palatinate, Electoral Palatinate (German: Kurpfalz), the Duchy of Baden, Hesse, Saxony, Swabia, Württemberg, Alsace, German Lorraine, and Switzerland.

Most of the people in these areas spoke Rhine Franconian, especially Palatine German and, to a lesser degree, Alemannic dialects; it is believed that in the first generations after the settlers arrived, the dialects merged, as there were few new German immigrants for a period of ~60 years.

[4] There are similarities between the German dialect that is still spoken in this small part of southwestern Germany and Pennsylvania Dutch.

When individuals from the Palatinate (Pfalz) region of Germany today encounter Pennsylvania Dutch speakers, conversation is often possible to a limited degree.

[citation needed] Pennsylvania Dutch for the most part does not reflect the diverse origins of the early speakers from regions along the upper Rhine River (Rhineland, Württemberg, Baden, Saarland, Switzerland and Alsace) but almost exclusively the strong immigrant group from the Palatine.

The question of whether the large loss of the dative case—the most significant difference compared with Palatine German—is due to English influence or reflects an inner development is disputed.

It is expressed, as in Standard German, through the use of dative forms of personal pronouns and through certain inflections of articles and adjectives modifying nouns.

Meanwhile, members of the entirely Pennsylvania Dutch-speaking community in Kalona, all of whom were Amish or Mennonite, showed strong age-related variation.

The changes in pronunciation, combined with the general disappearance of declensions as described above, result in a form of the dialect that has evolved somewhat from its early Pennsylvania origins nearly 300 years ago and is still rather easy to understand by German dialect speakers of the Rhineland-Palatinate area.

The people from southern Germany, eastern France and Switzerland, where the Pennsylvania Dutch culture and dialect sprung, started to arrive in North America in the late 17th and the early 18th centuries, before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

[citation needed] Thus, an entire industrial vocabulary relating to electricity, machinery and modern farming implements has naturally been borrowed from the English.

Today, many speakers will use Pennsylvania Dutch words for the smaller numerals and English for larger and more complicated numbers, like $27,599.

Pennsylvania Dutch has primarily been a spoken dialect throughout its history, with very few of its speakers making much of an attempt to read or write it.

There are currently two primary competing models upon which numerous orthographic (i.e., spelling) systems have been based by individuals who attempt to write in the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect.

Literary German disappeared from Pennsylvania Dutch life little by little, starting with schools, and then to churches and newspapers.

It is published twice a year (2,400 copies per issue)—since 2013 in cooperation with the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at Kutztown University.

The entire Bible, Di Heilich Shrift, was completed and published in 2013 by TGS International.

It has shifted its center to the West with approximately 160,000 speakers in Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa and other Midwest states.

[21] Even though Amish and Old Order Mennonites were originally a minority group within the Pennsylvania Dutch-speaking population, today they form the vast majority.

According to sociologist John A. Hostetler, less than 10 percent of the original Pennsylvania Dutch population was Amish or Mennonite.

[citation needed] As of 1989, non-sectarian, or non-Amish and non-Mennonite, native Pennsylvania-Dutch speaking parents have generally spoken to their children exclusively in English.

Kutztown University offers a complete minor program in Pennsylvania German Studies.

According to one scholar, "today, almost all Amish are functionally bilingual in Pennsylvania Dutch and English; however, domains of usage are sharply separated.

Finally, the Amish read prayers and sing in Standard, or High, German (Hochdeitsch) at church services.

Additionally, English has mostly replaced Pennsylvania Dutch among the car driving Old Order Horning and the Wisler Mennonites.

[26] Additionally, the Old Order Mennonite population, a sizable percentage of which is Pennsylvania Dutch-speaking, numbers several tens of thousands.

[27] There are also some Pennsylvania Dutch speakers who belong to traditional Anabaptist groups in Latin America.

[29] Heut is 's xäctly zwanzig Johr Dass ich bin owwe naus; Nau bin ich widder lewig z'rück Und steh am Schulhaus an d'r Krick Juscht nächst ans Daddy's Haus.

Today it's exactly twenty years Since I went up and away; Now I am back again, alive, And stand at the schoolhouse by the creek Just next to Grandpa's house.