According to the most recent data from Statistics Canada, German is one of the ten non-official and non-indigenous languages with the most native speakers (nearly 275,000 in 2021), and this astonishing situation is partly explained by the incessant work of Herr Elvin Hofer. Mr. Hofer teaches this language daily at the Hutterite school in the James Valley Colony in southern Manitoba, about fifty kilometers west of Winnipeg. The establishment has around forty students aged from around 5 to 17, all members of the German-speaking religious community that has been in the region for around a century.
Other subjects are taught in English by qualified teachers. German language training precedes and follows normal classes, in the morning from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m., in the afternoon for another hour from 3:30 p.m. Mr. Hofer leads the language classes with three assistants, including two women. Children even learn FrakturschriftGothic writing, which appeared at the same time as the Anabaptist movements in Europe, in the 16the century.
Professor John Lehr of the University of Winnipeg has spent the past several decades studying Hutterite communities in the West. He explains that at the beginning of his field research work, in the 1970s, he could come across old Anabaptists who spoke only German.
“They barely knew a few words of English,” says Mr. Lehr, himself who arrived in Canada in 1969 from his native England. “I imagined arriving in an English-speaking country and I discovered great linguistic diversity, with people speaking German, but also Ukrainian, Russian, Romanian and French. »
John Lehr is professor emeritus in the Department of Geography. Specialist in migration, he co-signed (with Yossi Katz) Inside the Ark: The Hutterites in Canada and the United States (2012). He further studied Ukrainian colonization in the west of the country.
“In contrast, descendants of Ukrainians are less likely to now speak the language of their ancestors, because they do not live in closed communities. Hutterites live in colonies where the common language remains their German dialect. » English still infiltrates a little into the German language of the Hutterites, for example to describe modern equipment. So they say “ computer ». “They are very high tech besides, but at work. In their daily life, they have neither radio nor television. »
In fact, Mr. Hofer, like other members of his community, speaks two types of German. The first is a Tyrolean dialect used in everyday life. “In the Tyrol, you can hear people who speak exactly like us,” he says, citing the example of a friend of his who recently confirmed this linguistic concordance during a trip to Austria by being understand with Grüss Gott And Wiedershaun.
In church, however, Mr. Hofer and the other Hutterites speak High German (Hochdeutsch), the standard language of Germany and Austria. It is this version that he teaches to children, so that they can in turn participate in religious rites.
The ritual and theology books are published in Altona, a town in the predominantly Mennonite region, another Anabaptist branch, which speaks a version of Low German (Low German) on a daily basis. Plautdietsch). The works are distributed as far away as Mexico.
“We teach the Bible and sermons,” explains Mr. Hofer, who also runs his group’s small bookstore. High German is used in the vast majority of our religious texts. The founding texts date back to the 16th centurye century. They were written in Moravia by our ancestors, who suffered greatly from persecution. We remain faithful to these texts, to this language. A wise man once said that when you translate a text, you lose 10 or even 20% of its value. We therefore want to preserve this value, this original meaning. »
He offers the example of the word “ Gemeinshaft ”, more powerful than the English term “ fellowship » (“very, very weak”), which also brings together the first communities of believers, at the beginning of Christianity. Another example : Gelassenheitcentral concept of the rule (Ordnung) Anabaptist, evoking serenity, plenitude, humble submission, abandonment to the will of God, without selfishness and with respect for Gemeinshaft. “It takes ten words in another language to translate what this one word means to us,” Herr Elvin Hofer said in conclusion.