Odd comment on Meet the Hutterites

[PeterG]

Watched an episode of this for the first time this evening, fascinating rules & regulations they have, but the whole thing is so obviously re-enacted after the event by the colony members or are they in fact actors? The accents range from almost Irish to broad German to Dutch to a kind of mangled Eastern European dialect. Fake in other words.

Anywho, the odd comment: one of the heavily accented mothers, Bertha, the kitchen boss, says to her teenage son who is going out on a date with a girl off the colony, "Be careful, these English girls are...." I missed the rest as my jaw hit the floor at the word English. Now the first Hutterites came to America in the 1870s, quite recently when compared to the Mayflower & the Pilgrim Fathers, so there should be no reason for these Austrian Anabaptists to think that the people around them outside the colony are anything other than American because it's not as if they arrived in America prior to the 1770s and could thus quite easily have called the people around them English.

[Baribrotzer]

To Hutterites and Amish, all outsiders are "English". It's what they call 'em. Don't know why.

[Duncan Glenday]

Check the Wikipedia article on this group. Interesting reading.

They're similar to the Amish and the Mennonites. They have a language and accent all of their own (loosely based on German), and as John said, all of these groups call anyone who isn't part of their own group "English".

They are not actors. Some parts may be re-enacted, but it's tightly based on the real lives of these people.

[PeterG]

Thanks guys, fascinating stuff. I'm hooked. I suppose then the answer is that being of Germanic ancestry and having a Germanic mother tongue they naturally refer to anyone who speaks English as English. And I suppose the variation in dialects might be due to some of them going to high school and mixing with outsiders and some of them not. Apparently girls are only allowed to go to school till about 15 or 16, then as women they are expected to live in and serve the colony.

[Baribrotzer]

I suppose then the answer is that being of Germanic ancestry and having a Germanic mother tongue they naturally refer to anyone who speaks English as English. I think it's more than just that. It may be a reference to the old British Empire as an exemplar of the outside world, as the epitome of greed and sin and oppression and worldliness. Rather like the references to the Roman Empire in the New Testament - coded references in that case, because denouncing the Romans in zeroth-century Palestine could get you hung for treason.

[PeterG]

Coluld be. You mean that for them "English" is a term that defines all the ills of the world outside the colony?

[Duncan Glenday]

I think you're inventing deep philosophical meanings that don't really have any bearing on the subject.

According to my (limited) reading on the subject, it's just a language thing. Back in the days when the Hutterites, Amish and Mennonites were formed, they were of German extraction and still spoke that language at home. So german became the colonies - and the churches' - lingua franca. In contrast, just about everyone outside their communities spoke English. So "The English" became a word for those not in their colonies.

It's a bit like neo prog. It isn't "Neo" (new) anymore - but because of its historic context, it's come to mean something specific.

[JKL2000]

Never heard of this show before. Are they horribly inbred?

[Vic2012]

Never even heard of "Hutterites" until I saw this thread. I've heard of Amish and Mennonites. I always get a little creeped out by these types of xenophobic communities.

[PeterG]

I think you're inventing deep philosophical meanings that don't really have any bearing on the subject.



Hello, I'm not sure if you're responding to me or to John. I however was simply expanding on what I thought John was suggesting. But the Germanic v non-Germanic language notion I first suggested is what you are also saying, and that seems to be probable.

[JKL2000]

My goal is to one day snort a line of coke off an Amish girl's ass.