WI: Standard German dialect replaced with PA Dutch after WWII?

Besides the fact that a lot of your examples are just straight up wrong, you're also basing this entirely off of supposed examples of linguistic imperialism taking places centuries ago and not in the modern era, with foreign conquerors intent on controlling new lands directly imposing a new language with varying levels of success. Germany was not ever supposed to be an American colony, ergo the Americans have no incentive to impose a new language which only a handful of Americans or Germans would understand anyways, on a population that already entirely speaks the one language.
But most Mexicans today are about half Amerindian, genetically.
And a lot of Mexicans speak various native languages instead of or in addition to Spanish. Besides which, another really old example that misses out on a lot of facts, such as massive plague deaths and that the majority of the population only gradually shifted to speaking Spanish after a few centuries, with social factors playing a bigger part than Spaniards taking an interest in what their peasants spoke, which they generally did not.
 
Besides the fact that a lot of your examples are just straight up wrong, you're also basing this entirely off of supposed examples of linguistic imperialism taking places centuries ago and not in the modern era, with foreign conquerors intent on controlling new lands directly imposing a new language with varying levels of success. Germany was not ever supposed to be an American colony, ergo the Americans have no incentive to impose a new language which only a handful of Americans or Germans would understand anyways, on a population that already entirely speaks the one language.

And a lot of Mexicans speak various native languages instead of or in addition to Spanish. Besides which, another really old example that misses out on a lot of facts, such as massive plague deaths and that the majority of the population only gradually shifted to speaking Spanish after a few centuries, with social factors playing a bigger part than Spaniards taking an interest in what their peasants spoke, which they generally did not.

In the modern era, Tuscan was imposed on Sicilians, and French was imposed on Alsatian.
 
In the modern era, Tuscan was imposed on Sicilians, and French was imposed on Alsatian.
1. How are you defining "modern" in this context? Because it certainly doesn't sound like you're talking about the 20th Century.

2. A European country imposing a more standardized dialect upon its own citizens that's already in common usage and doing is hardly the same thing as a completely foreign country imposing a quirky dialect barely spoken in that foreign country on a group of people who've already undergone that sort of linguistic "centralization" and have no incentive to speak a rustic dialect of Palatine German with an Anglicized spelling system. And who's going to be teaching the Germans Pennsilfaanisch? The Amish? The Mennonites?
 
1. How are you defining "modern" in this context? Because it certainly doesn't sound like you're talking about the 20th Century.

2. A European country imposing a more standardized dialect upon its own citizens that's already in common usage and doing is hardly the same thing as a completely foreign country imposing a quirky dialect barely spoken in that foreign country on a group of people who've already undergone that sort of linguistic "centralization" and have no incentive to speak a rustic dialect of Palatine German with an Anglicized spelling system. And who's going to be teaching the Germans Pennsilfaanisch? The Amish? The Mennonites?
Alsatian is a German dialect that was forcibly replaced by French.

And it’s not just the spelling that’s Anglicized, it’s also the pronunciation and some grammar.
 
England spoke French for centuries, though.
That’s just objectively wrong and is a massive insight of one of the most complicated pieces of linguistic history.

Britain, in terms of spoken languages, has never just spoken one language, but the one language I assure that that wasn’t spoken in mass was French.

Vulgar Latin, Romano-British, Welsh (Old/Middle/Modern), Cornish (Old/Middle/Modern), Pictish, Manx, Norn, Gaelic, Old Norse, Old English, Modern and Middle English, Common Brittonic, Old Saxon, yea, those all, along with like a dozen more that are undocumented or I just forgot to list.
 
Same reason the English forced their language on the Irish. To demonstrate dominance over a defeated rival.

Surely the equivalent would be forcing English on the Germans, not a quaint Germanic dialect that Americans associated with buggies and hex signs...

Obviously, they wouldn't do either, though. Again, it would be absolutely crazy to allow the Soviets to portray themselves to the German people as the champions of the German language.
 
Alsatian is a German dialect that was forcibly replaced by French.
And would you kindly remind me of which nation Alsace was a province of? Oh yes, France. Not occupied Germany, not the "special Alsatian autonomous zone", France.
And it’s not just the spelling that’s Anglicized, it’s also the pronunciation and some grammar.
Providing more reasons why Germans have literally no reason to speak Pennsylvania Dutch regardless of what some lunatic American occupation officer might say. Besides which, you still haven't answered which Americans are going to be teaching Deitsch let alone who would be for this. Because the secular Pennsylvania Dutch speakers had drastically dropped in population.
 
That’s just objectively wrong and is a massive insight of one of the most complicated pieces of linguistic history.

Britain, in terms of spoken languages, has never just spoken one language, but the one language I assure that that wasn’t spoken in mass was French.

Vulgar Latin, Romano-British, Welsh (Old/Middle/Modern), Cornish (Old/Middle/Modern), Pictish, Manx, Norn, Gaelic, Old Norse, Old English, Modern and Middle English, Common Brittonic, Old Saxon, yea, those all, along with like a dozen more that are undocumented or I just forgot to list.
England spoke Norman French in the centuries after the Norman conquest
 
And would you kindly remind me of which nation Alsace was a province of? Oh yes, France. Not occupied Germany, not the "special Alsatian autonomous zone", France.

Providing more reasons why Germans have literally no reason to speak Pennsylvania Dutch regardless of what some lunatic American occupation officer might say. Besides which, you still haven't answered which Americans are going to be teaching Deitsch let alone who would be for this. Because the secular Pennsylvania Dutch speakers had drastically dropped in population.

Alsace is culturally German land that was stolen by France in the early modern era and forcibly frenchified.

If France could force their completely different language on Alsace, then surely America could force a similar language on West Germany.
 
But WHY would they do that? WHY would they spend so much effort into forcing the Germans to speak a new language? WHY would America, a nation with a sizable population of Germanic immigrants, DO THAT?
 
But WHY would they do that? WHY would they spend so much effort into forcing the Germans to speak a new language? WHY would America, a nation with a sizable population of Germanic immigrants, DO THAT?

I don’t know, and it’s not like I’m suggesting this should have actually happened. I just think it’s a cool hypothetical.
 
Alsace is culturally German land that was stolen by France in the early modern era and forcibly frenchified.

If France could force their completely different language on Alsace, then surely America could force a similar language on West Germany.
Alsace was a small province with relatively few people taken over by a culturally imperialistic nation with a penchant for imposing its language on other people and had centuries to induce a rural population to speak French, which hasn't even completely succeeded as there are still hundreds of thousands of people who speak Alsatian instead of the extremely widespread and influential French language. That is to say, Alsatian has several times as many speakers as Pennsylvania Dutch. And almost everyone who speaks Pennsylvania Dutch belongs to a quaint religious community which barely interacts with the outside world. How in the hell is a popular, influential language going to be displaced by an arbitrarily selected dialect from a foreign country that hardly anybody in that country speaks? My family is Pennsylvania Dutch on my father's side, none of us speak the language. None of my Pennsylvanian great grandparents spoke the language, nor their parents, it's all but dead for anyone who ain't riding a horse-driven buggy and has been for some time.
 
Alsace was a small province with relatively few people taken over by a culturally imperialistic nation with a penchant for imposing its language on other people and had centuries to induce a rural population to speak French, which hasn't even completely succeeded as there are still hundreds of thousands of people who speak Alsatian instead of the extremely widespread and influential French language. That is to say, Alsatian has several times as many speakers as Pennsylvania Dutch. And almost everyone who speaks Pennsylvania Dutch belongs to a quaint religious community which barely interacts with the outside world. How in the hell is a popular, influential language going to be displaced by an arbitrarily selected dialect from a foreign country that hardly anybody in that country speaks? My family is Pennsylvania Dutch on my father's side, none of us speak the language. None of my Pennsylvanian great grandparents spoke the language, nor their parents, it's all but dead for anyone who ain't riding a horse-driven buggy and has been for some time.

I’m in a similar situation. My PA Dutch family, originally Mennonite, seemed to become English-dominant in the early 1800s.
 
England spoke Norman French in the centuries after the Norman conquest
Actually, no it did not. Only at court; most continued to speak English (defined broadly) or the local language. Of course, that does not mean French did not have any influence - Middle English was basically a creolization process of the language under a lot of pressure from various superstrata.

As for the OP - it would be much better to promote the Bavarian language (alongside a Bavarian-influenced Schriftdeutsch, a la Switzerland) rather than Deitsch in the American Zone. And with good reason - the few remaining Deitsch-speaking communities prefer not to share it with outsiders as it's a marker of group identity, and certainly would not share it with the English (read: Americans). So the operation requested by the OP has already failed before it even started.
 
Actually, no it did not. Only at court; most continued to speak English (defined broadly) or the local language. Of course, that does not mean French did not have any influence - Middle English was basically a creolization process of the language under a lot of pressure from various superstrata.

As for the OP - it would be much better to promote the Bavarian language (alongside a Bavarian-influenced Schriftdeutsch, a la Switzerland) rather than Deitsch in the American Zone. And with good reason - the few remaining Deitsch-speaking communities prefer not to share it with outsiders as it's a marker of group identity, and certainly would not share it with the English (read: Americans). So the operation requested by the OP has already failed before it even started.
There are classes in Deitsch, and you are not going required to be Deitsch to take them.
 
There are classes in Deitsch, and you are not going required to be Deitsch to take them.
That is more of a recent thing following the Yoder decision and Amish chic and all that. All of that very much post-dates the POD and does not account for the times the POD is in. At the time it was assumed the last of the Amish would vanish, hence they were treated as ethnographic curiosities by academia. For that reason Deitsch was not looked at in any positive light (even more so due to their strict pacifism) and hence was strictly an in-group thing. Which is not a solid foundation for taking an endangered linguistic variety and reimplanting it in a situation of the Allied division of Austria and Germany which would be instantly rejected by German speakers in those two countries. Even the Amish use Hochdeutsch in their Sunday services (to be sure, an archaic variety of Hochdeutsch), and Hochdeutsch is the basis for a more or less pluricentric common Schriftdeutsch shared by German-speaking countries. As the American Zone in Germany is largely in Bavaria, creating a mesolectal General Bavarian between a Bavarian-influenced Schriftdeutsch and the Bavarian regional varieties would be more doable and would play on Bavaria's strong regional identity.
 
Even the Americans didn't like Pennsylvania Dutch, that's why basically no one except insular groups like the Amish and Mennonites grew up speaking it after 1945.

Oh wait, that's an idea. The postwar occupation is led by the Mennonites who attempt to convert the entire country to their religion. Since Mennonites don't believe in warfare, this would obviously be a desirable result in Germany.
We talking militant, Luddite, bearded bastards here? If we can throw in Bauhaus barns, I'm down.
 
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