Thinking Pennsylvania Dutch

I may soon receive a Master’s degree, but I still think like a Dutchman (a Pennsylvania Dutchman, that is). The other day, I was trying to think of an adjective that best described how I was feeling. I thought, and I thought, and the only word I could think of was "shushly." This is a Pennsylvania Dutch term that falls someplace in the spectrum between "doppy" and "ferdutzed." Trying to explain "shushly," I looked in two authority sources on the subject.

According to Gary Gates’s How to Speak Dutch-ified English, shushly is "Always bissy; fidgeting. ‘She’s too shushly to chust sit and talk.’" Curvin Diffenderfer in You Can Tell You’re a Yorker If... identifies shushly as "A ‘Dutch’ word meaning nervous or flighty."

While on the subject, here are a few of my favorites from the book that fellow Pennsylvanians may identify with.

You can Tell You’re a Yorker if...

• You think that Route 30 has the worst traffic in the Western Hemisphere.
• Someone gives you a plant and you say, "I can’t thank you!"
• You don’t have a friend next door, she’s a "neighbor lady."
• You don’t "trick or treat" on Halloween night – your town sets "trick or treat" night on a day other than Halloween.
• All your ancestors came from one province in Germany in the 1740's.
• You have a bumper sticker that reads "If God isn’t a Penn State fan, then why is the sky blue and white?"
• Variety in a meal means switching from mashed potatoes to scalloped potatoes.
• You cook "filling" in your turkey, not "stuffing" and certainly not "dressing."
• You make "deer bologna" from your venison.
• You know what "pot pie" is.
• You go to an O’s ball game in "Bawlamer."
• You don’t clean your house, you "rett it up."
• From York, you go "up" to Hanover.
• The verb "to be" isn’t in your vocabulary. You say: "This car needs fixed"; "This house needs cleaned"; or "The grass needs cut."
• You are a waitress and you say, "Can I take your order awhile?"
• The plural of "You" is "Youse."
• You use "wooder" to "warsh" clothes.
• You sweep the street in front of your house.
• You live in Yoe.
• When you hear the word "snow", you have an uncontrollable urge to run out and buy toilet paper, milk, and bread.
• After you shovel out your car, you place lawn chairs, bar stools, or garbage cans in the parking space.
• After an ice storm, things get "slippy."
• You actually make your own hog maw.
• You always eat pork and sauerkraut on New Year’s Day.
• You always eat fasnachts on Fat Tuesday.
• Your favorite saying is, "But we’ve always done it that way!"
• You say "The [soda] is all."

And some from the sequel, You're a Yorker!

• If your mother told you to "Quit your ‘rutchin’ around",
• If Jakie has the "skitters",
• If you ‘spritzed’ your kids with the hose on a hot day,
• If you just can’t get anything done and you’re all ‘ferdutzed’
• If your kid is "Doppy",
• If you think that the red and white triangular sign at the end of the on ramp means, "STOP",
• If you don’t use the "Triple A" for auto assistance, you use the "Three A’s",
• If you ask, "Do you have enough a room?",
• If you use the word "ain’t" for "isn’t that so?" as in, "Nice day, ain’t?",
• If you give warnings by saying, "You daresn’t do that!",
• If Merralen is the State just south of Pennsylvania,
• If you tell someone, "You better wouldn’t!",
• If you don’t go to a Chiropractor, you go to a "Choirpractor",
• If you say to the caller, "May I ast who’s calling?",
• If you ask "where’s Yoe at" and, "Where did John go to?",
• If you must leave a house through the same door you entered,
• If your birth weight was between 8 and 11 pounds,
• If your new TV sits on top of your old console TV,
• If you have a cupboard full of little plastic margarine containers, with lids, because you hate to throw them out.
• If Texans or Bostonians tell you that you talk funny,
• If you haven’t moved from York, you’re just "out of the area",
• If you read this book in another state and begin to cry because you’re homesick,
• If you order a "hamburg", not a "hamburger," at McDonald’s.
• If you’ve always eaten "Whoopie Pies",
• If you go to breakfast in Ocean City and ask for a "dippy egg" and they ask if you’re from York,
• If the only snacks you eat are made by Martin’s, Wege, Snyder’s, Bon Ton, York Snacks, Revonah, Utz,
• If Route 462 is still "[old] Route 30" to you,
• If your idea of a clothes dryer is two poles with a rope between them,

...You’re a Yorker!