Pennsylvania Dutch Day in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, July 19, 2025

Join the GLD and the Delaware Valley Translators Association (DVTA) for a day dedicated to Pennsylvania Dutch at Southern Market in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on July 19, 2025, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. Our featured speaker will be Prof. Mark Louden of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the author of Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language. The program will present the history and present-day status of this German language variant, highlight gaps in interpreting services for the Plain community, and offer attendees the opportunity to learn some Pennsylvania Dutch themselves.

Click here to register

The registration fee* includes all educational sessions and refreshments. Participants can purchase their lunch from the Southern Market vendors located adjacent to the meeting room.

A pre-workshop tour of the Hans Herr House, the oldest Mennonite meeting house in America, is available on July 18 at 2:30 pm on a self-pay ($15 per person) and first come, first served basis. Please sign up for the tour separately by email.

GLD member Jamie Hartz has prepared a guide with things to do in Lancaster, including directions to Southern Market, hotels, and ideas for sightseeing.

Continuing Education Credits:

ATA: 5 CEPs, AOPC: 5 CEUS, CCHI: 5 Hrs.

 

*Discounts are available for GLD and DVTA members—consider joining to take advantage of additional member benefits!

 

Preliminary agenda:

9:00 am	Registration & Welcome	Coffee, tea, orange juice, water and breakfast items provided (included with registration)
9:30 am	Keynote Address	Professor Mark Louden, University of Wisconsin-Madison
11:00 am	Coffee Break
11:15 am	Understanding the PA Dutch Cultural Context	Steven M. Nolt, Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, Elizabethtown College
12:00 pm	Lunch Break	Lunch available for purchase from Southern Market vendors adjacent to the meeting room
1:00 pm	Interpreting PA Dutch: Addressing Service Gaps in Pennsylvania	Panel discussion on the challenges and opportunities in PA Dutch interpreting
2:00 pm	PA Dutch Language Lesson: Unit 1	Professor Mark Louden
3:10 pm	Coffee Break	Coffee, tea, water, and cake, provided (included with registration)
3:30 pm	PA Dutch Language Lesson: Unit 2	Professor Mark Louden
4:45 pm	Closing & Wrap-Up

 

Mark L. Louden, Ph.D., is the Alfred L. Shoemaker, J. William Frey, and Don Yoder Professor of Germanic Linguistics and director of the Max Kade Institute for German American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He received his undergraduate and graduate education at Cornell University and taught for 12 years at the University of Texas at Austin before joining the UW–Madison faculty in 2000. A Mennonite speaker of Pennsylvania Dutch, most of his research deals with the language and culture of its speakers. He is the author of Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language, for which he received the Dale W. Brown Book Award for Outstanding Research in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. He serves as a medical and legal interpreter, cultural mediator, and patient navigator for Amish and traditional Mennonite communities across the US.

 

Steve Nolt is the director of the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College. He is the author or coauthor of fourteen books on Amish, Mennonite, and Pennsylvania German history and contemporary life. Nolt is recognized for his scholarship on Anabaptist groups across North America. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Notre Dame. He also serves as series editor for Young Center Books in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies published by the Johns Hopkins University Press.

 

 

 

---

Official Event Sponsor

---