Happy Grundsaudaag! The ancient Germanic history of Groundhog Day (2024)

Every 2 February since at least 1886, people have been gathering in the Pennsylvanian town of Punxsutawney to watch a groundhog – a furry rodent – crawl out of a hole after its winter sleep. If the day is sunny and the groundhog sees its own shadow, there will be six more weeks of cold weather, according to legend – but if it's a cloudy day, and there is no shadow, spring has arrived. Across the US, the quirky tradition is known as Groundhog Day. But among its original celebrants, it has a different name: Grundsaudaag.

At first glance, Grundsaudaag may look like an ancient German word. Instead, it is actually an example of Pennsylvania Dutch, a Germanic language that emerged in the 18th Century and is now mostly used by the Amish and Mennonite religious communities. Due to the rapid growth of the Amish population, which numbers almost 380,000 people and for whom the language has a special spiritual and cultural significance, this relatively little-known language is in fact thriving and growing.

So what exactly is Pennsylvania Dutch? And how is it linked to Groundhog Day?

"As a linguist and language enthusiast, I love all languages. But there is something special about the language of my heritage, the one spoken to me when I was a child," says Rose Fisher, a PhD candidate in German linguistics and language science at the Pennsylvania State University.

Fisher grew up in the Amish community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Her family left the community when she was 11, and now mostly uses English, she says. Even so, she adds, "I love to hear Pennsylvania Dutch being spoken around me and hope that someday I will be around it more, and more comfortable speaking it again. For me, it means I am home." She and her family still use certain Pennsylvania Dutch words when speaking English "because they refer to concepts that do not exist in the English-speaking world. One that comes to mind is 'gluschdich' which means 'I am not hungry but I feel like eating!'"

An Amish buggy in Middlebury, Indiana. Using horse-drawn buggies is part of the Amish concept of plainness, which also includes speaking Pennsylvania Dutch (Credit: Getty Images)

Historically, the "Dutch" part of Pennsylvania Dutch referred to various Germanic languages in Central and Western Europe, including German, says Mark Louden, a professor of Germanic linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language.

"Pennsylvania Dutch has always been a hybrid language," he says, adding that like the American culture it is part of, it incorporates influences from a variety of sources.

In the 18th Century, over the space of several decades, a group of around 81,000 people moved to America from the conflict-ravaged German region of the Palatinate (Pfalz in German), Louden says. Among them were a few hundred followers of Jakob Ammann, a Swiss religious leader. They had left Switzerland and settled in Alsace and Palatinate, but were now on the move again – to Pennsylvania, a religiously tolerant colony, where they would become known as the Amish.

In the 1780s, Louden says, the first historical descriptions appeared of "a very curious form of German" being spoken in rural south-eastern Pennsylvania. Its speakers were the children of those first Palatine settlers, who had grown up hearing their parents' different Palatine dialects, as well as English words from others in the area. Those American-born children were therefore the first native speakers of Pennsylvania Dutch, Louden says.

The English influence was crucial, Louden says: "Essentially all Pennsylvania Dutch speakers have been bilingual." Some 15-20% of Pennsylvania Dutch words are English-derived, he adds. Louden gives the example of an American delicacy that was adopted with great enthusiasm by Pennsylvania Dutch speakers: pie. The sweet, fruit-filled, covered pastry was different from German cakes. They referred to it as "Der Pei", while using "Der Kuche" for German-style cakes. Among Pennsylvania Dutch people who were not Amish or Mennonite, the use of the language faded as people moved to the cities, Louden says.

However, it lives on among the Amish, says Fisher, who has studied Amish attitudes and identity in relation to the language. One possible reason this has occurred, according to research by her and others, is that it helps set the community apart from mainstream, secular society.

"Pennsylvania Dutch is still spoken as the main source of communication for many Amish and Old Order Mennonite groups," says Fisher. "There is huge diversity between the different groups, so it is difficult to make sweeping generalisations about all of them." She gives the example of the Swartzentruber Amish, a very conservative community who "speak Pennsylvania Dutch pretty much exclusively and use English only if they need to communicate with outsiders." Other groups may however use English much more frequently and proficiently: "In the group that I come from, the Lancaster Amish, English is even preferred by some. I don't know of anyone, except very young children, who have any difficulty whatsoever communicating in English."

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The origins of Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day is perhaps one of the Pennsylvania Dutch community's most well-known cultural inventions – although the Amish themselves do not celebrate it, since it is not a religious holiday. As with the language, Groundhog Day emerged from a mix of influences.

"The origins of Groundhog Day are fascinating," says Louden. "It goes back to a pre-Christian tradition of looking forward to spring." People would try to predict the arrival of spring by observing when ground-dwelling animals such as badgers emerge from hibernation. In northern European countries, these older traditions were then overlaid with the Christian holiday of Lichtmess (Candlemas) on 2 February, Louden says, which the Pennsylvania Dutch also celebrated. As a rural community, they also engaged in various other practices that honoured "the wisdom of nature", Louden says, such as Braucherei, a kind of folk medicine.

In their new environment, the settlers adapted this nature-watching, weather-forecasting ritual to a creature that didn't exist back home: the North American groundhog. Since they had no word for it, they called it "Die Grundsau", a translation of the English "Groundhog". Another word is "Grunddachs", meaning "ground-badger". These words are completely different from the European German word for groundhog: "Murmeltier", or more specifically, "Waldmurmeltier" ("forest-marmot").

The groundhog also fitted well with a core Pennsylvania Dutch value, Louden says: "Demut", humility.

"The groundhog is considered an icon of wisdom, not in the sense of book learning, but in the sense of 'schlau', clever, from practical experience," says Louden. It symbolises a way of life that values humility over striving, competition and materialism, he adds. "The groundhog is about as uncool an animal as it gets. It's not like a lion, a bear or an eagle – it's a rodent. So the Pennsylvania Dutch have embraced that, without planning, as a nice expression of humility."

To illustrate this, he gives the example of a Pennsylvania Dutch poem honouring both the groundhog, and practical knowledge. (If you want to know what Pennsylvania Dutch sounds like, you can listen to a recording of Louden reading the poem):

Die Grundsau kummt gewehnlich raus am zwette Daag im Hanning;

Vum Wedder wees sie meh wie mir un hot doch gaar ken Lanning.

Nau wann sie do ken Schadde sehnt, dann watt des Wedder widder schee,

Doch scheint die Sunn, dann wees sie schun, mer griege widder Schnee.

It translates into English as:

The groundhog usually comes out on the second day in February;

It knows more about the weather than we do and yet has no education.

Now if it doesn't see its shadow here, then the weather will get nice again,

But if the Sun shines, then it knows we will get snow again.

LISTEN: Mark Louden reads Die Grundsau

Fisher says that while the Amish generally do not celebrate Groundhog Day, in her own family, there was ancestral knowledge of it: "My dad has said that my grandma (his mother) put a lot of stock into it and always knew whether the groundhog had seen his shadow or not."

Perhaps helped by its friendly symbolism, the holiday has spread through wider US culture – even though the groundhog's predictions are a bit hit and miss.

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Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Dutch language itself may be more vulnerable than the population growth numbers suggest. Speaking about her own community, the Lancaster Amish, Fisher says: "They do generally view the language as an important part of their religious and ethnic identity. Some also value bilingualism as such. There are some, typically younger people, though, who do not value the language overly much." Within the community, the importance of maintaining the language is a topic of discussion, she says, and some try to convince others to speak it more to prevent it from being lost.

In any case, Pennsylvania Dutch – or Deitsch as its speakers call it – has already left a wider mark, not just in terms of holidays, but also in the way English is spoken, says Fisher.

"I grew up saying things like 'What for dog is that?' meaning 'Whose dog is that?' or 'Where did that dog come from?'. This is a word-for-word translation of the phrase we would use in Pennsylvania Dutch," Fisher writes. "These Dutchisms are very common in the English used by people from Lancaster [the Amish community] whether or not they speak Pennsylvania Dutch. It has had a huge impact on the local dialect of English."

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