When I first read this thread I hadn't yet read the Pennsylvania Dutch song one, so I wasn't thinking along those lines. It just occurred to me why the 'heiraten' language is so familiar to me: it is the language I grew up with!

Some of the words I have forgotten and if an Amish person speaks too fast for my ears I can't understand every word and since the dialect is not a written one I'm sometimes at a loss- but yes, it is the German dialect I knew as an Amish girl before I learned English.

"We" were taught that most of the Amish were originally from the Alsace, but I have noticed that we share a lot of pronunciations and words with Bavaria- does anyone know why that should be?

And yes- I agree that it's very bad German! But believe it or not, there are rules that govern it. For instance, one can not say, without great insult, that a human being eats like an animal ('fressen', rather than 'essen'), the articles are gender specific, etc.