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‘Return To Amish’ Stars Speak A Different Language — But It Includes English Words!
What language do they speak on Return To Amish? The Season 5 cast is made up of some old faces and some new faces, but they all share one thing in common: they all have decided to leave the Amish and Mennonite community in order to live life in the English world. But even though they’re hoping to assimilate into modern American culture, many of them still speak the language that their ancestors have been speaking for generations: Pennsylvania Dutch.
On this week’s episode, Ada arrived in Sarasota, FL to meet up with her new staff for Jeremiah’s Amish Donuts business. But when she got to the house, she was not happy to see the place was messy and one of her new employees, Shelly, was missing. It seems like Ada was so upset, that she reverted to speaking her native language throughout the whole scene.
Back in 2012, when the spin-off’s original version Breaking Amish first premiered, former cast member Kate Stoltz explained that for many Amish and Mennonites, Pennsylvania Dutch is their first language.
“It’s kind of a dialect of German. All of the younger children know how to speak that, and the children in some communities barely know how to speak English until they go to school,” Kate explained. “My parents were always aware of the fact that the English language is a language we were going to have to know and be fluent in, so they spoke English around me as well so that I could understand strangers when they speak to me.”
Whenever the cast of Return to Amish speaks Pennsylvania Dutch, production adds subtitles so that viewers can understand what they’re saying. But if viewers listen closely, they’ll hear an English word or two thrown in because, according to Amish America, Pennsylvania Dutch includes a number of English words.
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