1888.] -^"* [Hoffman. 



Motions of the Sun, with its accessories of the Four Ao^es of the 

 World. The Tree of Life, so constantly recurring as a design in 

 Maya and Mexican art, is but another outgrowth of the same 

 symbolic expression for the same ideas. 



That we find the same figurative symbolism in China, India, 

 Lycia, AssAria and the valley of the Nile, and on ancient urns 

 from Etruria, Iberia, Gallia, Sicilia and Scythia, needs not sur- 

 prise us, and ought not to prompt us to assert any historic con- 

 nection on this account between the earl}' development of man 

 in the New and Old World. The path of culture is narrow, espe- 

 cially in its early stages, and men everywhere have trod uncon- 

 sciously in each other's footsteps in advancing from the darkness 

 of barbarism to the light of civilization. 



Grdmiiiiitic Notes and Vocabulary of the Pennsylvania German Dialect, 



By W. J. Hoffman, M.D., Washington, D.G. 



{Read before the American PhilosopJiical Society, December 21, 18SS.) 



It is an astonishing fact that the speech of over three quarters of a 

 million people, occupying the most fertile agricultural lands of Eastern 

 Pennsylvania, has, with few unimportant exceptions, received almost no 

 attention from a scientific and philological standpoint. It is not the in- 

 tention of the writer to venture upon the subject from these points of 

 view, but only to present a few brief facts respecting the grammatic and 

 phonetic peculiarities of the "Pennsylvania German" dialect, and to 

 give a vocabulary of such words as are at present employed by such of 

 them as are not familiar with any other language. 



It is the writer's intention to present here a simple and intelligible sys- 

 tem of orthography, so that the exact sounds of syllables and words may 

 readily be reproduced by any one not familiar with them. This has not 

 been accomplished in the several brief contributions which have appeared 

 at sundry times and in various places, excepting in the case of a few 

 essays which were of strictly philologic value, but which, unfortunately, 

 abound in inverted letters and diacritical marks, thus causing a practical 

 study thereof to become rather difficult and tedious. 



The alphabet employed in the present paper and vocabulary is practi- 

 cally that adopted by the Bureau of Ethnology, at Washington, D.C. 



