Waves of Plautdietsch (continued)

Enriching the Language
Believers account for less than 50 per cent of the 200,000 relocated Plautdietsch speakers in Germany, according to Peter Wiens, director of the locally based Plautdietsch Friends Society (PFS).

Sawatzki doesn't expect that the radio ministry using the Plautdietsch Scriptures will make a major dent in reaching this mission field.

"There will be some, yes, but not too many," admits Sawatzki. "But it is enough for us that there are a few that will accept Christ, and we have decided that for those who are Christians, we can help deepen their faith."

While there is some disagreement about how much of the High German Scriptures most Plautdietsch speakers in Germany can really understand, few question Sawatzki's assertion that having the Bible in Plautdietsch "enriches the language". He likes the way Plautdietsch writer Anna Driediger puts it in her published book of poems: "Nü es de Bibel äwasat, Doamet uck onse Sproak jeraht." ("Now that the Bible is translated, our language is saved.")

Friends of Plautdietsch
Saving the language is at the heart of what Wiens wanted to do when he started PFS in 1999. The non-profit organization fosters and promotes the Mennonite mother tongue, connecting speakers worldwide through a Web site, a periodical, former Mennonite homeland visits and occasional Plautdietsch-language church services in Germany.

Wiens says the translation of the Plautdietsch Bible is extremely significant.

"Whether you believe in God or not, it is the book," he stresses. "As someone who regards Low German as a normal language, I think it should have happened earlier. So I'm happy it's translated now, from a literary perspective, but also from a Christian perspective."

The PFS office in Detmold has sold more than 100 copies of the Bible. Wiens says some purchasers are not believers, they don't belong to any church, and they have largely forgotten their Mennonite heritage. But they have respect for it as a piece of great literature, now in their mother tongue.

"Even though they don't believe in God, maybe they want to know about the story because they know 'we are Mennonites somehow.'"

Wiens says individuals have come to faith by reading the Plautdietsch Bible.

Perplexing Attitudes
Wiens expects these Scriptures, and other media in the language, to be increasingly important to many Plautdietsch speakers in Germany because they are rediscovering their heritage. But he also points to several factors working against this.

Some immigrants from Russia, who came to Germany in the 1970s, knew High German much better than later arrivals. As a result, their families have adapted more thoroughly to completely speaking the official language in their new homeland. Others (like Wiens, until he discovered song lyrics produced in Canada when he was in German junior high school) don't even realize their mother tongue can be more than an oral means to communicate.

"The idea of reading Plautdietsch and writing Plautdietsch, it's totally new here in Germany," he explains.

There is also no one standard writing system used from one Plautdietsch text to another around the world.

As well, Mennonites have an interesting, but perplexing, attitude towards their language, adds Wiens. "On one hand, they think it is a very important thing, a part of themselves and something that belongs to their heart. But on the other hand, when you begin to talk about it officially or publicly, then they say, 'Oh, it's just a dialect . . . it's nothing.'"

Sold on the Bible
But for those new German citizens who are using the Plautdietsch Bible, hearing God's Word in their own language is something special.

In a cozy apartment suite in the town of Oerlinghausen, retirees Gerhard and Martha Klassen use the translation in their daily devotional times together.

"We think it's very good. We like it very much," says Martha, through an interpreter. The translation helps the couple—who were born in the Ukraine and moved to Uruguay in 1951 before coming to Germany in 1968—understand the Scriptures in new ways.

"What is very interesting," explains Martha, "is that sometimes we read something and then we think, 'Hey, is this really written in the Bible?' And then we check it with the High German translation . . . and it's written there too!"

Though it was a challenge to learn to read their mother tongue for the first time in their lives, the Klassens now do so fluently. They wish more Plautdietsch speakers would join them.

"If only they would read it, it would benefit them very much," says Martha.

Echoing the Klassens' feelings is another older Plautdietsch speaker, Olga Schirmacher. Sitting in her apartment kitchen with her silver short-wave radio, she listens to Christian programs from an ocean away. Broadcast by HCJB, which uses the translated Scriptures, they are in her Plautdietsch language.

"I think it's good, and many—very many—other people really like it that there's a Plautdietsch Bible," she says.

Why? The answer comes later, when Schirmacher gets philosophical for a moment: "The essential things—that which you really mean, that which you don't want misunderstood—that you say in Plautdietsch."