After completing a 13-week course on the Pennsylvania Deutsch dialect, 46 students received their Frakturstyle diplomas from class instructors Dave and Jean Adam.

The Christmas-themed graduation ceremony took place Dec. 5, 2019, in the social room of Jordan Lutheran Church, Orefield.

The graduates, their family members and teachers celebrated their accomplishment and culture with a potluck dinner featuring Pennsylvania Dutch treats including meat pies, scrapple, hot bacon dressing over lettuce, potato filling, pickled red beets with hard-boiled eggs, chowchow (pickled vegetables), stuffing for hog maw (pig stomach), whoopie pies, funny cakes and shoofly pie.

At 85 years old, Crackersport resident Dale Brinker was the fall session’s oldest graduate.

“My parents spoke it, just to keep us from not knowing what was going on,” he said of his childhood.

He and his wife, Mary, enjoyed attending class together. This is the Brinkers’ second session.

A.J. Frantz, 9, and his sister Breanna, 12, were the youngest of the scholars.

They and their parents, Paul and Heather Frantz from Coplay, attended classes together.

A.J. was asked what the best part of studying Pennsylvania Deutsch dialect is.

“The singing,” A.J. said.

His sister agreed.

“ ... And just learning the words,” Breanna added.

All the students had some familial connection with Pennsylvania Dutch culture.

Schnecksville resident Clarence Hoffman can trace his side of the family tree back to Germans who settled the commonwealth in the 1730s.

Hoffman, his wife, Sandy, and their daughter, Terrie Weidman, attended the sessions together.

Singer Bill Young and guitarist Craig Siegfried led a group sing of Christmas carols and “Schnitzelbank,” a class favorite in Pennsylvania German.

Speaking in dialect, Dave and Jean Adam performed a humorous skit about empty nesters finding out their nest wasn’t going to be empty for long.

The 2019 fall session was the third time the couple has offered the course at Jordan Lutheran Church.

Pennsylvania Dutch was Dave Adam’s first language and he remained fluent in it as an older child while spending summers on his grandparents’ farm.

Adam serves as president of Grundsau Lodsch Nummer 16 and is president of what he calls “The Big Daddy Lodge,” which provided the course study materials.

The tuition goes to the church for the use of the facilities, he explained.

“My wife and I do it for free,” he noted

Having just completed his second dialect course with Dave Adam, Dr. Bill Donner, professor of anthropology at Kutztown University, commented.

“More than the other Dutch classes, this is the most fun,” Donner said.

“This has the most sense of community.”

The next 13-week session will be 7 p.m. Jan. 16, 2020, at Jordan Lutheran Church, 5103 Snowdrift Road, Orefield.

“We have so much fun with this,” Dave Adam exclaimed. “Our goal is to keep the Pennsylvania Dutch language going.”

For more information, call 610-395-4282.