University Linguists Working to Preserve Historic "Texas German" Dialect

From The Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

AUSTIN -- Although stories of der Cowboy and die Stinkkatze mayno longer get told in Texas, Germanic linguistics professor Hans Boas wants to make sure nobody forgets them.

Boas, an assistant professor at the University of Texas, is the founder and manager of the Texas German Preservation Project. Every month or so Boas ventures forth from his campus office in Austin to small towns like Boerne, Fredericksburg and Crawford to conduct interviews with the dwindling number of old-timers who speak the odd mixture of English and 19th-century German.

It's a dialect unique to the Lone Star State, and most of the 8,000 or so remaining speakers are in their 60s, 70s or 80s. Their numbers are expected to dwindle precipitously over the next few years, and Boas says that by 2040, the dialect will probably be gone.

And so die Stinkkatze -- the Texas German word for skunk -- and der Cowboy will become just a memory.

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My Comments:
The most important "Texas German" words to know:

Shiner Bock