#high german

It's a cast iron potato waffle iron, for a wood-burning stove! I assume, as "Kartoffel" is High German for "potato" and it's clearly a waffle iron. Something my great-grandparents left at the house, seeing as my dad had no idea it was there and they did leave a lot of stuff in the house when my dad bought the house from them. They lived through The Depression, so they kept every little thing they had.

It most likely came with them when they moved from Saskatchewan, and may've even been my great-great grandparents since they came to Canada from the old country.

I don't dare try cleaning it yet because it's cast iron and I'm not quite sure how to go about it, it's more complex than a simple frying pan.

id love to attempt to blog in it, but im worried i dont know enough to do so, and that i would have trouble looking words up that i dont know since there aren't many native speakers left. also, i dont think spelling was ever standardized at all.

are there any ideas or strategies you know of that i could use to help in this situation?

Hi, you mentioned in your tags that it's a form of High German? Well, Pennsylvania Dutch is apparently a fairly common form of High German spoken in the region. Maybe looking that up could help you? The wikipedia has lots of information and references on it! And here's a dictionary for it.

It might not be exactly what your grandmother spoke, but it might help get a feel of it and help you find a way of spelling it :)

And don't worry too much about it being 'correct'. You can always add a transcription of what you said in English for clarity. It would be neat to see it either way, even if it's just a few words!

When you talk to a higher ranked person(older person, teacher, boss,..) - Sie

When you talk to a friend (or close one) - Du

When you talk about more people (starting at 2) - sie

When you talk about a person who isn’t present - ihr(she)/ihm(he)

500 years ago, on September 21, 1522, Martin Luther's German translation of the New Testament was first published under the title "Das newe Testament Deůtzsch"

Luther had translated the text from Greek and Latin sources during his stay on the Castle Wartburg near Eisenach in Thuringia where he stayed hidden from the public due to a papal ban. He started the translation in December 1521 and finished it before March 1522, working at an astonishing speed. Nevertheless, time was pressing to get enough copies printed for sale at the Leipzig trade fair in September. Philipp Melanchthon, a fellow professor at Wittenberg and expert in Greek, helped Luther correct a couple of mistakes. Three printing presses were set up in the complex of painter and publisher Lucas Cranach in Wittenberg that were solely devoted for creating 3000 copies of the book. Luther received the first test prints in mid-May 1522. Printing was kept secret because they feared plagiarism. It was a big success with all copies sold out quickly, making subsequent editions necessary.

Six weeks after the book was published, Duke Albert the Bearded of Saxony prohibited its sale and even owning it. All sold copied were to be handed in to the local authorities for destruction. He ordered Hieronymus Emser to make another translation, which was published soon, but proved to be a plagiarism minus some of the anti-papal illustrations – Emser had even bought many of the printing blocks. Luther started a lawsuit against the author of the rip-off, but with no success.

One copy of "Das newe Testament Deůtzsch", which is kept at the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, is listed as World Documentary Heritage by the UNESCO.