Martha and Albert speaking Gottscheerish

This video was recorded by Daniel Bogre Udell at the Gottscheer Hall in the New York City borough of Queens. Gottscheerish, known natively as Göttscheabarisch, is spoken by an unknown number of people, primarily in the U.S. American states of New York and Ohio, and to a lesser extent in the Gottschee region of Slovenia, where the language originated. It is the mother tongue and heritage language of the Gottscheer people, who are the descendants of Germanic communities that settled in Eastern Europe during the 14th century CE. Conversely, the genealogy of Gottscheerish is Germanic, considered by most linguists to be a variety of the Bavarian language. Today, Gottscheerish is in steep decline, due to forced migrations and ethnic persecution spawned by the Second World War. However, preservation efforts have emerged in recent years, including a Gottscheer-English dictionary that Martha composed and published.