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NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas (AP) - When Hans Boas came to the University of Texas from California in 2001 to teach German, he stopped in the Hill Country town of Fredericksburg, which embraces its German roots with a robust Oktoberfest and German-themed restaurants and shops.
While eating "der Hamburger" at lunch, Boas overheard an "interesting sounding German" — one that sounded a bit odd to him as a native speaker of the language. It was sprinkled with English words and phrases pronounced with a German accent, and some phrases that sounded German but weren't quite right.
What he heard was "Texas German," a unique dialect that developed as German settlers came to central Texas in the 1840s. But the people who speak it are dying, so Boas is working to document the dialect before it's too late.
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