Hi Richard: I remember my grandfather, saying do you want to walk to the post office or take the machine? I thought it was funny and said only the motor is the machine the rest is the car to which he would reply automobile? It got to be a joke between us. He also had a little flip over coin purse that he clled his pocketbook. I loved him dearly, he is the one who did so much genealogy, the one I so want to prove his grandparents and find his greatgrandparents information. He died over 40 years ago and I still miss that wonderful man. His name was Dr, William Arthur Garfield Grant a dentist but more important the best gradfather any little girl could have wanted. His abcestry was in Pa before America was America. He tried to find them so now it is my quest to do it for him. So I will never outen the light till I find them. Sally ----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard Emlin Reed" <remlinr@tampabay.rr.com> To: <padutch-life@rootsweb.com> Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 11:02 AM Subject: [PD-LIFE] What For My last two contributions elicited such terrific responses that I am inspired to assay another essay. In the PA-Dutch region in which I was raised, we had an expression that I am inclined to believe was peculiar to that region. We would ask, "What for a [thing] is this?". This was a direct translation from PA-Dutch " Wos fah e'n [ding] is des?". In German, "Was für" means "What sort or kind of". It could also nean "what"; as in, "Was für ein schönes haus". "What a lovely house". Anyway, it was a common idiom in my home town. Where you say "what kind of" today; we said "what for". "What for a house", "What for a hat", "What for a machine". Today we say "car"; when I was a boy, we said "automobile or machine". My wife's grandfather never called it anything else. Every Saturday morning, he would don his overalls and say, "Vell, ich moos dee machine vesha" (Well, I must wash the machine). Does any of this make any sense? What for a fool am I to scribble it! }:-) Fahgesst net; alles fah shposs un' nix fah ungoot (No offense). Richard Emlin Reed Wesley Chapel, FL ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to PADUTCH-LIFE-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message