Religious identity and the perception of linguistic difference: The case of Pennsylvania German

•I compare nonsectarian and sectarian (Mennonite and Amish) Pennsylvania German.•I study variation in morphology (dative case usage), lexicon, and phonology.•Geography and speaker age are more important factors than religious identity.•Sectarians perceive dialect differences among different sectarian groups.•The malleable core value of humility can account for these perceptions.

Pennsylvania German is spoken by Old Order Mennonites and Old Order Amish, as well as by other less conservative Anabaptist groups and by so-called nonsectarians. A certain amount of linguistic variation correlates with these differences in religious affiliation, but the degree of divergence is smaller than has been previously suggested, in particular with respect to claims of different norms for sectarians and nonsectarians. In addition, the diversity of religious practices between different sectarian communities has had little effect on rates of borrowing and phonological incorporation. Even so, sectarian speakers do have folk linguistic perceptions of differences in language use, and these are interpreted through the lens of the shared core value of humility.