What is the difference between Ex-Amish and English in Amish terminology and when does a person who leaves the Amish community become English?

Answer 1

An English is someone who did not grow up in an Amish family - even if they grew up in China and don't speak English.

If you grew up in an Amish family, speaking Amish as your native language, is Amish, even if they never join the church.

Someone who leaves the church after becoming a church member are shunned, but they never becomes English. They are still Amish.

In most languages, there are words that mean "one of us" and other words that mean "not one of us". Almost always, there is an element of trustworthiness and civilized behavior implicit in the semantics. The N-word is the most reviled word in the language, despite literally just meaning "black." Montenegro is the Black Mountain of what used to be Yugoslavia, and finch feed used to be sold as Niger seed; now it's labelled "Black Thistle". If native Americans had been a little more successful in getting athletic teams to change their names, we might recognize that "Redskin" is equally offensive. After all, pirates and buccaneers are also dishonest, violent and treacherous, the native didn't choose to be inhuman, he was born that way.

But interestingly, the shunned are still considered Amish; they may be backsliders, but they are still recognized as inherently "one of us" and not one of those (pitiful?) English. Whether this is being nice to the shunned, or nasty to the English, is a judgment each of us decides for himself.