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Made me sad... apparently a good 1/3 of Americans spoke German before WWI, after which anti-German hysteria caused a decline in German speakers in America. So i
by x5n1 11y ago
Made me sad... apparently a good 1/3 of Americans spoke German before WWI, after which anti-German hysteria caused a decline in German speakers in America. So it was not only the Nazis that were responsible for German's decline.
- cafard 11y agoSome of the fall-off was the natural turn of immigrants' children to the English they heard all around them, and likely as not marrying spouses whose family spoke only English, or English and something other than German. My father's father spoke German (well, Plattdeutsch) in the house growing up, but my father had to learn it at school. But the hysteria played some role. My father's mother, whose mother's family was from the Palatinate, only got to take three years of German in high school; somebody who imagined himself patriotic broke into the high school in 1917 and burned all the German textbooks. I believe Nebraska outright banned the teaching of German during those years.
- panglott 11y agoLanguage shift occurs in nearly every immigrant community in the United States, and nearly all indigenous communities. It's not natural so much as it's that language ideology and policy in the U.S. is very hostile to anything but English monolingualism.
- shas3 11y agoTake heart, German descent folks are a silent minority (46 million) that have done very well for themselves. http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21642222-americas-largest-ethnic-group-has-assimilated-so-well-people-barely-notice-it http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21642222-america...
- cafard 11y agoThey aren't all that silent, but the noise they make is in English...