In the late 1800s and early 1900s, there was a wave of European immigration to the United States. Germans, Swedes, Czechs, Poles, and Danes all moved to the "Golden Country" to find a better life than in their home countries. And they brought with them, along with their culture, their language. But by the 1920s and 30s, most of the languages these communities spoke, aside from the exception of German, which is actually growing in speakers, have nearly completely died out in the United States, with many of these languages having less than 60,000 speakers today. So, I have a question/challenge. What would it have taken to make these languages survive longer, maybe even to the present day?
AHC: Have European Immigrant Languages be more widely spoken in the US
- Thread starter TunguskaStorm
- Start date
Prevent ww1, or at least keep the us neutral. Boom, no anti-german nativism. This means no cultural repression meaning no pushing for immigrants to speak English
I mostly meant the other languages. Swedish, Czech, Polish, Danish, Norwegian, etc. Lesser known ones.
It would be helpful to prevent the dramatic tightening of immigration laws that occurred during the early 20th century, in particular the Immigration Act of 1924 (which greatly restricted European immigration) and the Naturalization Act of 1906 (which required immigrants to learn English to become naturalized citizens) but I'm not sure how this would be accomplished, especially with a post-1900 POD.
My grandparents on my father's side both immigrated from Denmark. They I intentionally did not teach their children Danish. First is we are Americans now we speak English. Second was they could talk amongst themselves without The children knowing what was being said
Yes, it's very true that many immigrants chose not to teach their children their language. The main reason, though, was that the immigrant's language had little use in the United States, because there weren't very substantial communities of people who spoke those languages. How this could be solved is to have larger communities of immigrants, for example by lessening restrictions on immigration from Europe like @Thisisnotausername said.
A conlang for all Germanic languages? Entirely possible, since they are pretty closely related. But a more likely thing would be to create a conlang for the Scandinavian languages, since they're nearly mutually intelligible already, and one for German and Dutch, though that would see less use simply because Dutch immigrants were few.
If German is actually increasing (I'm nor denying it, but I'd like to see the evidence) that must be a very recent development; the number of German speakers declined by 32.7 percent between 1980 and 2010 (not even to mention the earlier declines): https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2013/acs/acs-22/acs-22.pdf
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People mention the world wars and repression of German--but these things merely accelerated a process that would have happened anyway unless there were new immigrants to make up for the assimilation of the older ones. To quote an old post of mine:
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In 1893-4 there were almost 800 German-language publications in the US. "With the decline of immigration and the consolidation trends after 1890, German-language publications declined to 613 in 1900 and 554 in 1910...*World War I accelerated an ongoing decline.* [my emphasis--DT] *Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups,* p. 420 (article "Germans")
The main reason German was a flourishing language in the US in the early twentieth century was simply that there were so many fairly recent German immigrants. As late as 1890 Germans represented 30.1 percent of the foreign-born in the US--that went down to 25.8 percent in 1900 and 17.1 percent in 1910 and then to 12.1 percent in 1920--that last figure being only in part a result of the War. With the decline of German immigration, the German language was likely to decline. This happened with other languages, too. "In 1923, when the Polish-American journals were at their height, at least 19 dailies, 67 weeklies and 18 monthlies were in circulation." *Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups,* p. 800 (article "Poles") After 1930, "the number of the Polish press titles...began to decline steadily." https://books.google.com/books?id=Jyd_DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA202 Yet the US had never gone to war with Poland...
Again, I am not denying that the world wars encouraged German-American assimilation--but they only accelerated a trend that would have taken place anyway.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...cuisine-in-the-us.415902/page-2#post-14738637
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In 1893-4 there were almost 800 German-language publications in the US. "With the decline of immigration and the consolidation trends after 1890, German-language publications declined to 613 in 1900 and 554 in 1910...*World War I accelerated an ongoing decline.* [my emphasis--DT] *Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups,* p. 420 (article "Germans")
The main reason German was a flourishing language in the US in the early twentieth century was simply that there were so many fairly recent German immigrants. As late as 1890 Germans represented 30.1 percent of the foreign-born in the US--that went down to 25.8 percent in 1900 and 17.1 percent in 1910 and then to 12.1 percent in 1920--that last figure being only in part a result of the War. With the decline of German immigration, the German language was likely to decline. This happened with other languages, too. "In 1923, when the Polish-American journals were at their height, at least 19 dailies, 67 weeklies and 18 monthlies were in circulation." *Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups,* p. 800 (article "Poles") After 1930, "the number of the Polish press titles...began to decline steadily." https://books.google.com/books?id=Jyd_DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA202 Yet the US had never gone to war with Poland...
Again, I am not denying that the world wars encouraged German-American assimilation--but they only accelerated a trend that would have taken place anyway.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...cuisine-in-the-us.415902/page-2#post-14738637
Again, many immigrant languages declined in the United States because immigrants weren't teaching the languages to their children, mostly in part because they saw little use in continuing to use the language of their home country. What we need is a way to create larger communities not just of immigrants, but immigrants willing to continue speaking their native language.
It’s pre-1900, but American attitudes toward immigrants never changed much. Jacob Riis, in “How the Other Half Lives”, said that German immigrants (in New York City) immediately started learning English as a matter of duty. His views were highly stereotyped, but he wasn’t all wrong. I can’t recall his exact views on others, but there was a definite spectrum. Some, like the Germans, assimilated so eagerly that they probably even spoke English at home, while others (Italians?) continued to speak their native languages at home but not in public... all the way to those who might’ve known some English, but easily lived without speaking anything but (IIRC) Yiddish or Chinese. It’s a subjective view, but interesting.
I’ve got to add this. You sometimes hear that immigrants (by which I mean, of course, later immigrants) never bathed. Tenement bathtubs were often full of coal or general junk. That’s actually because they were afraid of disease. They bathed in their own tenements, often in the laundry tub, as they could be sure it was clean.
I’ve got to add this. You sometimes hear that immigrants (by which I mean, of course, later immigrants) never bathed. Tenement bathtubs were often full of coal or general junk. That’s actually because they were afraid of disease. They bathed in their own tenements, often in the laundry tub, as they could be sure it was clean.
No, they aren't. German wasn't even a unified language of sorts until it was forced down people throats, and even now there are plenty of dialect differences, apparently the Germanic spoken in Switzerland is impossible to understand by those not from Southern Germany. As for the Scandinavian Languages, they have been their own group for over a thousand years. We should probably just use Deutsch and Germanic for all talk of this. Anyways, I don't know if even the Palantine inspired Pennsylvania Dutch can be understood by Germans. Most probable that communities just blend into English. They take what words they want from their homelands' language and then do the best they can for communicating with other mixed groups that act as their neighbors. Not like territories were set aside to be settled by different language groups. The Mormons would be a good group to have as keeping a secondary language, if not for them being very keen on American and British roots. They claim to be mostly of English extraction.
Maybe if slaves were not mixed so much (in order to get them to lose their languages) there might have been extra languages brought about in that fashion. I bring that up mostly as I saw your thing on the Chinese and I think it does probably come down partially as to whether or not people are given schooling.
The thing is that suburbanization and the breakup of old ethnic communities made language maintenance difficult. When Poles in Chicago were concentrated in places like so-called Polish Downtown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Downtown_(Chicago) it was easier for them to retain the Polish language than when they moved into outlying parts of Chicago and then the suburbs. Likewise, when it came to small towns, highways and improved communications opened up German, Norwegian, etc. villages in the Upper Midwest to outside influences. The pubic school was another factor. To be sure, there were parochial schools teaching in German or Polish or whatever; but not all parents could afford to send their children there, and even parochial schools began switching to English to "Americanize" the younger generation. Only in special cases do you see language maintenance through many generations--e.g., the Amish, for whom language maintenance and other things differentiating them from American society as a whole are a religious duty.
Even for Spanish, use of the language does tend to decline in succeeding generations. To quote an old post of mine:
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In general, a non-English language in the US needs new immigrants to avoid decline through assimilation. Latin America supplied the new immigrants for Spanish. Remember that even the restrictive legislation of the 1920's did not have any quota limits for the Western Hemisphere. (Ironically, those were first set by the 1965 law which many people mistakenly think led to the upsurge of Latin American immigration.) And Puerto Ricans, being US citizens, were always free to move to the mainland.
No doubt the fact that Mexico--unlike Germany or Italy--was next door, and that people in the Southwest had ready access to the Mexican press (and movies, radio, etc.) played a role. But the fact remains that without new immigration, Spanish would be in decline in the US. 75 percent of third-generation Hispanics who identify themselves as Hispanic say that English is their primary language--and 90 percent of third-generation Hispanics who do not identify themselves as Hispanic (and there are quite a few of those) say so. http://www.pewhispanic.org/2017/12/...fall-away/ph_2017-12-20_hispanic-identity_10/
I think the decline of non-English languages in the US was pretty inevitable. If you knew English you could be hired almost anywhere but if you only knew only German you would have more problems finding a job. If you knew only German only German books and newspapers would be readable to you. English is going to be learned as a practical matter. Once you learn English as a kid there is less reason for you to learn German as well if everyone around you speaks English. This applies to French, Spanish, Italian , Polish or any other language as well.
Could some Midwestern states possibly make German a recognized minority language, or even an official language alongside English? If the majority of the population is descended from Germans and speak German at home, I see very little reason why not if this is implemented in the 1890s or 1900s.
Driftless
Donor
Have the US population less mobile and less ethnically mixed by geography, though I have no POD for that one.... A mobile and homogenized population works more efficiently with a lingua franca. A stationary or isolated population tends to go with a more localized dialect - think of the regional accents in the US and elsewhere. A similar thought might apply if you have a more-or-less stable population of Norwegians in North Dakota, Swedes or Finns in Minnesoata, Germans in Wisconsin and East Texas, etc.
It might help, slightly, the main point is even then English is going to be the main language. The main thing is that having just one language is very helpful in a country as large and ethnically mixed as the US.