PC/AHC: The USA speaks German

Isaac Beach

Banned
I've seen this bandied about recently, and there's at least one erroneous account of Congress attempting to pass into law German as a national language. (In reality it was a bill to print laws in German as well as English, probably to aid the 7% of Americans that spoke German at the time) But is it plausible? And what circumstances would have had to arise for the US to legislate German as the national language? A particularly bad bruising from Britain? That aforementioned law passing? A close alliance with Prussia/Austria?
I'm no German nationalist, but I do think a German speaking USA would be particularly interesting, it would have some interesting side effects. For instance, the Canada-US dichotomy would be much starker, and in my mind a German speaking USA could set the groundwork for a more 'European' America, but I'd like to know what you think.
 
Getting a Prussian prince as king might help bring more Germans and German influence over?
 
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Isaac Beach

Banned
Getting a Prussian prince as king might help bring more Germans and German influence over?

You mean good 'ol Prince Henry, yes? He was a pretty neat guy, learned about him recently. Something like 15% of the US population is descended from Germans, and while some of it can clearly be put down to anti-German hysteria during the World Wars causing ethnic Germans to hide their identity, it befuddles me as to why there weren't established German speaking communities before then, as with other late settler groups like the Norwegians and Russians.
 
Alien space bats with a POD after 1776.

Is it though? Even in colonial times, there was a large population of Germans in the US. Certainly there has to be a way to get the German language as co-official in the United States nationwide, since German settlement wasn't limited to the Midwest. Although Frederick Muhlenberg himself said "the faster the Germans become Americans, the better it will be."
 
Is it though? Even in colonial times, there was a large population of Germans in the US. Certainly there has to be a way to get the German language as co-official in the United States nationwide, since German settlement wasn't limited to the Midwest. Although Frederick Muhlenberg himself said "the faster the Germans become Americans, the better it will be."

There was absolutely massive German immigration in our timeline and they were an esteemed immigration group until the 20th century, yet they still didn't get anywhere close to getting this. And it's not like Germany is a major power that could somehow conquer the USA in the first few decades to enforce such a thing. Other large immigrant groups like the Italians, which took longer to integrate, also didn't come close.
 
You mean good 'ol Prince Henry, yes? He was a pretty neat guy, learned about him recently. Something like 15% of the US population is descended from Germans, and while some of it can clearly be put down to anti-German hysteria during the World Wars causing ethnic Germans to hide their identity, it befuddles me as to why there weren't established German speaking communities before then, as with other late settler groups like the Norwegians and Russians.

There were in the 1700s. It's just they integrated earlier due to getting there sooner.
 
German was one of the most spoken languages in the US before WW1. There was even a lot of support for Germany prior to the US involvement in WW1.

I'm not sure without a pod before 1700s for the US to be majority speaking. Now anglo-saxon language before William did hold a lot of similarities with German. You could fudge it with that, but for me the best chance German has it to become second most popular.

US joining Germany in WW1 would probably do it.
 

Isaac Beach

Banned
Thinking on this a wee bit, I think you could get the impetus for a switch in administrative language that disseminates out to the wider public under the circumstances whereby Britain really damages the US. Like, national humiliation scale damage. The obvious and most cliche example would be Britain crushing the US in an alt-War of 1812. Therein, the US wants to distance itself as much as possible from the UK, and so maybe adopts German as it's official language to spite them. But that seems a bit of a stretch.
 
I'm not sure without a pod before 1700s for the US to be majority speaking. Now anglo-saxon language before William did hold a lot of similarities with German. You could fudge it with that, but for me the best chance German has it to become second most popular.

US joining Germany in WW1 would probably do it.

Anglo-Saxon would evolve into a language like Dutch, although it's continental relative (West) Frisian would always be the closest language. If you know a bit of etymology, a native English speaker can decently understand Frisian languages, more distantly Dutch, yet German is much harder to understand.

But even if the US joined the Central Powers (imagine those campaigns against the British Empire in Canada and the Caribbean!), how would you convince the United States to give recognition to the German language as an official language? Wouldn't that only slow down the assimilation of the community?

There's also the state level to consider. German could be an official language throughout the Midwest and likely elsewhere, and other immigrant languages would be official in the associated regions (although Spanish might have a problem given how historically disliked Mexican immigration has been, not to mention Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog, etc.). OTL, aside from English, Hawaii has Hawaiian as an official languages, and Alaska has a variety of indigenous languages as official. New Mexico essentially has Spanish as an official language. We can probably do better with other languages as official in the US, which of course would include German (and Italian, Polish, Swedish, Finnish, etc.).
 
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