German speakers in the US
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  German speakers in the US
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King of Kensington
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« on: July 31, 2014, 10:37:58 PM »

Most places that have larger German speaking populations today are Amish/Old Order Mennonite settlements, such as Holmes County, Ohio.  But some counties in the Dakotas and Montana have large German speaking populations today (presumably these are "Volga Germans").  As late as 2000, 35% of McIntosh County, North Dakota (where 80% are of German ancestry) said they spoke German at home!  Didn't that immigration dry up about 100 years ago?

I don't have more recent data, but here are some county figures for 2000.  I think it's safe to assume German speakers continue to increase or at least remain stable in Amish/Old Order Mennonite communities while it's gone down quite a bit in other places.

http://www.usefoundation.org/userdata/file/Research/Languages/german.pdf

http://www.usefoundation.org/userdata/file/Research/Languages/pennsylvania_dutch.pdf

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Sol
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« Reply #1 on: July 31, 2014, 11:09:25 PM »

The German wave of migration to the U.S. was extremely long-running and pervasive.
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H. Ross Peron
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« Reply #2 on: August 01, 2014, 06:46:22 AM »

Something I've generally been curious about is besides in deliberately isolated communities such as the Amish what sort of ethnic groups speak their native language at home in the second generation or even after?
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ingemann
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« Reply #3 on: August 01, 2014, 07:30:21 AM »

Something I've generally been curious about is besides in deliberately isolated communities such as the Amish what sort of ethnic groups speak their native language at home in the second generation or even after?

Remember most of these people who still speak German (and are not Amish) was born before mass media as we know it.

So immigrants who settled in rural areas and took up farming, alsooften settled relative close to other immigrants and rarely had anything to do English speakers, except when they visited towns (sometimes at least some groups like the Germans often also dominated the local towns). So they did not need English.

 In fact without the World Wars, especially German would likely have been much wider spoken, as it was only with the hostility against the non-English (again especially Germans) that they begun to assimilate into a English speaker identity, and in fact some of the prarie states only forced teaching in English through with WW2, this was the start of the disappearance of the ethnic enclaves in the area, without that, you could easily see the prarie states still being dominated by German, Slavic and Scandinavian enclaves.
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memphis
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« Reply #4 on: August 01, 2014, 11:59:59 AM »

If we're including Mennonites, we need to include the Hasidic Yiddish speakers too.
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ingemann
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« Reply #5 on: August 01, 2014, 12:24:20 PM »

If we're including Mennonites, we need to include the Hasidic Yiddish speakers too.

Mennonites may speak as distinct dialects of German as Yiddish are, but they use standard German as their written language, which is what count in the end.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #6 on: August 01, 2014, 02:17:17 PM »
« Edited: August 01, 2014, 02:19:47 PM by Gravis Marketing »

How many of these counties are sparsely settled and home to Hutterite colonies?

There's a map here and it appears that a few colonies are in McIntosh County, ND, which has a population of less than 3,000, as well as in McPherson County, SD.

http://www.hutterites.org/the-leut/distribution/
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King of Kensington
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« Reply #7 on: August 01, 2014, 04:18:35 PM »
« Edited: August 01, 2014, 04:22:15 PM by King of Kensington »

Yeah, the big ones are obviously Hutterite colonies in the Dakotas then.  Though it's also true that the "Germans from Russia" came to the US later than Germans from Germany proper and were in more isolated settings.  Their late arrival in the US and isolation would have made them less susceptible to the anti-German hysteria of WWI.

Still I find it remarkable how long it held out.  I think it's probably reasonable to assume that most of the second generation was born in the first quarter of the 20th century and the third generation in the second quarter.   So people born before 1950, say, may have grown up speaking German (and the older people are still speaking it in their homes today to some extent).
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memphis
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« Reply #8 on: August 02, 2014, 02:44:43 PM »

If we're including Mennonites, we need to include the Hasidic Yiddish speakers too.

Mennonites may speak as distinct dialects of German as Yiddish are, but they use standard German as their written language, which is what count in the end.
I disagree. Speech is what makes a language. Writing is merely a representation.
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Indy Texas
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« Reply #9 on: August 02, 2014, 03:17:59 PM »

German was easily the second-most widely spoken language in the US after English up until the early 20th century, when most German-Americans concealed their ethnic ancestry during World War I and were more or less forced to completely extinguish it during World War II.

It makes sense that it would be more likely to survive in more homogenously German areas where there wouldn't have been as much public pressure not to speak German in public. But I'd imagine most of the Americans who speak German at home are over 65 and that their children and grandchildren speak English. German will die with them.

The same phenomenon is happening in Louisiana with Cajun French.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #10 on: August 02, 2014, 03:56:25 PM »

German was easily the second-most widely spoken language in the US after English up until the early 20th century, when most German-Americans concealed their ethnic ancestry during World War I and were more or less forced to completely extinguish it during World War II.

It makes sense that it would be more likely to survive in more homogenously German areas where there wouldn't have been as much public pressure not to speak German in public. But I'd imagine most of the Americans who speak German at home are over 65 and that their children and grandchildren speak English. German will die with them.

The same phenomenon is happening in Louisiana with Cajun French.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22490560

This indicates the cutoff is about 1950 (at least in New Braunfels).

http://www.tgdp.org/tgdp
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King of Kensington
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« Reply #11 on: August 02, 2014, 04:20:57 PM »

Just fascinating.  Here's an NPR report about German in Wisconsin.  Though Wisconsin is often thought as the "most German state" it didn't survive to the degree it did in the Dakotas and Texas:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102523977
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muon2
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« Reply #12 on: August 02, 2014, 04:32:33 PM »

Yeah, the big ones are obviously Hutterite colonies in the Dakotas then.  Though it's also true that the "Germans from Russia" came to the US later than Germans from Germany proper and were in more isolated settings.  Their late arrival in the US and isolation would have made them less susceptible to the anti-German hysteria of WWI.

Still I find it remarkable how long it held out.  I think it's probably reasonable to assume that most of the second generation was born in the first quarter of the 20th century and the third generation in the second quarter.   So people born before 1950, say, may have grown up speaking German (and the older people are still speaking it in their homes today to some extent).

The Germans from Russia, or the Volga Germans, settled in both cities and rural areas. Concordia University has detailed descriptions of the areas and years of immigration which amounted to almost 120K by 1920. As a descendant of the Chicago immigrants I can say that though the first generation spoke German at home their children, including my grandmother, did not and I only heard snippets as a child. According to this source the assimilation was driven by concern over the Russian connection, not the German one.
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angus
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« Reply #13 on: August 02, 2014, 06:22:53 PM »

I actually hear German spoken around here, or some strange variant thereof.  It was jarring at first, but I've gotten used to it.  I've lived in quite a few places but southeastern Pennsylvania is the first place I've lived when I regularly hear German spoken by locals in places like Wal-mart.  (Well, except for the year we lived in Germany.  There I heard German spoken regularly.  But in the US, I hadn't heard it till we moved to PA.)
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« Reply #14 on: August 02, 2014, 08:29:01 PM »

My parents said they actually did run into people (olds of course) in the late 80s/early 90s in south central North Dakota (where they lived at the time though a completely different part of it) who only spoke in broken or very formal English and were obviously native German speakers. Of course today almost all of these people are dead.

The German speakers today would be olds who were only middle aged at the time who probably grew up with their parents speaking German and know the language well but use English in almost all their conversations except with each other, which basically means with their spouse if they also understand German or at one of those German heritage clubs. You'd have a tough time going to a bar or restaurant anywhere in North Dakota and run into people speaking German, unless it was one hosting some specific event for one of those heritage clubs.

My grandmother was also raised in an essentially bilingual family (in western Minnesota but similar situation) though I doubt she's spoken any German for decades.
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Sol
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« Reply #15 on: August 02, 2014, 08:59:34 PM »

If we're including Mennonites, we need to include the Hasidic Yiddish speakers too.

Mennonites may speak as distinct dialects of German as Yiddish are, but they use standard German as their written language, which is what count in the end.
I disagree. Speech is what makes a language. Writing is merely a representation.

Of course, Declaring where one language ends and the other begins is itself an artificial construct, a fact which is quite salient regarding German. If Yiddish is a dialect of German, so is Dutch.
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Indy Texas
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« Reply #16 on: August 02, 2014, 09:28:20 PM »

If we're including Mennonites, we need to include the Hasidic Yiddish speakers too.

Mennonites may speak as distinct dialects of German as Yiddish are, but they use standard German as their written language, which is what count in the end.
I disagree. Speech is what makes a language. Writing is merely a representation.

Of course, Declaring where one language ends and the other begins is itself an artificial construct, a fact which is quite salient regarding German. If Yiddish is a dialect of German, so is Dutch.

Didn't Napoleon say that languages are dialects that have their own armies and currencies?
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King of Kensington
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« Reply #17 on: August 02, 2014, 11:30:58 PM »

From the 1980 census:

37,134 spoke German at home in North Dakota, 6.2% of the state population.  11,996 were 65 and older (born 1915 or earlier), 13,732 were between 45 and 64 (born 1915-1935) and 7,385 were between 25 and 45 (born 1935-1955).

In comparison, the other "ethnic" language in ND didn't hold out as long.  12,459 spoke Norwegian and a majority - 7,947 - were 65+.  3,524 were 45-64 and just 548 were 25-44.

In 1990, 24,453 spoke German at home and 7,113 spoke Scandinavian languages.

In 2000, 14,931 spoke German - 2.5% of the state population - and 3,193 spoke Scandinavian languages.

In 2010, 8,959 still spoke German - just ahead of Spanish.
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Хahar 🤔
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« Reply #18 on: August 03, 2014, 01:02:52 AM »

אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט
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Brittain33
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« Reply #19 on: August 03, 2014, 09:16:37 AM »

What's the last word--looks like "flat"?
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angus
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« Reply #20 on: August 03, 2014, 01:04:56 PM »

"Flot"   It means navy, as in "a language is a dialect with an army and navy"
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King of Kensington
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« Reply #21 on: August 05, 2014, 05:59:00 PM »

In Canada, the biggest concentration of German speakers is in rural southern Manitoba (around Steinbach) where there are large Mennonite communities, which in fact still get immigration from Mennonite colonies in Mexico, Paraguay, etc.

Saskatchewan has the highest proportion of German origin (30%) but German has really died out there and there are no German-speaking enclaves that I'm aware of.

Ontario has some Old Order Amish/Mennonite communities near Kitchener.

The German origin population in Ontario is made up mostly of descendants of Pennsylvania Germans who came after the American Revolution and as well as mid-19th century immigrants from Germany.  In contrast, in Western Canada few came directly from Germany - most are descended from Germans from Russia.  Manitoba is more Mennonite and Saskatchewan more German Catholic.


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