Sprechen Zie Deutsch?: Did European Immigrants Really Learn English Quickly?

Many Americans take great satisfaction, sometimes bordering on maniacal pride, in claiming that their European ancestors came here and learned English quickly. According to some, these immigrants' boots were still wet from the spray of the Atlantic when they ditched German, Swedish, or Dutch. The thinking is that European immigrants rapidly mastered English in a sink-or-swim environment that demanded that they leave their mother tongues behind. The follow-up to this assertion is inevitably, "Why can't Latin American immigrants do the same and learn English quickly?"

It's a fair question. There's just one problem. The central thesis - that European immigrants swiftly adopted English - may be wrong.

Two researchers at the University of Wisconsin - Madison have published a study showing that America has a long history of (dare I say it?) multiculturalism. The researchers are Joseph Salmons, a German professor, and Miranda Wilkerson, a Ph.D. graduate in German.

Their study shows that until the late nineteenth century, and even into the early twentieth century, many German immigrants to that fine state still had not mastered English.

Germans made up that era's largest immigration wave to Wisconsin, which is the chief reason that the researchers focused on them. The researchers add, however, that another factor for this emphasis was because the Germans "really fit this classic view of the 'good old immigrants' of the nineteenth century." The researchers plowed through census data, court information, school records, newspapers, and all the other minutia that academics salivate over. When they were done, they had a linguistic record of German immigration to Wisconsin from the 1830s to the 1930s.

Their conclusion was that many immigrants felt no need to learn English at all, much less quickly, and that some of them, in the words of the researchers, "appeared to live and thrive for decades while speaking exclusively German." In fact, as late as 1910 - decades after the initial wave of European immigration - German speakers still accounted for more than 20% of the population in several Wisconsin counties. Some second- and even third-generation residents (yes, even many born and raised in the United States) still spoke only German as adults.

The researchers point out that "after fifty or more years of living in the United States, many speakers in some communities remained monolingual." The researchers added that "this finding provides striking counterevidence to the claim that early immigrants learned English quickly."

So apparently, whole swaths of America's heartland were overrun by people speaking devil languages (i.e., all languages except English) for decades. This is not exactly the instantaneous assimilation that we have been led to believe took place.

By the way, my lovely wife is descended from German immigrants, so I'm not exhibiting anti-Prussian bias or indulging in Bavarian bashing. My point is that Hispanic immigrants are constantly told that they're not as bright or as determined as European immigrants who mastered English in a week, tops. The additional implication is that speaking Spanish is - if not illegal - certainly an affront to American values.

The irony is certainly powerful. Right wingers claim that their ancestors needed to learn English quickly to survive, and that modern immigrants have been coddled and refuse to adapt. However, the reverse may actually be true: European immigrants could keep speaking their original languages with few negative effects, but contemporary immigrants are economically screwed if they don't pick up the local dialect as soon as possible.

According to the researchers, many of those hard-working Gunthers and Schultzes of the past were "committed Americans. They participated in politics, in the economy, and were leaders in their churches and their schools. They just happened not to conduct much of their life in English... There was no huge pressure to change." Speaking only German "did not act as a barrier to opportunity in the work force."

It's a different story today. People who come to America and don't learn English are doomed to perpetual lower-class status. Certainly, every effort should be made to ensure that residents get a grasp of English as soon as possible. I would argue, however, that insulting contemporary immigrants, indulging in fear mongering by claiming they won't learn, and mythologizing a past that may not have existed are not the most effective ways to do this.

By the way, if it worries you that a church in your neighborhood has occasional services in Spanish, take another look at Salmons and Wilkins' study. There, you can find out about the Lutheran Church in Wisconsin that, after much debate, added services in English.

They did it in 1929.

Comments

[Adrio]

A study? By professors? I'm impressed.

When German immigrants began arriving in Wisconsin back in 1839, many of them setted in wilderness communities that had little or no daily contact with English, there was no television, no Internet, and not much incentive to learn any language but their own, The villages were self-sufficient and self-contained in business, church, school, and every other aspect of life. There was no opportunity (nor pressure) to learn English until it became mandatory in schools in (I think) 1929, maybe 1930.

It doesn't take a university study to discover that picking up a new language will be slower if no one realizes they're supposed to be learning it in the first place.

It's also always been obvious enough that, if we want new arrivals to be learning English, we should be developing the patience and the resources to teach them.

Despite the english-only insistence of the xenoglossophobes among us, the U.S. isn't and never has been a monolingual society -- finde dich damit ab!

[coolmaiden]

English happens to be one of the most difficult languages on the earth to learn, what with all our double meanings and crazy spellings. The very same folks who ridicule immigrants for speaking native languages are often the very same ones who rely on English-speakers in foreign countries.

[joebiz]

Daniel, another good post.

Das Volk . . . actually had Americanization and bilingual schools based on the notion or fear by earlier English immigrant elites that Germans would replace them as the dominant group. However, the post leads to the issue as to whether "linguistic imperialism" is good for the nation and or immigrants.

The argument above calls into question other issues. Namely, is English really necessary for success? I can think of native English speakers, mono-lingual English native Americans, that are marginalized and by all acounts are considered social and economic losers. Or, the converse, immigrants that do not speak a lick of English are are successful beyond belief.

Consider the following article from Wikipedia:

*English is best taught monolingually ("the monolingual fallacy");
*the ideal teacher is a native speaker ("the native-speaker fallacy");
*the earlier English is taught, the better the results ("the early-start fallacy");
*the more English is taught, the better the results ("the maximum-exposure fallacy");
*if other languages are used much, standards of English will drop ("the subtractive fallacy").

Three basic arguments are used by dominant group to promote the adoption of English:

its economic utility: it enables people to operate technology;
its ideological function: it stands for modernity;
its status as symbol for material advance and efficiency.

My ideal is for all Americans to learn a foreign language . . . that's the new global standard!!

[StanFlouride]

This article fails to mention the "pressure" on German speakers to learn and switch to English, namely, WW I. It was made illegal to teach in German language in the schools. The Irish threw stones at German-speaking students were on their way to study in a school that taught classes in German. During WW II people of German ancestry, including those born in the US were treated almost as harshly as the Japanese, except for not being placed en masse in camps, some jailed on suspicion, not proof, of collaboration with the Nazis.

During WW I, the US was mostly rural German and Czech immigrants were the main population in the wide midwest. Because most Germans were Lutherans and most Czechs were Catholic, there wasn't that much interaction between them. Thus, the incentives to learn English by either group was weak. I point this out in order to dispel any suggestion that neither language group didn't want to learn English. They didn't need to.
My maternal great-grandparents never learned English; my maternal grandparents spoke to each other mostly in German at home, but they spoke English well, because my grandfather went from farm to town and to carpentering rather than farming. Once the US became urbanized, immigrants had to learn English faster in order to survive in an English-dominated commerce society.

[DuPageDem]

This confirms my own family's history, not only in Wisconsin but in Chicago and its suburbs as well, among both my Northern German and Bavarian ancestors going back to the mid-1800s. My great-grandmother spoke very little English even though she was born in Menominee, which was essentially 100% German speaking. Her uncle ran a lumber mill where only German was spoken. He served in the US Army during the Spanish-American War -- in a unit that spoke only German. (The officers were bilingual, and translated the orders.) My grandfather spoke fluent English but read Chicago's German-language daily newspaper until his death. Chicago's Lincoln Square neighborhood had a German-language movie theater until the 1980s. In my current suburban/rural village, settled in the 1830s, German was the primarly language until World War I, and it was common to hear Deutsch spoken on the street -- as well as for church services -- until at least the 1960s. For years I've pointed this out to people who whine about our more recent Spanish-speaking neighbors. Their culture is rich and wonderful, and I now regret studying German rather than Spanish as a kid.

[marlovian]

My experience with Italian/Sicilian immigrants in western New York and with Italian and Ukrainian immigrants in southeast Michigan (both family and non-family) revealed that it was a point of pride for all generations to learn English as quickly as possible though the ancestral dialects were still common in the home.

[montemalone]

In Chicago, even the ATMs are in Polish, Russian, and an Asian language I can't identify.
Entire neighborhoods have stores and businesses with signage, and patrons, of many different languages, from Europe (western and eastern) and Asia (near, middle, far, and south).

[JGatsby]

The conclusions the authors derive from the study seem totally unfounded. They study one particular fairly insulated community and extrapolate their conclusion to all immigrants. Of course there were communities where immigrants could settle and get by in their native language, no one ever doubted that did they? There were also plenty of other communities where immigrants learned english. Studying one specific community doesn't prove anything.

[ESerafina42]

My father was either first or second generation in this country from Poland, or at least what was later Poland since his grandparents and/or parents came before WWI. His grandparents never learned English. Presumably his parents did, but he was raised in a Polish neighborhood, went to Polish schools, and according to my mother, when she met him he spoke English but with a thick Polish accent that sounded like he was just off the boat.

My great-grandfather on my mother's side, on the other hand, left Germany (to escape conscription, according to family lore) and never looked back - wouldn't even allow German to be spoken in his house.

Jackie Mason, according to what I heard him say once, was the first baby born in this country in his family, and his accent is pure New York.

Obviously every situation is different, and a lot does seem to depend on what the feelings were towards the "old country," whether people cluster together with those similar to them, etc.

But please, let's not hear any more of this nonsense about how ALL previous immigrants learned English immediately, and HAD to because there was none of this mollycoddling, blah blah blah.

[Norge]

If those coming to a new country are isolated and alone within an english community without their collective own, then they are forced to learn the language to survive and learn it as quickly as possible.

If there is a collective group speaking the same language within the larger group, not speaking fluently can be used as part of the survival system as they can fain "do not understand" help me when they are out in and interacting in the larger language group. And being in a group with themselves only knowning what is being communicated helps protect themselves from the larger group.

How often has one sat in a cafe where the language majority is english in America or arabic in another land and heard two or three from other countries sitting alone and speak their language and not understood by the larger group.

In my opinion, the larger group feels threatened.

[weatherwaxx]

Interesting how the argument shifts. When the "MY ancestors learned English RIGHT AWAY!" myth is exploded, it's suddenly, "Oh, that's all right for BACK THEN, but we can't do it NOW."

My grandfather came to the US in the early 1900s. He never learned to speak English very well; he never learned to read it at all. He had a Polish newspaper and radio programs, and since he spent most of his life working as a gardener, his communication skills were sufficient.

All of his kids were bilingual.

None of his grandchildren -- my generation -- are. We lost our chance to be bilingual because our parents were embarrassed by their parents' being 'foreign.'

I don't think there's any argument that it is BETTER to learn the language where one is going to live. But it wouldn't be a bad idea to have some sort of English instruction assistance for people who come to America.

If you grew up speaking the language, great -- you're lucky. But if, say, your home town or home state were devasted by war or national disaster, and you found yourself moving to some other country for survival and to protect your kids, would you deserve to be treated as stupid just because you didn't speak the language?

Unless you are 100% American Indian, you are a child of immigrants. A little compassion is not a bad thing.

[kylennblack]

Ich hatte Deutsch in der Schule gelernt, aber ich habe viel vergessen und möchte gerne Deutsch üben.

(I hope I did that right. I'm rusty!)

[kylennblack]

In addition: I have some Germans in the ancestral woodpile but I'm not exactly sure when they came over. My grandfather's stepmother was from Germany and she taught him some German, an interest he maintained throughout his life and picked up from him. I inherited his books and it's interesting to go through those old readers written in the Fraktur German script.

[virginiamd]

ja, ich auch.

Actually, there were still church services conducted in German in SW MO during the 1960s. My great-grandfather, even though born in the States (c. 1880), spoke English with a German accent.

[ksyellowdog]

ya, ich sprechen duetch. Ouch ienen?

[antaeus]

Talk about a faulty thesis.

The facts you point to--an abundance of German schools, newspapers, and community organizations in the US before WW I--have been widely noted for years. Even in the 18th century, Ben Franklin expressed concern that Pennsylvania was becoming more German than English. But your comparison of American life from 1900 with life in 2008 is problematic, to say the least. Those earlier "foreign" enclaves and institutions were often self-sustaining, especially in a country that was still agrarian. Indeed, what would be the economic drag on a rural, isolated German-speaking village that produced nearly everything it needed for success?

The technological and social changes that have occurred in this country since the early 1900s have made your comparison meaningless. For a more relevant example of linguistic separatism, look to Quebec in the last 20 years.

[Rog49Thomas]

Large sections of rural Chicago, rural New York, rural Milwaukee had non English linguistic enclaves well into the 20th Century. German, Polish, Yiddish.

Many of the early socialist/radical newspapers in this country were printed in German. If you're ever in Chicago stop by the Chicago Historical Society's display on the Haymarket Riot (1886) lots of the pro union propaganda, calls for meetings is in German or English and German.

In the 1890s the city of Milwaukee hosted quite a flourishing German theater and music scene. In the victory of the first socialist mayoral candidate in Milwaukee, the famous "bundle brigade" delivered pro Socialist campaign literature in 10 or 12 languages.

In 1912 the Archbishop of Milwaukee told his flock that anyone reading the Kurier Polski or National Daily News would be denied the sacrament of confession. (The great sin apparently was calling for a Pole as Archbishop instead of an Irishman).

During 1917 Ohio (along with several other enlightened states) banned the usage of German language (Ake Law) in any grade school in the State. Iowa always a progressive state had its Babel Proclamation 1918 which made the speaking of any language other than English in public a crime, including religious services and over the telephone.

[AsISaid]

The separatism in Quebec is very much derived from cultural differences (language being cuturally based) is it not?

Many of the ethnic "enclaves" were not only in rural areas as you argue, but most were in industrial and mining centers in the early to mid-1900's. One could argue that a small community or rural town founded by immigrants would be the slowest to "go" English because there was no need. Those living in larger cities were different - but I would submit for different reasons. One was the feeling that they would have the inability to obtain the better jobs without English. Another was the cultural pressure on the children of immigrants who wanted to better assimilate into American lilfe. They never expressed pressure to speak English or go back to the old country.

My grandparents were all immigrants and they loved this country. They never felt that others didn't believe they didn't belong here. Instead, they felt their ethnicity added to the richness of American culture. Truth is, there is no American culture per se. It is an amalgamation of every culture. I don't think wanting to keep one's native tongue and loving the United States are mutually exclusive.

[TtfnJohn]

What I have found amusing is that the times I've gone in to Quebec driving a vehicle with Ontario license places trying to find an English speaker is akin to finding hen's teeth.

When I've gone there with British Columbia plates on the car I have no problem getting help in English, even badly broken English. Perhaps different expectations of we westerners compared to Ontarians?

Or do Quebecois share the same contempt for the colonizers of Ontario and Toronto as we westerners do?

[TtfnJohn]

"For a more relevant example of linguistic separatism, look to Quebec in the last 20 years."

Don't bother. The separatist movement in Quebec is having problems exciting anyone anymore if for no other reason than they've been too successful. Not in gaining political independence but in ensuring that Quebecois French, which isn't Parisian French is alive and well and healthy.

Young francophone's, often fluent in French and English don't see English as some kind of marauder out to kill their language and culture. On radio, tv and the Intenet they have examples daily that thier culture is alive, well and healthy. Something hard to say about the "Survivor" oriented English cultures of the Americas.

[antaeus]

If the Anglophone flight from Quebec that we saw reported in the early '90s has stopped, then that is a good thing.