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

[drkazmd65]

My grandmother (aged 95 when she died mid 2007) used to talk about her Grandfather, a 1st Generation native-born American to German immigrants, who still spoke fluent German. He, however, only spoke German at home to his relatives, and only to those that understood him. His family came over from Germany ~1870. They all did rapidly adopt English as a common language - even though they did keep German 'alive' for at least the next generation.

I don't have a problem with people of Hispanic, Mid-eastern, Eastern European, Indian,... whatever speaking their 'ancestral' tounge. Hell, I wish I knew something other than English and a smattering of Spanish.

But, whether immigrants like it or not, learning and passably using English should be a priority.

I wouldn't move to France, or China or Russia and expect to get by without using their native languages.

[hardlyhikin]

Then go out and learn another language. This country would be FAR better off if more of it's citizens learned a second language.

[drkazmd65]

No arguement there hardlyhkin. We would be better IF we were required to actually learn at least one other language.

I had 4 years of High School & College Spanish. I actually read Spanish reasonably well. My conversational Spanish truely stinks. I know my niece (18 now) speaks Spanish fairly well, but because the school system she is in has made it a priority to ensure a second language has received more emphasis.

[propitiousmoment]

You would have a hell of a time with it, too, because the ability to acquire new languages sharply decreases after puberty. We need to have a little compassion for people who arrive here as adults and struggle with the language. One hopes you would encounter that as a newcomer in some other country as well.

[drkazmd65]

That's bull propitiousmoment - I work with a Bulgarian, an Egyptian, and Indian, and two Chinese nationals. They mostly didn't get here until they were adults. The Bulgarian learned English (also speaks Russian) late. The Egyptian learned English when he moved here for grad school during the 1980s at about 30 years age. One of the two Chinese learned English mostly within the last 7 years (he is ~50).

It can be done - even if the accent remains strong. And I am more than willing to be compassionate while they are learning English - as long as they look like they are trying.

And yes, I would hope from the same as I struggled to learn another country's native language.

[PoliticalEnnui]

Fifteen years ago I helped a man translate some written family records from German into English. His particular ancestry was Swiss German, of which there are many in my Connecticut hometown. One evening, after I had finished, he told me that he was grateful and always wished he could remember the German he spoke in school. He couldn't recall exactly when it happened, but his one-room schoolhouse had spoken Schwyzer-Deutsch exclusively until one day when his teacher announced that they would be speaking English from then on. The man would eventually go on to enlist and fight for the U.S. in WWII.

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

In my home town (Mansfield ,OH) there were so many German immigrants that as late as the 1970's one of the radio stations was still carrying 2 hous of weekly German language programming.

[mbsheetz]

There is a Lutheran church in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn Heights that STILL holds services in German ..my ancestors arrived from Pomerania in th 1870's, their grand children ( my grandparents) were bi-lingual and only spoke german to each other so the children ( my mother) wouldn't understand what they were discussing ! My grand parents both learned english and discouraged their children from learning German because of both World Wars. My Grand father eagerly signed up for WWI in part to prove that his families loyalties rested with the United States. My father took german in high school and college because his father would not speak it at home. My father's newly aquired skill was a key reason he was attached to a General's staff in WWII because he could read the road signs and ask for directions in German!! Today his grand daughter is a language major in college in guess what? Arabic/French & Spanish. We decendants of immigrants do what we have to do both to survive and thrive in this country of plenty.

[Anna S]

My mother is one of those Mansfield "German" immigrants. (They spoke German, but were not from Germany. They were refugees from Tito's ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia.) She strongly feels that immigrants should learn English as soon as possible, that civil participation requires a common language.

There is a church in Mansfield called First ENGLISH Lutheran Church (caps mine) -- so called because it was, at one time, the only Lutheran church in the area to conduct services solely in English.