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I might have worded it weird. For example, did you Grandparents speak the language of the "old country?" How many generations do you have to go back where they knew no English? When did you family start speaking exclusively English?
On my Mom's side, her Grandparents(my Great-Grandparents) came from Mexico and they knew barely any English until the day they died. Both of her parents(my Grandparents) are fluent in both English and Spanish. My Mom speaks no Spanish since her parents raised them to speak English. She was often playfully teased by the other Mexicans at school for not knowing Spanish.
On my Dad's side, both his parents only spoke English. His mother's father(my Great-Grandfather) immigrated from Norway when he was 12 with his family(my Great-Great Grandparents). He could speak both English and Norwegian, but didn't want to speak Norwegian anymore since he was now an American. He learned English once he moved to the US. I'm not sure about his parents and whether they ever learned English. I think my Great-Great Grandfather and Great-Great Grandmother on my paternal Grandpa's side knew both German and English(just a guess since their parents only knew German). I know that my Great-Great-Great Grandparents knew very little English and only German.
I also have English, Irish, and French ancestry, and obviously they didn't need to learn a new language from England or Ireland, but I'm not exactly sure when they stopped speaking French on that side.
My grandpa was Irish and grandma was German - both immigrants as children. Grandma was fluent in German and English, but the kids (my father's generation) were raised with English as the only language spoken in the home. My wife's grandfather was English and my wife's grandma was swedish and she spoke limited English, but English was the only languge spoken in the home (wife's parents generation). The generation at my parents level all spoke exclusively English.
The other two lines (both wife and myself) are knee deep in new england yankee (I am decended from the Mayflower Pilgrims, she is about 8-9 generations new england).
My kids however, are a tower of Babel. I have a son that speaks Finnish, a son that speaks Italian (and worked for a while as an interpreter for a fortune 100), a daughter that is a Korean linguist for the military, and another daughter that "speaks" ASL, and has taught her two year old ASL so he can communicate with her (he's not deaf, nor is she).
My wife's grandfather was visiting his son in Spain and in his 70's, and he impregnated a Spanish woman, and raised his daughter in Spain. She now lives in the US with her Spanish husband, and they speak Spanish to each other (he speaks almost no English). She has a heavy Spanish accent, but both her kids speak English. The son understands but doesn't speak Spanish, the daughter is bi-lingual, but is primarilary an English speaker.
Depends on the branch. I have colonial Mennonite ancestors who spoke German for many generations (about 5-6 gens depending on specific branch) in the US, probably up until my 2nd great grandfather (b. 1853), whose parents had converted to Methodism. His parents grew up Mennonite so they would have been German speakers. I don't know if my 2nd great grandfather picked anything up from them but I know his son, my great grandfather didn't. At the very latest, it would have died out after WWI.
On the other hand, my Italian ancestors lost the use of the native language within one generation of arriving. My Nan's father was from Italy so obviously spoke Italian but none of his US born children did.
I don't really know about the rest. There are other German branches of my tree but I don't know for sure how long the language was retained. I also have a Norwegian branch but again, unsure how many generations in the US spoke Norwegian. The rest of my immigrant ancestors were British - English and Scottish/Scots-Irish and there's no record of any of them speaking Gaelic that I know of.
Hasn't dies out yet. French and Spanish are still spoken in our home. My mom who speaks fluent English almost speaks exclusively in French at home. She has no accent unless... She's mad lol. My mom, dad, brother and myself are all fluent in Spanish, French and English. My grand parents ( moms side ) speak next to no English and on my dads side speak a little English.
When I have kids I will teach them same.
Dad's side arrived in US in 1872 and English was not spoken in the home until his sibs started school in the 1910s. There were 10 kids in his family. The older sons said they spoke German and Danish in the home, English at school, and French to talk to the neighbors.
Mom's side were slower ...her family came to US in 1850. Settled in a predominately French community where everyone basically talked French. Mom started school in 1918 and that is when the family started learning English. She and her sibs became orphans and were placed in a Catholic orphanage. In the 2 years they were there French language was wiped from their minds. So basically English became their 1st language in 1926 when her dad was killed.
My family in Canada are all Francophones, my family in the UK still speak Patois and they left the islands before I did, while most of my family in the US is bi and tri lingual.
Well, a vast majority of my ancestors were English, especially on my mom's side, and so there was no other language.
On my father's side of the family however, we do have quite a few Germans. They mostly immigrated during the 1850's and settled in an area with a large German population. In fact, the local church continued to hold one service a month in German until relatively recently.
Anyway, my father, born 1944, only learned English. His mother, my grandmother, spoke both German and English. Her parents were both children of the immigrant ancestors. So, in my dad's case, from the immigrant ancestor, it was child>grandchild>great-grandchild when the mother tongue died out completely.
I had thought that the last people to speak a foreign language were my Dutch and German descended grt/grt/grandparents, who left the U.S. for Canada after the revolution. The evidence is that they spoke some Dutch, and maybe German, as well as English.
All my other grt/grt/grandparents were from Ireland, and arrived just before or just after the Great Famine at which time the Irish language was being supplanted by English even among many peasants. However, my father's mother could speak Irish (and was disappointed that her children would not learn), so obviously one or both of her parents must have spoken the language. They came from Drimoleague civil parish in Co. Court.
I would have to go back to 3rd grt grandparents before I run into people who may have had to learn English as a second language.
I also have English, Irish, and French ancestry, and obviously they didn't need to learn a new language from England or Ireland, but I'm not exactly sure when they stopped speaking French on that side.
How about with you?
Whether Irish immigrants had to learn English or not depended upon their status in Ireland. Gaelic persisted among the peasants in the rural west of Ireland longer than it did elsewhere in the country, and while these people were generally too poor to immigrate, during the Famine, landlords and communities sometimes paid for these immigrants to go to the US or Canada because it was cheaper to send them away than support them.
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