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I love the story of my Finnish ancestors who came here to and forced their kids to speak English no matter what. Finnish was unacceptable. Only if today's immigrants had that attitude
It wasn't until WWI that a large number of schools in the Midwest stopped teaching classes in German. English is just the language of the government, but honestly if you were to walk around 100 years ago - you'd find a LOT more people who didn't speak English around the country than you do today.
Today it's all different because we're all conntected to each other 24 hours a day. We hear and see everything going on in every city and town out there. Before WWI small cities/towns existed much more on their own. You would have settlements that spoke Swedish (like the town in Iowa where my family came from), German, French, Dutch, etc.
Even in big cities people went to where their "people" lived. In Chicago you had vast areas of Italians, Swedes, Germans, Poles and other nationalities who normally lived in select areas of the city with their own kind. Don't think they all came and learned English on day 1.
I still know friends in Chicago who's parents and grandparents speak nothing but Greek or Polish.
Today we all speak English because after a few hundred years and the lack of European immigration during the past century - it's become the common denominator. There have been enough generations go by with lower immigration levels that most of us are English speakers by now.
We just notice more that there's a very large group out there speaking another language, but this is certainly nothing new. I think what's new is instead of a dozen or so "smaller" languages being spoken, it's one language spoken by people from dozens of countries (Spanish). It's a larger base.
I don't see anything wrong with it. Normally by the second generation people know English, and by the third generation it's probably all they tend to speak. We're just seeing a large immigration of people during the past 30 years.
Immigration to the USA was strong during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By 1970, the number of first generation immigrants had dropped to below 10 million. Then the new wave started and we're currently at around 40 million first generation.
It wasn't until WWI that a large number of schools in the Midwest stopped teaching classes in German.
There was a movement in the 1800's to make German the official language of Texas.
German and Czech were the dominant ethnicities in Texas in the 1800's.
Nevertheless the original 13 colonies were English and it is to these that we joined and formed the US. So the Johnny-come-lately's can do as everyone has been doing for the last 200 years
Location: Appalachian New York, Formerly Louisiana
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Originally Posted by HtownLove
I vote for Cantonese
Gosh that is...
unhelpful.
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