Study debunks myth that early immigrants quickly learned English

[AlphaCentauri]

Source: UW

Joseph Salmons has always been struck by the pervasiveness of the argument. In his visits across Wisconsin, in many newspaper letters to the editor, and in the national debates raging over modern immigration, he encounters the same refrain:

"My great, great grandparents came to America and quickly learned English to survive. Why can't today's immigrants do the same?"

As a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of German who has extensively studied European immigrant languages in the Midwest, Salmons discovered there was little direct research available about whether this "learn English or bust" ethic really existed.

To research the topic, Salmons and recent UW-Madison German Ph.D. graduate Miranda Wilkerson delved into census data, newspapers, books, court records and other materials to help document the linguistic experience of German immigrants in Wisconsin from 1839 to the 1930s. Their paper appears in the current issue of the journal "American Speech."

Focusing on German immigrants was a logical choice, Salmons says, since they represented the biggest immigration wave to Wisconsin in the mid-1800s, "and they really fit this classic view of the 'good old immigrants' of the 19th century."



Read more: http://www.news.wisc.edu/15801

[aquart]

1. Nobody over puberty "quickly" learns a language.

What we're saying is they DID learn it, hard as the struggle may have been. And we are saying it is an insult to the current adult immigrants to imply that it's too big an effort for them.

As for pre-pubescent children? Yes. They learn languages quickly and without accent. Which is why it is ridiculous to wait till high school to teach languages.

[aquart]

3. P.S. I am utterly opposed to any "study" that supports language segregation.

Or is someone here really looking forward to creating a separatist Quebec in our own country? We could have forty or fifty in ten years in we try.

[silverojo]

5. You're right -- it's about the effort, not the speed of learning

Learning your new country's language is not only necessary to get a decent job, it's also respectful toward those whose land you now live in.

Right offhand, I can think of three very rich South Korean entertainers who are studying hard to become fluent in English, in order to get work here: Se7en, Rain, and BoA. They sing English well enough so that they could easily slide by with a translator during interviews. But they respect and admire America so much, that they want to be able to connect with Americans in our native language.

Now, if people who aren't even going to LIVE here -- and also aren't exactly hurting for money -- are going to put this much effort into learning English, it's only natural to expect that people coming here to live should learn our language, not the other way around.

Furthermore, business people around the world, who wish to do trade with Americans, learn the English language. So why the hell should people LIVING here not respect us enough to learn our language?

Maybe it's because I'm Irish--knowing that my people were invaded by people from another country who forced them to learn English--but I'm not too keen on being invaded by Hispanics who want to force their language on me.

And I'm a person with a great interest in foreign languages--Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, German, and now I'm getting into Japanese and Korean. In my school days, I gathered some other kids to join with me in a movement to get Spanish taught to those of us younger than 9th grade. So please don't tell me that I'm racist or intolerant of other cultures. Other cultures fascinate me--but I want my own culture to be respected, as well.

And aquart is right about one other thing: They wait WAY too long to introduce kids to foreign languages. Other countries start foreign languages in elementary school. :)

[EFerrari]

6. You have been repeated set straight on this issue and you have

continued to repeat the right wing hate talking point that Latinos disrespectfully refuse to learn English and want to force the dreaded Spanish language on you. Transparent and pathetic.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[bitchkitty]

11. Our country's history is made up of all

types of "foreigners" without whom we would have no culture. I spent part of my childhood in California, where Spanish was compulsory and my best friend's surname was Martinez. I spent some of my childhood in Asia, and as a young adult went to Spain. When I grew up I married a Japanese, and after I divorced him, I married a Latino. I speak Spanish, after a fashion, but my first language is English. Not once did anyone in any country I've ever been criticize my lack of knowledge of their language or culture. They were almost to a one warm, inviting people who were as eager to learn about my life as I was about theirs.

In no way have I "compromised" my culture by embracing another. You should try it sometime.

In spite of your education, and your intelligence, you have a very small mind.

[annabanana]

13. Not many people have the facility with languages that you claim for yourself.

It is a matter of the wiring in the brain that determines whether learning a language in adulthood is a snap or damn near impossible.

[Bill McBlueState]

22. "they DID learn it"

Do you know this, or do you merely think it might be the case?

I suspect not many people can say anything definitive about the language skills of their ancestors who lived and died 100+ years ago. I have no idea how fluently my great-great-great-grandparents spoke English.

[foxfeet]

37. According to my dad, my g-g-grandmother never learned English.

She was from the Gaeltacht of Ireland and spoke Irish all her life. I doubt it was a matter of respect but of ability and confidence. So what? Her kids grew up speaking fluent American English (the first-born generation post-immigration nearly always does) and now nobody on that side of the family, to my knowledge, speaks Irish nowadays. I studied it for about 20 weeks a couple of years ago, but I'm not even functional, let alone fluent, in it and I have a distinct facility for learning languages.

[rpannier]

2. It really shouldn't be that surprising

Immigrants tended to live in communities with people from the "Old Country."

This happened all over the country and it happens all over the world.

You had/have Jewish Harlem, Spanish Harlem, German-ton, China Town, the Irish Quarter, etc.

The only reason I learned Korean so quickly is my wife spoke so little English when we met that I had to work at it -- We live in Korea, so logically I should have made the adjustment.

But, even then, when I first came to Korea I hung out in English speaking areas and my friends all spoke some English.

[MannyGoldstein]

4. No Kidding

Ask any Jewish person - almost invariably, the grandparents and/or great grandparents spoke Yiddish with just a bissel of English.

[kskiska]

7. My Hungarian-born grandparents arrived c.1905

and spoke Hungarian till their dying days. My grandfather spoke no English. My grandmother spoke limited, heavily-accented English. They lived in a Hungarian community and did business with other Hungarians and attended a Hungarian Catholic church.

I've known Italians who lived and died never learning English.

And this was in the NYC suburbs of Connecticut.

[bhikkhu]

8. After the American Revolution, German was considered

as a strong candidate for a national language, being very commonly spoken and understood. Our current condition of lacking an official national language is what they at the time decided as the best course- to not dictate what people should think or speak.

[Demeter]

35. That's Because the Farmer's Daughters Married the Hessians

Revolutionary Prisoners of war, Hessian mercenaries, were encouraged to stay and settle the wilderness.

[izquierdista]

10. Adults need help and schooling to learn

The pattern is that the first generation to arrive barely learns enough English to get by; the first generation born and schooled here is fluently bilingual; the second generation born here might learn enough of the old language to converse a little with the grandparents, but unless they make an extra effort, they are never fluent in the language of the old country.

Now with Mexicans who travel across the border regularly, they can be completely bilingual. In Chula Vista, CA, one encounters people who are so completely fluent in both Spanish and English that they can switch back and forth mid-sentence without skipping a beat. However, language requires constant reinforcement and if they were to be immersed completely in one language for a few years, the other language would atrophy.

It's no problem to promote multi-lingualism. In Europe, consumer packaging may have 6 or 8 languages printed on the box. And it's not that difficult to pick up some language skills as an adult if learning materials are available. Back a hundred years ago, it was sink or swim as far as trying to learn English and some made the effort, but many didn't. Today, with ESL courses at community colleges, anyone who wants to stay in the USA and communicate with the natives can make an effort to learn English. Plus, English is the language of travel the world over, so it ranks as THE most important foreign language skill that a non-native speaker can have.

[Berry Cool]

12. I don't know how true that is.

My parents were first generation, but I don't think they ever learned to speak their parents' native language enough to be bilingual. They knew a few phrases their parents would come out with now and then, but that's it. Otherwise, if they didn't learn their parents' language in school, they didn't learn it--they learned English, period. The same way I did.

[annabanana]

14. I suspect your parent's lack of fluidity in your grandparent's language

is the result of a conscious decision by your grandparents..

[happyslug]

34. Depends on what background in the US

Around 1900 it was common practice in the Coal Fields of Pennsylvania to a Pole (or other slav) with an Italian in the coal mines, the reason was simple, they could remove the coal but not talk about how bad management was treating all of them (this was an early and effective effort at union busting). Similar actions incurred in the Steel Mills and any other place where people worked together for large industrial organizations (who did NOT want unions, even if it meant higher number of workers killed do to a lack of an ability to speak a Common Language).

Thus you had a lot of immigrants (My grandfather among them) who refused to speak their native tongue, for English was the language of Communications and thus power (i.e. the ability to work together AGAINST management i.e. form a union). Now while my Grandmother was alive he spoke Polish to his wife in his home (Through that was more habit then conscious thought) thus my mother knew Polish and can speak it, but he refused to teach it is at home and refused to speak it once his wife died (Unless he had to while dealing with someone who spoke his native language only or that person's English was marginal). He was very big on this, even remanding his adult son, in English, for speaking Polish to him while my Father was in the same building, on the grounds my Father did NOT know Polish and thus an insult to my Father (Yes My grandfather had the opposition position as Herbert Hoover and his wife who thought it was smart to speak to each other in Chinese even as President in the presence of others, given that so very few Americans knew Chinese they could be confident that what was spoken could NOT be understood by anyone else at the table, but then my Grandfather was a working man NOT a member of the ruling elite of the US).

Thus most of the Unions from 1900s to the 1950s wanted everyone to speak English, for they knew from first hand experience what the lack of an ability to speak English was in both working together for someone else AND working together to your own benefit. This is NOT the same as refusing admittance to the Union do to a lack of an ability to speak English, but that that person had to make the Commitment to understand the Language as much as possible (And for those that could not, to provide services even translators).

Thus why a lot of First Generation Americans NEVER learned the language of their Parents, more to protect themselves when it came to dealing with Corporate Management then anything else.

[Nevernose]

21. The problem with this:

What you say is very true, but the problem is that the languages learned tend to be conversational, spoken, and filled with slang. The proper written use of the language often eludes the children of immigrants, and even children who immigrate to a new country young usually have difficulty with academic language. It's quite common for students to be verbally fluent in multiple languages, but be under-literate in both. It's the classic problem of post-ELL students who have been mainstreamed into the classroom.

[Demeter]

15. That Is So NOT TRUE!

My Great Grand parents came from Poland to various states and eventually all ended up in Michigan working for various automotive companies. The Greats never learned much English. Detroit was 45% Polish, and streets had Polish names, stores were Polish-speaking, schools taught in Polish, and so forth...

My parents attended Polish-language Catholic schools, but never really mastered the language, but they could converse with their grandparents as children do.

Those days ended in the 60's, fifty years after they arrived.

I know maybe 5 words, and that's from a few months of study.....

[xchrom]

16. recommend

[libnnc]

17. German was spoken in the Piedmont area of NC until the mid 1800s

Especially around Winston-Salem.

[Frances]

18. My husband's grandparents immigrated to Minnesota from

Norway.

I had to laugh when his aunt said she'd just been to a church service where the minister said a prayer in Norwegian. Then 5 minutes later the aunt complained about new Hispanic immigrants speaking Spanish.

I'm sure research will show that the first generation mainly speaks the native language. The next generation speaks the parents' language at home and English at school.

When many people immigrate from one country to the same area, the first generation usually establishes newspapers in their native language. Gradually, the readership declines as the older generation dies out. I seem to remember someone in Maryland making the claim that his grandparents learned English rapidly, but research revealed that there was a thriving German speaking community of that era. It's just that the children and grandchildren learned English.

The only exception I know of is in Miami where REPUBLICAN Cuban refugees and their children and grandchildren speak Cuban Spanish.

[slackmaster]

19. My great-grandfather never really learned English

His son, my grandfather, was born on the Hopi Indian Reservation in 1895. His first languages were German and Hopi, which he learned concurrently.

When my grandpa was 11, they moved into an Italian immigrant ghetto in Chicago. He learned Italian, but still no English.

He finally STARTED learning English at age 13 when the family moved to Oklahoma.

[LanternWaste]

20. Regardless...

Regardless of whether the immigrant community does or does not learn ESL on the timetable of the quaintly-provincial, one-language, 'Murikan, it makes little difference to me.

The more languages I hear on a daily basis, the bigger the smile on my face gets. I think we should all be exposed to more languages and more cultures-- each allows us greater perspective of the world we live in, and our own individual place in it.



I've never seen anyone forced to learn a language (or, as written up-thread "have Spanish forced on me"). More likely, many of these people are presented with the choice to learn, or not learn according to the whims of the free markets they so readily embrace, and any negative consequences accorded them from their choice is labeled "forced on me" to better self-justify the decision they themselves made in not expanding their own pool of knowledge.

If, for whatever reason one does not want to interact with a person who has difficulty with the English language, the choice is always there simply to not interact with them, and in doing so, enlarge your own provincialism. But I doubt there's anyone on this board that is so unintelligent as to be denied by birth the addition of another language or two in our world.

[Igel]

26. So you'd like my relatives.

They've been to a number of countries, and have enlightened the denizens there by only speaking English to them. Some of the citizens there have shown their backwardness by only speaking their native language and not interacting with my parents to any great extent.

Of course, the French and Russians were the most backwards, by that standard, and the Finns the most enlightened.

I humiliated both the French and Russians by being the intercessor and interpreter in both cases. I treated the Finns with respect, not knowing a word of their language.

Oddly, all I've found in learning those languages and cultures (and others) were additional provincial outlooks, many of which were even more retrograde and jingoistic than my own working-class American one, if the truth be told. With two caveats, of course. Among the educated and enlightened class I usually found a non-provincial outlook as enlightened as the one I started out with, thus showing how highly evolved they were (of course, they assumed that it was I who came up to their lofty standards). And, if we reduce "culture" to its superficial and peripheral elements, gutting the word of any actual importance: food, festivals, folklore, and fashion.

[LanternWaste]

27. I'm afraid I base neither my like nor my dislike

I'm afraid I base neither my like nor my dislike of a person on the number of languages spoken. Hence, you're passive-aggressive disagreement with my position is rendered invalid from the outset...

[tanyev]

23. Yep. My dad did a lot of research on a group of German immigrants

that came to the U.S. in the 1830s-1840s. Their church publications, hymnals, worship services, everything were in German well into the beginning of the 20th century. Accusations of being un-American as the country headed into World War I was what really propelled the final adoption of English as the primary language. But even then, Dad was born in the mid 1920s and grew up speaking German in the home. He took a job in Texas in the 1970s preaching German services for an ever-shrinking group of elderly people in an area with a strong German heritage.

The Texas Co-op Power Magazine had an interesting article a few months ago about the trouble German immigrants in Brenham, Texas had with the KKK:

Yet isolationism also gripped America as farm boys returned hardened men after fighting the Germans in World War I. The Ku Klux Klan rode. People of German heritage were tarred and feathered. Prominent businessmen were taken from their homes and businesses and badly beaten. Many towns banned speaking foreign languages.

In Brenham, Texas, the whole mess was eventually settled in the mid-1920s in what can only be described as a downright friendly compromise. The town threw a $6,000 Reconciliation Barbecue, with all sides invited to call a halt to the bloodshed.

In exchange for the Klan’s standing down, German businessmen, preachers and teachers in town agreed not to publicly speak, preach or teach in their native tongue. But it was likely the groaning tables heaped with Texas barbecue, German potato salad, coleslaw, peach cobbler and Brenham Creameries ice cream that sealed the deal. Who could possibly fight over a plate of slow-smoked meat and (what would later become) Blue Bell ice cream?

A German printer was threatened in his downtown shop by KKK leaders and told to quit publishing the newspaper. The printer responded by throwing one Klansman through a plate-glass window.

http://www.texas-ec.org/texascooppower/issues_archive/2008/January/system/feature2.aspx

[Critters2]

24. My dad supports bilingual education because of his experience in central Illinois.

He grew up in an area where families often spoke German in their homes and among friends. So, a lot of kids started school speaking little if any English. My dad spoke English because his mother's family was Scottish American, but he knew a lot of kids who only spoke German. Some of his Mennonite neighbors didn't even hear English spoken at church. They had no exposure to it. They'd get to school and immediately fall behind in other areas, because they were stuck trying to learn English. And these kids were often second or even third generation Americans. Everyone around them spoke German.

So, it's just silly to think European Americans didn't speak their native languages, if everyone in their communities did. I still remember my great grandmother talking to her two Boston Terriers in German. And scolding me and my sibs in "the old language" as she called it.

[yellowcanine]

25. My father (whose family had been here for at least 5 generations) did not speak any English before

he went to first grade. He spoke Pennsylvania Dutch. The public teacher at the one-room school punished them if they spoke PA Dutch at school. He learned English quickly.

[bullwinkle428]

28. German was THE PREDOMINANT LANGUAGE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS in Iowa

until the early 1900s, when anti-German sentiment during WWI eventually killed it...

[treestar]

29. It would not be surprising if it took much longer in those days

They'd be out on the farm and mostly around fellow immigrants.

These days there are tons of books, tapes and study aids, plus you have TV, radio and mass communication. All would make it easier to learn another language.

And you don't even have to be in a country to learn it's language. English is spoken all over the world now. Hell, many immigrants learn a lot of it before they get here. If they come from India or Africa, they learned it at home before they ever even came to the U.S.

[Igel]

30. He's one of the scholars that seeks to counter "conventional wisdom"

at the expense of the truth.

It's "logical" to pick German immigrants to a relatively un-Europeanized part of Wisconsin because they were probably the largest wave of immigrants to establish settlements if his conclusion is the one you seek to confirm. German immigrants to Oklahoma and Kansas would have been as good. Lesser immigrations, whether of large groups in smaller quantities or of smaller groups in relatively large quantities, would yield the opposite result--Croatian immigrants to Baltimore, for example.

Picking your research subjects to justify your conclusions isn't a way to reach far-reaching conclusions (and I'm sure that this guy knows this quite well). It's a way to reach a kind of particular conclusion. In this case, both conclusions--"immigrants quickly learned English" and "immigrants stayed monolingual in their ancestral language for decades, even generations" are both completely valid. Depending on circumstances. Given what is known about L2-acquisition, it's fairly trivial to properly pick the circumstances to yield the correct conclusion.

The Germans-in-Wisconsin cicumstances were overwhelmingly advantageous to the "stay monolingual" conclusion. Many immigrants lived in ghettoes (the "gh" should tell you which ethnic group provided the word), in which they were sometimes economically disadvantaged and even subject to segregation, imposed both without and within. Study such groups and you get two sets of conclusions: Those in economically viable, socially cohesive ghettoes with the possibility of adequate social and economic advancement within the ghetto can be predicted to stay monolingual, and the same for their kids. Those in less economically viable ghettoes with few chances for advancement were often discontent after they'd been here a few years, but would be unable to get free of the ghetto, and all but forced their kids to become accent-free in English. "Motivation", "opportunity", and "inhibition" are three important factos in L2-acquisition. The Germans under discussion had little motivation or opportunity, and inhibition wasn't a big factor since they didn't need to interact extensively outside their communities. Italian immigrants to NYC may have developed motivation years after moving here, but still had little opportunity (both time and access to appropriate input) by that time and were faced with racism, which yielded grounds for inhibition. But they motivated their kids, provided opportunities, and those were sufficient to overcome racist-induced inhibition.

My brother's father's family were in circumstances overwhelmingly advantageous to quick learning of English by the first generation: Sicilians who landed in New York and wound up moving out of the ghetto almost at once, soon setting up a business that involved heavy trade with non-Italians in a milieu where Italian, specifically Sicilian, was only of use in dealing with overseas trading partners. In other words, they were in precisely the situation my Chinese boss was in two generations later, and both learned English very quickly. Neither were balanced bilinguals, as if that mattered. They had motivation (learn English or be dirt poor from the start, and stay there for life), opportunity (everybody around them spoke English), and while they had inhibitions ("dirty wops" hardly encouraged my brother's family), their motivation was even greater. Even for the wives, who had to learn English to deal with the social aspects of maintaining the companies--dinners and parties.

Americans I ran into in Prague in the early-mid '90s fell into the same two categories. Those who formed a kind of ghetto, with English bookstores, laundromats, etc., and knew just enough Czech to order beer, get laid, and not get arrested, and those who had more extensive dealings in Prague and needed to learn the language to satisfy their own motivations for being there. The latter were seldom balanced bilinguals, either, but coped with most everyday Czech reasonably well. The former earned the locals' ire, and were considered disrespectful and uncouth.

People are people. They were no different then than we are now. This guy's research is valid for one part of the data set, something he must know quite well.

[NickB79]

31. Hell, my grandmother could have told you that

My great-great-grandfather emigrated from Germany to Wisconsin in the 1880's. My great-grandfather still spoke predominantly German when he moved to Minnesota around 1910, as did most of his neighbors in the predominantly German and Swedish community. My grandfather was raised speaking German first, English second, and still spoke with a slight German accent until the day he died 5 years ago (he would always call me Nicklaus instead of the American pronouncement of Nicholas).

Early immigrants didn't learn the English language; they learned enough phrases and words from the English language to get by when they had to venture outside of their immigrant communities. It was the same then as we see now.

[Toucano]

32. I remember my great uncle spoke Gaelic and little English

He had been here for 40 years when he died.

[newscott]

33. Of my ancestors

My Italian great grandfathers never learned much English, hell they were illeterate in two languages, one Italian great grandmother never learned English and one great grandmother was actually educated in both English and Italian, very rare for the times. She actually used to do translating as a side job for neighbors etc....

My Irish ancestors well, of course they spoke English anyway.

[semillama]

36. In my home town, there were still Finnish-language newspapers

being printed in the 1940s, some 40-odd years after the peak of Finnish immigration to the area. And having poured over 19th century census records as part of my job (coincidentally, I've done that in Wisconsin looking for concentrations of different ethnic groups in rural settlement patterns), I can't tell you how many first-generation immigrants I've seen that didn't have the "speaks English" box checked. Often, though, their children did.

[RamboLiberal]

38. Very true - I know in Pittsburgh which had neighborhoods

that were clustered around German, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Slovak, etc.

I heard from my maternal grandmother that they spoke German at home with her parents. My paternal grandparents never did learn to speak English very well. My dad lost most of his ability to speak Slovak after their deaths. When I was young(late 50's into the 60's) I would hear many of the elderly in my area speaking their native tongues of Polish, Hungarian, Slovak, Italian, etc.

At the turn of the century warning signs in the mills and mines of this area were often multi-lingual. BTW, many of these immigrants never became naturalized citizens. And many didn't have a strong affiliation with the United States. Many of them if it would have been economically feasible would have gladly returned to the "Old Country" as I often heard them refer.

The generation born and schooled here of course learned to speak English and identified with the United States.

I've noticed that many of the Asians who migrated here Korean(I have background of 27 years or Korean Martial Arts from a Korean master), Vietnamese, Indian, etc., do learn to speak English in enable to engage in commerce but of course revert to their native tongue to speak to other immigrants of their native country. Their children grow up speaking their parents native tongue but in many cases being much more comfortable with English.

Again I'm hearing more and more immigrants talking in restaurants and other public venues in their native tongues. (We're not exactly the hotbed of immigrants here). I'm fascinated and try to guess the language, but it doesn't offend me.

IMHO many Americans are totally ignorant and too far-removed to know of their ancestors and the fact that in many cases their immigrant anscestors never became conversant in English or were very limited.