German in the United States

Before World War I, more than 6% of American schoolchildren received their primary education only in German.Fact|date=August 2008 Although more than 65 million Americans claim they have German ancestors, according to the 2000 census, only 1.5 million, speak the language.Fact|date=August 2008 Today, German is the second most spoken language in two states: North Dakota and South Dakota.Fact|date=August 2008

In the United States, German is third in popularity after Spanish and French in terms of the number of colleges and universities offering instruction in the language. [Modern Language Association, 2007-11-13, [http://www.mla.org/pdf/release11207_ma_feb_update.pdf New MLA Survey Shows Significant Increases in Foreign Language Study at U.S. Colleges and Universities] . Retrieved 2008-05-16.]

Dialects

Pennsylvania Dutch

The Amish and other Pennsylvania Germans speak a dialect of German known as Pennsylvania German (also called "Pennsylvania Dutch", where "Dutch" is a corruption of "Deutsch"), a remnant of what was once a much larger German-speaking area in eastern Pennsylvania. Most of the "Pennsylvania Dutch" originate from Switzerland, Alsace, or the Palatinate area of Germany.Fact|date=August 2008

Indiana

There is also a significant population of Amish and Old Order Mennonites located in rural areas of Elkhart County and LaGrange County, Indiana, who speak a similar dialect.Fact|date=August 2008 A much smaller community of Pennsylvania Dutch-speaking Amish is found in Parke County, in western Indiana. Many English words have become mixed with this dialect and it is quite different from High German (Hochdeutsch), but quite similar to the dialect of the Palatinate (Palatinate (region).

Usually, Pennsylvania Dutch (often just "Dutch" or "Deitsch") is spoken at home, but English is used when interacting with the general population.Fact|date=August 2008 The Amish and Old Order Mennonites of northern Indiana often differentiate between themselves and the general population by referring to them, respectively, as the "Amish" and the "English", noting the difference in language. Pennsylvania "Dutch" is sometimes used in worship services, though this is more common among the Amish than the Mennonites. More mainstream (city) Mennonites may have a working knowledge of the language, but it is not frequently used in conversation or in worship services.

Texas

There is a dying dialect called Texas German based in the Texas Hill Country in the vicinity of the town of Fredericksburg.Fact|date=August 2008

Hutterites

Hutterite communities in the United States and Canada speak Hutterite German, an Austro-Bavarian dialect.Fact|date=August 2008 Hutterite is spoken in the U.S. states of Washington, Montana, North and South Dakota, and Minnesota; and in the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

German as the official US language?

An urban legend, sometimes called the Muhlenberg legend after Frederick Muhlenberg, states that English only narrowly defeated German as the U.S. official language. In reality, the proposal being referenced was only to have government documents translated into German as a secondary language.Fact|date=August 2008 The United States has no statutory official language; English has been used on a "de facto" basis, owing to its status as the country's predominant language.

In Pennsylvania, where the state had a large German-American population, German was long allowed as the language of instruction in schools, [ [http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/kade/adams/chap7.html] "Some states mandated English as the exclusive language of instruction in the public schools, while Pennsylvania and Ohio in 1839 were first in allowing German as an official alternative, even requiring it on parental demand."] and state documents were available in German until 1950.Fact|date=August 2008 As a result of anti-German sentiment during World War I, the fluency decreased from one generation to the next and only a small fraction of Pennsylvanians of German descent are fluent in the German language.Fact|date=August 2008

ee also

*American Association of Teachers of German
*Bilingual education
*German American

Media

* Arbeiter-Zeitung (Chicago), a German-language newspaper in Chicago.
* New Yorker Staats-Zeitung
* Der Volksfreund, a newspaper in Buffalo, New York.

References

Further reading

*cite book|last=Kloss|first=Heinz|title=The American Bilingual Tradition|origyear=1977|year=1998|edition=reprint|location=McHenry, IL|publisher=Center for Applied Linguistics and Delta Systems|id=ISBN 1-887744-02-9

External links

* [http://www.aatg.org American Association of Teachers of German]
* [http://www.gahfusa.org/ German-American Heritage Foundation of the USA in Washington,DC]
* [http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/kade/adams/chap7.html Willi Paul Adams: "The German Americans." Chapter 7: "German or English"]
* [http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/zwiebelfisch/0,1518,306711,00.html Bastian Sick: "German as the official language of the USA?"]
* [http://german.about.com/library/weekly/aa010820a.htm The Muhlenberg hoax] – Did German lose out to English by just one vote?
* [http://hiwwewiedriwwe.wordpress.com/ Hiwwe wie Driwwe] , a Pennsylvania German Newspaper.