<html><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div>Does anyone know where this research has been published?</div><div><br></div><div>-Wayne<br><br>Sent from my iPod</div><div><br>On Oct 25, 2008, at 3:54 PM, "Harold Schiffman" <<a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com">haroldfs@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><div><span></span></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div class="gmail_quote">Forwarded From: <a href="mailto:LINGANTH@listserv.linguistlist.org"><a href="mailto:LINGANTH@listserv.linguistlist.org">LINGANTH@listserv.linguistlist.org</a></a><br><br><br>---------------------------<br><br>Study debunks myth that early immigrants quickly learned English<br>
<br><a href="http://www.madison.com/tct/news/310204" target="_blank"><a href="http://www.madison.com/tct/news/310204">http://www.madison.com/tct/news/310204</a></a><br><br>The Capital Times — 10/18/2008 3:37 pm<br><br>Joseph Salmons has always been struck by a frequent argument in<br>
letters to the editor, national debates and in just plain old<br>conversations:<br><br>"My great, great grandparents came to America and quickly learned<br>English to survive. Why can't today's immigrants do the same?"<br>
<br>With "English-only" movements cropping up and debate growing about how<br>quickly new Spanish-speaking immigrants should learn English, the<br>University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of German decided the issue<br>
was important enough to look more deeply into the past.<br><br>Salmons and recent UW-Madison German Ph.D. graduate Miranda Wilkerson<br>delved into census data, newspapers, books, court records and other<br>materials to help document the linguistic experience of German<br>
immigrants in Wisconsin from 1839 to the 1930s. Their paper appears in<br>the current issue of the journal American Speech.<br><br>Focusing on German immigrants was a logical choice, Salmons said,<br>since they represented the biggest immigration wave to Wisconsin in<br>
the mid-1800s, "and they really fit this classic view of the 'good old<br>immigrants' of the 19th century."<br><br>What Salmons and Wilkerson found was a remarkable reversal of<br>conventional wisdom: Not only did many early immigrants not feel<br>
compelled out of practicality to learn English quickly upon arriving<br>in America, they appeared to live and thrive for decades while<br>speaking exclusively German.<br><br>In many of the original German settlements in the mid-1800s from<br>
southeastern Wisconsin to Lake Winnebago and the Fox Valley, the<br>researchers found that German remained the primary language of<br>commerce, education and religion well into the early 20th century.<br>Some second- and even third-generation German immigrants who were born<br>
in Wisconsin still spoke only German as adults.<br><br>"These folks were committed Americans," said Salmons. "They<br>participated in politics, in the economy, and were leaders in their<br>churches and their schools. They just happened not to conduct much of<br>
their life in English."<br><br>One of the richest sources for the study came from the 1910 U.S.<br>Census, which is digitized and available through the Wisconsin<br>Historical Society. Wilkerson analyzed self-reports on the languages<br>
adults spoke in areas of heavy German settlement, which included nine<br>townships in seven counties in southeastern and central Wisconsin.<br><br>Examples include Hustisford in Dodge County; Hamburg in Marathon<br>County; Kiel in Manitowoc County; Germantown in Washington County; and<br>
Belgium in Ozaukee County.<br><br>The researchers found that in 1910, there were still robust<br>populations of German-only speakers in those communities. The census<br>identified 24 percent German-only speakers in Hustisford, 22 percent<br>
in Schleswig (Manitowoc County), 21 percent in Hamburg and 18 percent<br>in Kiel.<br><br>These numbers did not only represent first-generation immigrants, but<br>included many born in the United States. Of the self-reported<br>
German-only speakers in the census, 43 percent from Germantown were<br>born in the United States, followed by 36 percent in Schleswig, 35<br>percent in Hustisford and 34 percent in Brothertown (Calumet County).<br><br>"What this means for the learning (or non-learning) of English here is<br>
telling: after 50 or more years of living in the United States, many<br>speakers in some communities remained monolingual," the authors wrote.<br>"This finding provides striking counterevidence to the claim that<br>
early immigrants learned English quickly."<br><br>Salmons pointed to other straightforward evidence of how viable the<br>German language remained in Wisconsin. Through state history, there<br>were more than 500 German-language newspapers published in Wisconsin.<br>
Those small-town papers often consolidated into larger-circulation<br>papers in the 20th century and remained commercially available into<br>the 1940s.<br><br>They also found, surprisingly, that people in contact with the Germans<br>
learned to speak German as well. In Ozaukee County, for instance,<br>there was evidence that Irish families who lived scattered among<br>Germans could speak German.<br><br>Another finding was that German-only speakers found work as teachers,<br>
clergymen, merchants, blacksmiths, tailors and surveyors, in addition<br>to farmers and laborers.<br><br>"The key issue seemed to be whether they had a big enough<br>German-speaking community, where they had a critical mass for people<br>
to be comfortable being monolingual," Salmons said. "There was no huge<br>pressure to change in those communities."<br><br>According to Salmons, the study suggests that conventional wisdom may<br>actually have it backwards -- while early immigrants didn't<br>
necessarily need English to succeed and responded slowly, modern<br>immigrants recognize it as a ticket to success and are learning<br>English in faster than was done in the olden days.</div>
<div class="gmail_quote"><br>=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br>Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br>Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com"><a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com">haroldfs@gmail.com</a></a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/"><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a></a> <br>
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