wag

[David Bergdahl]

Dan Goodman wrote:

"My great-grandmother came to the US right after WW I, speaking three
living languages (and perhaps Hebrew).  She never learned English; she
lived in a NYC neighborhood where everyone spoke Yiddish.  My
great-grandfather had to learn English; he owned a newsstand, and he had
to communicate with customers.

It seems likely to me that English-speaking men might similarly have to
learn a more generally-used dialect of English, while women in the same
group might not.  (I'm not a linguist, but I suspect that there's been
at least one study of this.)"

My first wife's parents came here from Bavaria after WW1 and their
experience was exactly the opposite.  Both started as house servants ("in
service" they used to say) and later he worked as a machinist and she a
seamstress for Jay Thorpe, then a fashionable 57th St dressmaker.  His
English was rougher and less assimilated than hers, because of the work
environment where she got to talk with the multinational seamstresses and
occasionally the upscale clientele while he could continue to use German or
hadn't much practice talking with Americans.  I think it's not gender but
the type of work one does that is the important variable.