German dialect in Texas

[Joseph Salmons]

Of course there was a full-fledged foreign language culture thriving:
schools, papers, churches, everything, for German and lots of other
languages.

As for English only, a grad student here (Miranda Wilkerson) and I
have been looking at patterns of monolingualism among Germans in
Wisconsin. A fair number of second and THIRD generation Wisconsinites
couldn't yet speak any English in 1910 and there were communities
here at that time where close to half the population was reported as
monolingual German-speaking in the US Census. And this looks
consistent with other evidence we have. (Immigration to these
communities generally ended in the mid-19th c., with only a trickle
after that, in many places.) They didn't exactly get off the ship and
learn English that afternoon.I haven't looked at Texas data, but
imagine it's very similar in core Hill Country and eastern German
Belt communities.

The implications of this for contemporary debates about language and
immigration are probably pretty clear to this audience -- although
we're working hard to lay them out in a couple of papers.

Joe



On Nov 27, 2006, at 10:08 AM, Charles Doyle wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: German dialect in Texas
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> Well into the twentieth century, both German and Czech schools were
> operating in Texas (and in the Midwest too).  Those immigrant
> Americans were lucky the English-Only patrols didn't find them out!
>
> --Charlie
> _______________________________________________
>
> ---- Original message ----
>> Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 10:42:39 -0500
>> From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject: Re: German dialect in Texas
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>
>>
>> There's also a Texas Czech dialect. The actress, Sissy Spacek
>> ([SpaCEk] = "sparrow"), is probably the best-known member of that
>> community.
>>
>> -Wilson
>
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Director
Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures
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jsalmons at wisc.edu

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