Kate Remlinger

[Jim Wilce]

Congratulations to linganth list member Kate Remlinger as well. She 
appears to be the first author of the American Speech article.

Best,

Jim

Kerim Friedman wrote:
> Thought this article might be useful for teaching.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Kerim
>
> ---------------------------
>
> Study debunks myth that early immigrants quickly learned English
>
> http://www.madison.com/tct/news/310204
>
> The Capital Times  —  10/18/2008 3:37 pm
>
> Joseph Salmons has always been struck by a frequent argument in
> letters to the editor, national debates and in just plain old
> conversations:
>
> "My great, great grandparents came to America and quickly learned
> English to survive. Why can't today's immigrants do the same?"
>
> With "English-only" movements cropping up and debate growing about how
> quickly new Spanish-speaking immigrants should learn English, the
> University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of German decided the issue
> was important enough to look more deeply into the past.
>
> 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 said,
> 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."
>
> What Salmons and Wilkerson found was a remarkable reversal of
> conventional wisdom: Not only did many early immigrants not feel
> compelled out of practicality to learn English quickly upon arriving
> in America, they appeared to live and thrive for decades while
> speaking exclusively German.
>
> In many of the original German settlements in the mid-1800s from
> southeastern Wisconsin to Lake Winnebago and the Fox Valley, the
> researchers found that German remained the primary language of
> commerce, education and religion well into the early 20th century.
> Some second- and even third-generation German immigrants who were born
> in Wisconsin still spoke only German as adults.
>
> "These folks were committed Americans," said Salmons. "They
> participated in politics, in the economy, and were leaders in their
> churches and their schools. They just happened not to conduct much of
> their life in English."
>
> One of the richest sources for the study came from the 1910 U.S.
> Census, which is digitized and available through the Wisconsin
> Historical Society. Wilkerson analyzed self-reports on the languages
> adults spoke in areas of heavy German settlement, which included nine
> townships in seven counties in southeastern and central Wisconsin.
>
> Examples include Hustisford in Dodge County; Hamburg in Marathon
> County; Kiel in Manitowoc County; Germantown in Washington County; and
> Belgium in Ozaukee County.
>
> The researchers found that in 1910, there were still robust
> populations of German-only speakers in those communities. The census
> identified 24 percent German-only speakers in Hustisford, 22 percent
> in Schleswig (Manitowoc County), 21 percent in Hamburg and 18 percent
> in Kiel.
>
> These numbers did not only represent first-generation immigrants, but
> included many born in the United States. Of the self-reported
> German-only speakers in the census, 43 percent from Germantown were
> born in the United States, followed by 36 percent in Schleswig, 35
> percent in Hustisford and 34 percent in Brothertown (Calumet County).
>
> "What this means for the learning (or non-learning) of English here is
> telling: after 50 or more years of living in the United States, many
> speakers in some communities remained monolingual," the authors wrote.
> "This finding provides striking counterevidence to the claim that
> early immigrants learned English quickly."
>
> Salmons pointed to other straightforward evidence of how viable the
> German language remained in Wisconsin. Through state history, there
> were more than 500 German-language newspapers published in Wisconsin.
> Those small-town papers often consolidated into larger-circulation
> papers in the 20th century and remained commercially available into
> the 1940s.
>
> They also found, surprisingly, that people in contact with the Germans
> learned to speak German as well. In Ozaukee County, for instance,
> there was evidence that Irish families who lived scattered among
> Germans could speak German.
>
> Another finding was that German-only speakers found work as teachers,
> clergymen, merchants, blacksmiths, tailors and surveyors, in addition
> to farmers and laborers.
>
> "The key issue seemed to be whether they had a big enough
> German-speaking community, where they had a critical mass for people
> to be comfortable being monolingual," Salmons said. "There was no huge
> pressure to change in those communities."
>
> According to Salmons, the study suggests that conventional wisdom may
> actually have it backwards -- while early immigrants didn't
> necessarily need English to succeed and responded slowly, modern
> immigrants recognize it as a ticket to success and are learning
> English in faster than was done in the olden days.
>