Kate Remlinger

[Liz Ronkin]

I recall that Hal Schiffman also discussed this fascinating history in his
language policy text:

Linguistic Culture and Language Policy. Harold Schiffman. New York:
Routledge, 1996. 351 pp.

Maggie

On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 12:24 PM, Jim Wilce <jim.wilce at nau.edu> wrote:

> 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.
>>
>>
>