<<I'd be curious to know just how prevalent German was. I realize that the government didn't keep track of these things as well back then, but is there any good information about it? In South Carolina there were a few German settlements in the colonial period. Signs of them remain in some place names and in the family names of a good many persons. The Germans were greatly outnumbered, though, and their language and culture practically disappeared (if I'm not mistaken, in the early 19th century). I suppose that in colonial Pennsylvania and later in the midwest the numbers were larger.>>
I would be interested in knowing the stats on that as well. I would guess it was at one point in the several millions nationwide of native speakers as well as bilingual second-generation speakers.
<<My own view is that the situation with Spanish speakers is somewhat different in several significant ways. Large areas of the country were once governed by Spain itself, and many persons there still speak Spanish (or, more typically, Spanglish).>>
That's an interesting period in history. Last year I actually took two classes ("History of San Diego" and "History of Los Angeles") which dealt heavily with that, at least at related to California. While these were indeed great swaths of land that were once "inhabited" by Spain, they were very sparsely populated, even considering native populations, whose allegiance to Spain, and later, Mexico, was quite dubious (yours would be too if the rulers of "your" country routinely committed shameful atrocities, considered you to be subhuman and provided no real incentive for you to identifiy with the larger state).
In 1800, the non-Indian population of California was 1,800 people. From what I learned I believe it was no higher than 4,000 by the time California became a US state in 1848. There were some natives that had survived to that point but few were Spanish speakers, and I doubt there was ever a significant amount of native Spanish speaking Indians by that point. Also, these 4,000 Californios, as the non-Indian Mexicans were known, either intermarried with Anglo Americans (or had already done so as there had been a pre-'48 Anglo presence) or moved down to Mexico in the years following the war ending in 1848. Interestingly, these Californios did not have a particularly strong allegiance to Mexico to begin with, principally because they were few and very far from Mexico City (think how far it is now and imagine how far it was without cars and planes) and were irritated at the lack of attention they received from Mexico's capital, as Mexico followed a highly centralized federalistic route in its early years. Historical sources show some Californios welcomed and even supported the US in the US-Mexican war, something I was surprised to learn.
Another thing to remember--California was only Mexican from 1820-1848. Before 1820 it was still under the Spanish crown (all 1,800 Californios and whatever they considered the natives to be). I would assume many of the things relevant to California at this time were also relevant to places that would become Arizona and New Mexico, except I wouldn't be surprised if they had even fewer non-Indians there (and thus, non-Spanish speakers at that point). So, it may be tempting to construct a strong Spanish-speaking history for this region but the truth is it was quite negligible even then, much less today.
<<If I'm not mistaken, both historically and currently Spanish speakers have been less likely to learn other languages -- or, at least, master the accepted academic dialects -- than Germans were and especially some of the peoples from Scandinavia or some of the small European countries that are surrounded by speakers of other languages. Rather than going by the saying , "When in Rome do as the Romans do" many of them tend to see their connection with their historical Spanish roots in this country as a justification for not adapting to the larger national culture.Also there's far less pressure on current Spanish-speaking immigrants to assimilate than there was for Germans in the past. Multiculturalism is stressed now. There's a law that requires that ballots be printed in languages other than English once the percentage of persons who speak that language reaches a certain point. Spanish-speakers are an important political force, especially in some states. Government and private-sector preferences for persons who identify themselves as Hispanic or Latino give encouragement for them to preserve their separate identity. Were there ever state-instituted preferences for Germans in the United States? If there were, I doubt that it was on the same scale.>>
Well, historically it hasn't been comparatively long that we've had so many Spanish speakers in this country so it's hard to gauge but I know what you're saying. However, even with the emphasis on multiculturalism (whether official or noninstitutional) and the like the trend is that Spanish knowledge decreases as the generations go up. I've seen this in numbers and in personal experience. As I stated before, my hometown is 30% Hispanic, mostly Mexican or of Mexican descent, so there are plenty of native Spanish speakers. I've told this story before, so if anyone's heard it and is bored, you can skip this part. In my personal experience, such as with my Mexican-American friends I had thru school and particularly in high school, many of them were the first generation to either be born or to have spent most of their lives in the US. These people, my generation, often speak Spanish natively as they grew up speaking it. However, they're also unquestionably native speakers of English and in many cases, English dominant, something which surprised me once I realized it.
My personal experience in this that really sums it up is this: my senior year in high school (2001-2002) I took AP Spanish Literature and of the 30 students I was the only non-Hispanic and one of two nonnative speakers of Spanish (actually 3 if you include my teacher, who is 100% Mexican American, but who was actually not a native Spanish speaker herself but had learned it in school--she sounds like any regular gringa who learned Spanish in high school and college). Everyone was quite comptent in Spanish and we could read and discuess the intricacies of Borges, Unamuno, Matute, Garica Lorca (all examples of authors we read) yet, when we weren't actually talking about literature, the language of the class was usually English. These were kids who were great at Spanish (native in it!) but, as it turns out, whose English was more dominant--it was the language they chose to speak amongst themselves for most of the time, even tho every single person in that class understood Spanish perfectly. Outside of class, where they weren't supposed to be speaking Spanish as in the classroom, they overwhelmingly spoke English.
Now, the interesting part is that these kids were not completely assimilated or integrated or whatever you wanna say. Most (tho not all) lived in parts of town with a heavy Spanish-speaking populace and most of them hung out mostly with other Mexican-Americans and wore the clothes and styles identified with that group. Surely most of them spoke Spanish at home with family and relatives. However, despite what it looks like on paper they all preferred English, tho no one was making them speak either one. While my town has a lot of Spanish speakers and you can get certainly around without knowing English if necessary, the true fact is that English is still the dominant regional and national language and that's what's most useful for people in the end in the context of the US.
I also took a sociolinguistics class on this whole phenomenon, and we talked about bilingualism a lot, and researchers have found that rather predictably, the incidence rate of Spanish speaking skills goes down greatly with each successive generation. Thinking of my friends who are 3rd generation Mexican-Americans (and I know quite a few here), none of them knows Spanish natively, altho most of them study or did study it in school like everyone else here. Mostly it comes down to this--if your parents were born in the US, the chances you speak fluent Spanish diminish greatly, even if they are bilingual. My Spanish teacher I referred to earlier happened to be 2nd generation Mexican-American. Look at Los Angeles mayor Villaraigosa. He's Mexican-American (3rd generation I believe) but is not a native Spanish speaker and I unhesitatingly say my Spanish is much better than his (not because I'm being arrogant, but his Spanish just is elementary--intermediate at best...he fumbles thru sentences and has awkward pronunciations and grammar, such as you would expect from any nonnative speaker who hasn't studied it sufficiently). Yes, he reached out to Latinos in order to win the position as LA mayor but it certainly wasn't because of his Spanish-language appeal :)
<<I believe that there are reasons not to dismiss lightly the possibility that the United States will lose the advantages of having a common language. Once a large part of the population closely identifies itself with another language, it will be too late to try to preserve English as the common language (even unofficially). It may well be too late for that already. While I myself am interested in foreign languages, and would encourage immigrants to try to maintain their knowledge of their native languages -- along with English -- there are definite disadvantages to having a country in which large parts of the population can't be addressed by using a common language. Even if things don't deteriorate into violent confrontations, separatism, and civil war, there are other problems.
Take this forum, for instance, one in which most of the persons seem to have a special interest in languages and who typically understand many of them. Even introducing a few posts in a language besides English immediately causes divisions. Some persons don't understand the posts. They are left out of the discussion unless somebody takes the trouble to provide translations. (For some of the more commonly spoken languages, automatic translators may convey the gist of what was said.) Doing so takes up space and time. Having knowledge of more than one language is a great resource, but not being able to communicate in a common one is a obstacle. In my opinion many linguists -- because of their fondness for other languages themselves and talent in that area -- tend to underestimate it.>>
Well, based on the numbers, research, and my experience, I have very few worries about what will happen to English and the picture is generally clear for me what is happening to Spanish, and that is that it will be on the decline as successive generations go up. What keeps it going is a constant influx of Spanish-speaking individuals to the US. As I said before, I'm just describing what happens, not what I think would happen in an ideal world (in an ideal world I would also speak the Swedish of my great-grandarents who were from Sweden).
Probably the clincher in all this for me, in addition to all these other things I had learned or experienced myself, was reading some research that had shown that despite massive booms in immigration (from all over the world) in recent decades to the US, there are percentagewise fewer people who speak no English than during another huge boom--that of the later part of the 1800s and earlier 1900s. People tend to equate Spanish speakers in the US as exclusively Spanish speaking when in fact that's not the case. Even many recent immigrants eventually attain some level of English competency or become fluent. I've seen it happen over and over. Immigrants may not be native speakers but if you can communicate and understand English fine you do qualify as an English speaker. So, basically for me, it's not a linguistics-inspired thing to overlook or underestimate the situation in the US, but it's in fact my linguistics background (also influenced by the history classes I took) coupled with my own personal real life and anecdotal experience that has convinced me that Spanish is still not that great of an exception in the overall scheme of things in US language history. I think it's the other way around. Many people tend to take these things out of perspective and don't bother to consult historical context or linguistic facts before coming to the conclusion that English is somehow being threatened when it's clearly the opposite that's happening. And that was just talking about Spanish speakers. I don't need to go on now about other groups such as my Asian friends (about half of everyone I know or possibly more is Asian--I go to a college whose largest ethnic group is Asian-Americans, near 50%, and also have Asian-American relatives) but you can probably take a guess at what the situation is there, too.
Anyway, thanks for your comments, Gjones2. I really do appreciate them. How's that for wordy? ;)
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