Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Language diversity in the USA
- 2 Language contact in the USA
- 3 Native American languages in the USA
- 4 Spanish in the USA
- 5 Chinese in the USA
- 6 Tagalog in the USA
- 7 French in the USA
- 8 Vietnamese in the USA
- 9 German in the USA
- 10 Korean in the USA
- 11 Russian in the USA
- 12 Italian in the USA
- 13 Arabic in the USA
- 14 Portuguese in the USA
- 15 Polish in the USA
- 16 Language policy in the USA
- Notes
- Media resources related to the top twelve non-English languages in the USA
- References
- Index
9 - German in the USA
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Language diversity in the USA
- 2 Language contact in the USA
- 3 Native American languages in the USA
- 4 Spanish in the USA
- 5 Chinese in the USA
- 6 Tagalog in the USA
- 7 French in the USA
- 8 Vietnamese in the USA
- 9 German in the USA
- 10 Korean in the USA
- 11 Russian in the USA
- 12 Italian in the USA
- 13 Arabic in the USA
- 14 Portuguese in the USA
- 15 Polish in the USA
- 16 Language policy in the USA
- Notes
- Media resources related to the top twelve non-English languages in the USA
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
German presence in the USA dates back to colonial times. In 1608, German craftsmen, mostly carpenters, helped create the first American settlement in Jamestown. In 1683, thirteen families of Mennonites and Quakers arrived in Pennsylvania and created Germantown, the first German settlement in the USA (Faust 1912, II: 7). Many of the immigrants during these early days came for religious reasons. They continued to settle in Pennsylvania, but also in New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina and mainly came from the western part of today's Germany. Later, they came for economic reasons or were political refugees. They all brought their faith, their belief in hard work, and, of course, their language.
Today, more than 400 years later, the USA has the largest concentration of German speakers outside of Europe. According to the 2007 American Community Survey conducted by the US Census Bureau, German is the sixth most commonly spoken non-English language in the USA (Table 1.1), though the number of US German speakers declined by 11 percent between the 1990 Census and the 2000 Census, and by a further 20 percent between 2000 and 2007. This chapter presents a brief historical overview of German ancestry and language, as well as some demographic and recent immigration information, followed by some thoughts about the future of the German language in the USA.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Language Diversity in the USA , pp. 146 - 163Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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