[Norm MacDonald] Or so the Germans would have us believe! [/Norm MacDonald]
Hynagogic Jerk writes:
> I would assume that there are more Americans of English ancestry than
> Americans of German ancestry.
Every survey that I’ve seen has said that there are more Americans of German ancestry than those of Irish ancestry, and more Americans of Irish ancestry than those of English ancestry. Do you have any statistics that say otherwise?
No, I have no statistics that say otherwise, but see kenobi 65’s response. And even if multiple responses are allowed, I’d imagine that Americans would mostly mention their “most interesting” or more standout ethnic background, even if it’s only a minor part of their ethnic mixture. See how many black people in the US are black despite only having a minority of their ethnic heritage be African. English people have been in the US in large numbers for a lot longer than German people, so I’d assume they’re the ones who make the bulk of the American genetic background.
Curiously the number of those identifying as English-American has nearly halved since the 1980 census. From 49 million to 27 million in 2009.
My father’s parents came over from East Galway about the turn of the century (not the most recent one). Census records indicate they knew English & Irish but my father knew only English. (I think–he died when I was quite young & we were brought up by my mother’s people down in Texas.)
The Handbook of Texas has quite a bit to say about the numerous & influential German Texans. The World Wars & tapering off of immigration contributed to the loss of the German language.
But there are still Oktoberfests here. And the music played by the German & other Central European immigrants influenced Tejano music.
The Katzenjammer Kids still have German accents.
Apparently they were temporarily de-Germanized during WWI, though.
Totally agreeing here. One of the big family legends is, “From here on, we all speak English,” dating from WWI. From what I’ve been told, the prejudice was horrible then, and WWII hostility paled by comparison. The last remnants of German culture passed down were foods. I had to learn German in school.
Which is a reason to distrust “surveys” as they serve no scientific purpose.
My Grandfather grew up speaking German at home. Then when he was around 5, which I guess was close to the WWI anti-german hysteria, or possibly just after, they decided they’d speak english at home as well as outside the home. He never had an accent, but he’d sometimes use german words for things–he’d always say “kaffeekuchen” instead of coffeecake, and so on.
Hynogogic Jerk writes:
> English people have been in the US in large numbers for a lot longer than
> German people, so I’d assume they’re the ones who make the bulk of the
> American genetic background.
Well, no. German immigration to (what’s now) the U.S. started in the early 1600’s. There were a whole lot of such immigrants between 1680 and 1770. So German people have been coming to the U.S. nearly as long as English people, and there have presumably been more German immigrants than English ones:
Interestingly, there’s a list of the 25 towns in the U.S. with the highest proportion of people with German ancestry. A lot of them are near where I grew up in Ohio, I notice. There’s also a list of the proportion of people with German ancestry for each state. You can see that there are still a lot of states in the middle of the U.S. with a very high percentage (but not a majority) of German-Americans.
I suppose one advantage was that germans looked like regular white people; so they were less likely to be ghetto-ized and discriminated against like some of the other dang furriners who looked funny or dressed funny or worshipped funny. That probably aided in assimilation. I worked with a fellow once who had a strong german accent. His take on assimilation was to point out he was “a member of an audible minority.”
I had heard in Canada that in a lot of high schools German was one of the language options up until WWII.
What the freak? We were here first. :smack: You are the immigrants. 
My great-grandfather, 2nd generation German-American, pastored to Missouri Synod congregations in southwest Iowa. As late as the 1940s, my dad remembers, my ggf would preach for an hour in English and an hour in German every Sunday…and play a violin solo in between.
Nitpick: I don’t know how accurate such estimates can be, but if the Scotch-Irish are excluded from Irish, might Irish not fall below English? Didn’t Scotch-Irish in America exceed Catholic Irish before the Great Famine?
Wasnt the hostility to German already there before WW1? I remember something about making English the official language of the US at the end of the XIXth century for fear that German would prevail over English.
As per the stats on wikipedia even if you exclude the self-identified Scots-Irish, Irish Americans are still a bigger self-identified group than English Americans.
But presumably a lot of Americans who put down just “American” as their ethnicity are of old English-American and Scots-Irish stock.
In the US German is a standard language offered in high school. The “normal” modern languages for a high school to offer are Spanish, French, and German. Other languages might be offered depending on what teachers are available and/or what is popular in the area. In NJ, for example, you might find Italian offered (very high number of people with Italian ancestry there).
Why would you presume that, given that we were English colonies for over 170 years? I suspect self-reporting is pretty useless in establishing ancestry. For one thing, as noted by other posters, English ancestry is less “interesting,” and people are apt to chose an ancestry that is more romantic or interesting, even if it comprises a minority of their heritage. For another thing, English ancestry is more likely to be lost in antiquity, since the English have been here so long. People are often simply not aware of their English ancestors, whereas they may be aware of ancestors from other nations who arrived more recently.
Yes, and the fact that the Scotch-Irish arrived earlier than the Catholics makes it more likely they would identify as just “American.” And, also according to Wikipedia (and as I should have clarified in earlier post 
), some Scots-Irish may have ended up identifying selves as “Irish.”
Teddy Roosevelt was impressed with the Scotch-Irish leading the way Westward in the 18th century. My own pursuit of genealogy led to an appreciation of this: my Presbyterian ancestors crossed the Appalachian Mountains, breeding like rabbits, and rafted down the Ohio River.
(On a side note, “Scots-Irish” seems more correct than “Scotch-Irish” – Scotch being an adjective for whiskey, not people – but the latter form seems standard in America.)
Does anyone think that English is easier to pick up for German speakers than other languages might be?
I think the two wars against Germany were a big factor. There’s also going to be some discrepancy between the concept of German-American and the actual country of origin and language spoken. Germany as a country is a modern construct that encompasses only a part of the German speaking region of Europe, and there are the various dialects, and the broader Germanic languages.
I’ll also note that everyone on earth speaks and understands some English. If they seem not to, you just have to shout and gesticulate until they stop feigning ignorance 