Good Old Immigrants of Yesteryear,” Who Didn't Learn English
Germans in Wisconsin
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6031473 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Miranda E Wilkerson (University of Wisconsin–Madison), Joseph Salmons (0000-0003-3491-0443, University of Wisconsin–Madison) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 83 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 259-283 |
| Publication date | 2008-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Speech (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-1283 • E-ISSN: 1527-2133 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00031283-2008-020 |
| OpenAlex | W2168999597 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 26 |
| References cited | 7 |
One myth about language and immigration in North America is that nineteenth-century immigrants typically became bilingual almost immediately after arriving, yet little systematic data has been presented for this view. We present quantitative and qualitative evidence about Germans in Wisconsin, where, into the twentieth century, many immigrants and their descendants remained monolingual, decades after immigration had ceased. Even those who claimed to speak English often had limited command. Quantitative data from the 1910 Census, augmented by qualitative evidence from newspapers, court records, literary texts, and other sources, suggest that Germans of various socioeconomic backgrounds often lacked English language skills. German continued to be the primary language in numerous Wisconsin communities, and some second- and third-generation descendants of immigrants were still monolingual as adults. Understanding this history can help inform contemporary debates about language and immigration and help dismantle the myth that successful immigrant groups of yesterday owed their prosperity to an immediate, voluntary shift to English
Census · German · Immigration · Media studies · Mythology · Newspaper · Political science · Population · Prosperity · Sociology · Yesterday · Classics · Demography · Gender Studies · History · Law · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy · Names, Identity, and Discrimination Research
Foreign Accent
A Tale of Three Cities
Language Shift
Heritage languages and their speakers (Cambridge studies in linguistics 159)
Canadian heritage German across three generations
Varying social roles and networks on a family farm
Scandinavian-American English over time
Historical heritage language ego-documents
Letters home
Variation and stability of American Norwegian /r/ in contact
To hón ich imma insistieat
Introduction to the special issue on Heritage languages & Bilingualism
You Take the Low Road and I’ll Take the High Road
Heritage Languages in North America
Linguistic Marginalities
Finding home in Irish and German migrant letters
Maintaining a Language of Culture
From Bidialectal to Bilingual
Hypercorrection in Wisconsin High German
Revised Perceptions
A Comparative Perspective on Language Shift and Language Change
Language Contact and New Dialect Formation
Making Linguistics Matter
A swing vote from the ethnic backstage
Keeping the Farm in the Family Name
Integration and Identities
| Unique citing works | 26 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,53 |
| Citation span | 2009 - 2025 (17) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 26 |