Dear Americans,
one of the questions of this list was, why German is no longer spoken in the
US, though millions of Germans emigrated in the past. There are some
reasons, but first of all seems to be, that Germans are very easy to
integrate. And the cultural differences were small. They are all christians
as the majority in our country. I think, you have never had integration
problems with Germans, contrary to other national groups emigrated in the
US.
Comparing with Germany, we had and have also immigration. Between 1870 and
1920 a lot of polish people moved to the Ruhrgebiet, an industrial area in
West Germany. We had never problems with these polish people. My friend is
the son of such a Polish family. His parents were able to speak Polish and
some German, but he cannot speak any word Polish. He speaks nothing but
German and only his name remember that he has polish roots. And this is the
same in the US. And, this is good! On the other hand I can report to you of
the Turkish people that are overwhelming Germany today. These people like it
to live in groups. They speak their Turkish language, have islamic Moschees
and are very often not willing, to do anything for integration. When they
visit an office for getting state documents etc. they insist on getting a
translator. A school teacher told me, that he had big problems with the
Turkish children, cause they are not able to speak German. So he contacted
the parents of the children that they should try to learn them German. The
answer was: There are thirty children speaking Turkish and only one teacher
speaking German. In this case it would be better when the teacher would
learn Turkish. I think, this cannot happen in the US, cause you have much
stronger laws as we in Germany. The reason to tell you this story is to show
you, what problems could arise if a group of people is not willing for
integration.
Another reason why German is not spoken in the US. We have had two world
wars, the second was a criminal one (may be, all wars are criminal, but the
second was definitely started by Nazi-Germany). Not to forget the killing of
millions of jews in the German concentration camps. I understand very well,
when the Germans, formerly emigrated to America, shamed. And even in the
time of the first war, it was not good to be a German in the US. I can
understand that they don't use their mother language.
By the way. German and English languages have the same roots. Of course,
both are rather different today and the high German, which is used
frequently today, is more away from these common roots as the low German,
which was only spoken in north Germany. The Bavarians have quite different
dialects. The English language was strongly influenced by the Romanic
(French) language, when England was occupied by William the Conquerer 1066.
This is the reason why you have very often two words for the same thing,
e.g. ripe (German-Saxon) and mature (Romanic). This word ripe is also used
with the same meaning in low German, but not in high German, where it is
"reif".
This shouldn`t be a scientific course about languages but it may help to
understand some things.
Happy Christmas with some German songs (the melody of "My Maryland" is the
German christmas song "O Tannenbaum!)
Bernd Goertz
(To add some genealogical items: My name is frequently used in the States.
Very often with some modifications, e.g. Gore. You cannot pronounce the
German "oe" (same to the letter �). So I had problems on an US-airport to
understand my own name when it was pronounced by a stewardess.
