My maternal great-grandmother was 40 when she came to the US. She spoke three languages: Yiddish, Ukrainian, Russian. She never learned more than a few words of English.
She didn't have to. She lived in a Yiddish-speaking neighborhood. Her husband, who owned a news stand, did have to learn English.
There are still people in the Twin Cities who have definite Scandinavian accents. I suspect most of them don't really know their ancestral languages -- they speak English as it was spoken in their neighborhoods.
Someone I used to work with told me that his grandfather didn't want his father to grow up speaking with a Scandinavian accent -- so the family moved to a non-Scandinavian neighborhood. As a result, the guy grew up speaking with a German accent.
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She didn't have to. She lived in a Yiddish-speaking neighborhood. Her husband, who owned a news stand, did have to learn English.
There are still people in the Twin Cities who have definite Scandinavian accents. I suspect most of them don't really know their ancestral languages -- they speak English as it was spoken in their neighborhoods.
Someone I used to work with told me that his grandfather didn't want his father to grow up speaking with a Scandinavian accent -- so the family moved to a non-Scandinavian neighborhood. As a result, the guy grew up speaking with a German accent.