Assimilate or get the hell out?

[jhetley]

News reports another of the periodic spasms against multi-lingual culture -- in this case, against posting official signs in Spanish as well as in English.

Funny ancestral connection here.  My Mennonite ancestors came over from Germany around 1700.  I have, in a drawer downstairs, a New Testament printed in New York in the 1850s.  In German. 

I recall parental tales that my great-grandmother on that side never spoke a word of English.  She understood it, but would not speak it.  This would be in the 1880s or later.

I'm prepared to give Hispanics (Hmong, Sudanese, whatever) a few more generations to file off their rough edges and fit the mold.

Comments

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

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.