German Americans

One of the many countries where German speakers have exerted a profound influence over the local culture is in the United States. German Americans constitute the largest self-reported ethnic group in the United States, constituting an astounding 17% of the total population, or about 49 million people. The largest populations of ethnic Germans in the U.S. can be found in Texas and California, although North Dakota and Wisconsin have the highest population of German Americans proportionally. In North and South Dakota, German is the second most spoken language, and there is even a widely circulated myth that German was at one time considered for the primary language of the entire country. Nevertheless, only 1.5 million people nationwide speak German, and it is only the third most popular language of study at universities and colleges behind Spanish and French.

German speaking communities exist all over the United States. One of the most widely known groups of German Americans is the Pennsylvania Dutch, who immigrated from Germany and Switzerland. They are known as the “Dutch” because of an American mispronunciation of the German word for German, “Deutsch.” Immigrants from these areas have also moved into Indiana, where they speak a similar dialect to the Pennsylvania Dutch. This new dialect is similar to the German spoken in the Palatinate region of Germany, and contains many English words that have been adopted into it. Members of these German speaking groups usually speak their unique dialect when interacting with one another, but switch to English when dealing with outsiders, referring to them as English. German Americans can also be found in Texas, where they created a dialect known as Texas German. This dialect is quickly disappearing from use, and is rarely spoken.

Their native language is a subject of profound contention in the history of German Americans. The Muhlenberg legend, a myth that German was edged out as the official language of the United States by only a narrow margin, while a testament to the prevalence of the German language in America, has no factuality. It is based on a proposal that government documents be translated into German as a secondary language. Although English is the common American vernacular, used on a de facto basis, the US has no official language on the law books. However, in Pennsylvania, many government documents were translated into German as late as 1850, and many schools offered instruction in German. Anti-German sentiment during the First World War decreased the prevalence of speaking German among the Pennsylvania Dutch. Today, only a small fraction of the Pennsylvania Dutch still speaks German.