The Fiction that Our Immigrant Ancestors Quickly Learned English
People who
are hostile to new U.S. immigrants often complain that immigrants cling to
their home country’s language and prefer to live with other immigrants. What
happened to the idea of the melting pot, these people gripe. Our
ancestors learned English right after they came to America, and quickly adopted
American culture, they claim. They chide today’s immigrants, demanding that
they learn to speak English! Now!
But did
our ancestors really embrace American culture and the English language right
after they landed in America? I’m sure there were a few people who did, but
most of our immigrant ancestors did the same things that modern immigrants do:
they took decades to truly learn English, and they preferred to live with other
people from their home country, speaking the Old Country language, eating Old
Country foods, and worshipping and reading newspapers in their native language.
Examples
abound from my own family. My father’s grandparents all immigrated from Norway,
and joined other Norwegian immigrants in Minnesota, forming a Norwegian
community in Brown County. Nearby was a German community, and a few miles away,
a Swedish community. Each community set up their own churches that used their
home country language. Newspapers were printed in their home country language. My
father, born in 1917, nearly fifty years after his Syverson grandparents
immigrated, spoke with a strong Norwegian accent. Why? Because his parents, who
had spent most of their lives in America, spoke Norwegian at home as well as
English.
An example
is this postcard from my great-uncle Siver Syverson addressed to his mother
Ragnhild. While my photo cut off the postal cancellation date, the company that
made the post card did not begin producing them until 1909. I am guessing Siver
travelled to Canada and sent the postcard sometime between 1912 and 1915. Siver
was born in the United States in 1882. His parents immigrated in 1868, so
Ragnhild had been in America for at least forty years by the time this postcard
was written. But her American-born son was still communicating with her in
Norwegian.
My
father’s family attended a nearby Lutheran church that continued to offer
services in Norwegian well into the 1900s. Here is the parish register for my
father’s 1917 baptism. The headings are in Norwegian. Most of the ministers
that served such churches came directly from Norway to serve American
congregations.
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My grandmother, Nora Hoffman, was the child of German immigrants, and attended a German Lutheran church in Mankato, Minnesota. Many of the forms they used, like wedding, baptism and confirmation certificates, were written in German. Hymns and services were conducted in German into the 20th century even though the German immigrants in the area had arrived at least thirty years earlier. Below you can see my grandmother’s 1900 baptism certificate in German.
No matter
how eager immigrants are to start new lives in America, they still take pride
in their home culture—and they should! I take pride in my Norwegian and German
roots, after all. And it is perfectly natural that immigrants would seek to
settle near other immigrants from their homeland—it offers a built-in support
system and a sense of community. Our ancestors did the same. In addition,
English is a complex and difficult language to master, so it is perfectly
natural that adults would take decades to become comfortable and fluent, often
being forced to rely on their children, who attended schools taught in English,
to act as translators.
We accept that
we need to examine historical records to trace our ancestors. We also need to
look at what historical records tell us about American immigration before we
make unfounded claims about our immigrant ancestors’ embrace of American culture
and language.
Sources:
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