Immigrant Languages in the United States – Disappearing or Enduring?

Javier López Seoane and Maike Rocker

The metaphor of a “big melting pot” is often used to describe U.S. culture, and the roots of people living in the United States today can be traced to virtually every corner of the world. Many Americans consider their cultural heritage to be an important part of their identity. In this research summary, we focus on a key aspect of that heritage: language. A lot of immigrant communities completely transition from their home country’s language to English at some point, but others maintain their home language for centuries. We will share what language scientists have learned about why some communities stop using their home country languages, while others maintain this aspect of their cultural heritage after decades or even centuries in the United States. We’ll also talk about how the many languages that have been brought to the United States have found their way into American English, becoming a part of what it means to ‘speak American’.

The stages of language shift

While many immigrant communities adapt fairly quickly to the use of English in their daily lives, the shift does not happen overnight. Scholars have suggested four stages of language adaptation in immigrant communities.¹ In the first stage, new immigrants may use English mostly at work or in official settings, but they still speak their mother tongue in other settings, such as with the family or in the community. In the second stage, immigrants speak English with greater fluency and begin using it in more contexts, sometimes alternating between English and the mother tongue. These initial stages are associated with first generation immigrants. In the third stage, an immigrant community has its largest number of bilinguals: English and the mother language are used in many different areas, and both languages are taught to children. In the final stage, English is the main language for most people in the community, and the mother tongue is only spoken on rare occasions, with close friends or family. This stage is often characteristic of second-generation immigrants.

Reasons for shifting to English

Communities have practical reasons for transitioning to English so quickly: It allows them to fit in with the larger society, and to have better access to jobs and educational opportunities. But the transition often leads to a loss of opportunities to use the mother tongue. When this happens, a process called language attrition, in which people lose proficiency in their native language, may occur. When using their mother tongue, speakers undergoing attrition may have problems remembering words and producing sounds like a native speaker, and they may use grammatical structures that could be perceived as ‘incorrect’.² These speakers typically do not teach their mother tongue to their children, so the next generation often grows up speaking only English. In situations like this, once the shift to English is complete, the mother tongue disappears from the community when the last bilingual speakers pass away.

Keeping the mother tongue alive

While many groups in the United States today have completed the shift to English, there are a number of groups that have been able to maintain their immigrant language for much longer. One particularly interesting example of this is German immigrants in Wisconsin. This group arrived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and continued speaking only German. Remarkably, some second- or third- generation descendants of the original immigrants still spoke only German as adults.³ And the German speakers of Wisconsin are not alone in preserving their mother tongue: according to the 2010 Census, of the 1.1 million people who speak German at home, only 39 percent are foreign-born.

Communities that manage to keep their mother tongue alive over long periods have built what linguists call language islands.⁴ Other examples of language islands include Chinese- and Spanish- speaking communities in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, among other urban areas. But how do people manage to preserve their languages for so long? One way this can happen is due to geography: rural communities, or communities that are more isolated from the broader English-speaking society, can often become language islands. People in these communities tend to be close-knit and marry within the group, which makes them more likely to keep their language for longer.⁵ There are also cultural reasons: People may wish to preserve their language because it forms an important part of their identity, or serves an important role in their religious beliefs and practices. Reasons such as this have led to language islands for Spanish speakers in Miami, Yiddish speakers in New York, or German-speaking Pennsylvania Dutch communities right here in central Pennsylvania.⁶ And when mother tongue-speaking communities have control over local institutions such as schools, churches, and newspapers, the use of the mother tongue in these contexts has been shown to foster language maintenance.⁷

Are you coming with? Immigrant language influence on English

In addition to bringing their languages to the United States, immigrant groups may also influence the English spoken around them. This is seen most clearly in the lexicon, or the words that we use to describe things. Some common examples are bagel, lox (cured salmon), and klutz (a clumsy person) which are all of Yiddish origin, and burrito, canyon, and cargo from Spanish. Interestingly, while these words became a part of the English vocabulary through interaction between different communities, speakers today can know these words without ever having spoken to a Yiddish or a Spanish speaker!⁸

Moving beyond words, there are also many situations of language contact, where two linguistic systems interact in often very interesting ways. This applies to communities but also to individuals: languages are in contact within a single bilingual speaker’s mind!⁹ In bilingual communities, language contact can actually give rise to new structures that become the community norm. The phrase Are you coming with?, which is often used in place of Are you coming with me?, is an example of this: It is a direct translation of the German phrase Kommst du mit? And just like what happens with words, the phrase can be used even by speakers who have never come into contact with German-speaking communities.¹⁰

A multilingual future

According to the 2018 Census, there are 67.3 million people in the United States who speak a language other than English at home. This works out to about 20 percent of the population, which is a lot! Quite interestingly, nearly half of these speakers were born right here in the United States. This means that the Unites States is filled with vibrant and strong communities like the Pennsylvania Dutch speakers and the Spanish speakers of Miami, who continue to use their mother tongue alongside English. And the numbers continue to grow in this direction, suggesting a future for the United States that is even more rich with linguistic diversity than it is today.

References

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2. Schmid, M. (2002). First language attrition, use, and maintenance. The case of German jews in anglophone countries. John Benjamins.
3. Wilkerson, M. E. & Salmons, J. (2008). “GOOD Old Immigrants of Yesteryear,” Who Didn’t Learn English: Germans in Wisconsin. American Speech, 83, (3): 259-283.
4. Putnam, M. T. (2011). Studies on German-language islands (Vol. 123). John Benjamins.
5. Louden, M. & Page, R. (2005). Stable bilingualism and phonological (non) convergence in Pennsylvania German. In ISB4: Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism. Cascadilla, 1384-1392.
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7. Salmons, J. (2005). The role of community and regional structure in language shift. In L. Hönnighausen, M. Frey, J. Peacock, & N. Steiner (Eds.), Regionalism in the Age of Globalism: Volume 1: Concepts of regionalism. Madison: Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, 129-138.
8. Matras, Y. (2020). Language contact . Cambridge University Press.
9. Weinreich, U. (1968). Languages in contact. Findings and problems. Mouton de Gruyter.
10. Putnam, M. T. & Salmons, J. (2015). Multilingualism in the Midwest: How German has shaped (and still shapes) the Midwest. Middle West Review, 1(2), 29-52.