Do European-Americans speak the languages of their ancestors?

31 comments

1. yeah I speak English

2. Half my ancestors were English, so…

3. We do in my family as European-Americans. It’s our main language spoken at home. I think that’s true of most immigrants, from Europe or elsewhere.

4. WEll, if you mean from the country of origin of my ancestors, I would need to learn German, one of several Scandinavian languages, Scottish….probably some others I’m missing. So, no.

5. I don’t speak Gaelic, Norwegian, German, French, or Scots. I do speak English, but not the same dialect.

6. Most people wouldn’t identify as European -American.

   Much of our European immigration wave was long ago and we’ve spread across the nation. Few of the ethnic enclaves still exist. Little Italys, Germantowns, etc… are either dying off, gentrifying, or were destroyed during interstate construction of the 50s-70s.

7. Some do some don’t.

   My Italian side banned Italian from being spoken once they moved here. “We’re Americans now” my my great-grandparents used to say.

8. For the most part, no. Unless they travel there regularly usually only the first or second generation born in the US would learn their parent’s language. Spanish is the second most spoken language here, though most Spanish speakers have Latin American ancestry rather than direct Spanish ancestry. Still, it’s a big country, so there are tons of people who learn languages either because of their ancestry or just for fun.

9. In the old days mother and grandparents spoke the language from the old country much longer.

   There used to be generations that spoke German in the US.

   Now there’s TV, the internet, and people are way more mobile.

   Very few families have many solely foreign language speakers in their family they need to communicate with.

   Just not needed anymore.

10. First generation? Typically yes though my grandfather was born in Italy but after 60 years in the U.S. not really using Italian at all, he forgot a bunch of it.

    Second generation? Sometimes.

    Third generation and beyond? No usually not.

11. Absolutely not, we can barely speak proper English

12. Some do, but it’s more common just to know a few words (usually terms of endearment or related to food or cultural celebrations).

13. Unlikely unless the native country speaks English. Most European immigration happened far enough back that the native language has been forgotten by most people. Exceptions would include recent influxes of European immigrants from the former Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe.

14. Minus the English parts, no. Its mostly German and Portuguese. Scotch Irish and Scottish as well.

15. Some of my ancestors were English and Scottish, so yes. Some of my ancestors were not, so no.

16. Just English. My grandmother was ethnically 100% German with four immigrant grandparents. Her parents would speak to each other in English but refused to teach it to their children. She knew very little of German culture other than a few recipees, did not identify as German, and had little interest in the place when she would take trips to Europe later in her life.

17. For people who have been here for generations they are less likely to speak their ancestors language but if they do they often speak a unique dialect as it’s been isolated from the main language and in a different environment. The Amish speak Pensilvania Dutch and which is a German dialect unique to their closed community there are also accents that retained parts of pronunciation from regions in other countries from which people immigrated. Even with first generation speakers you can see that if they often speak in the manner of the time when their relatives immigrated and became removed from the modern language. For example my Grandfather spoke Greek as his parents came from Greece in the 1910s and his manner of speaking and phraseology and grammar remained frozen in that time period as he grew up here so if you could hear him speak Greek now it would sound like Greek from 100 years ago.

18. Some do, most don’t.

19. My mother spoke Italian to other Italians but never at home, save when she was yelling at me.

20. I’d think most people speak at least a few words. I live in a very German part of the country, and people will say Prost instead of Cheers or call their grandparents Oma and Opa. I don’t think most of them speak German on any real level though.

21. I have ancestors who came over on the Mayflower. They spoke English, as do I.

22. My ancestors came to the US 6 generations ago and stopped speaking German 5 generations ago.

23. Lol, like others have said, I speak English, so…

    I do know what you mean though. It varies a lot. *A lot* a lot.

    I have friends whose parents are European and don’t even speak the language. Actually, my SO’s father is a native German speaker, moved here when he was 8. After they moved he wasn’t allowed to speak German ever again in his house (to force him to learn English faster). He never bothered going back to Germany and while he can still speak it fluently, his vocabulary is that of an 8yo in 1956. So he doesn’t know any “adult words”/terminology or the German words for anything invented after 1956 or any modern slang. The American equivalent would be imagine going to talk to a grown adult older man today and he busts out talking like one of the kids on *Leave It to Beaver*. My SO doesn’t speak a word of German either, in school he took Spanish.

    The same applies to some of my friends whose parents are immigrants from non-European countries as well. For example my friend whose parents are South Korean always gets majorly confused looks because he doesn’t speak Korean at all, and when they go back to Korea to visit family people will say something to him in Korean and he’ll just be like “sorry bro, I don’t speak Korean like at all” in the thickest New York/Long Island American accent. However his sister took an interest in the language/culture and does speak it fluently.

    On the flipside I have friends whose families are Italian-Americans, have been here since their great-grandparents or even earlier, but they all learn Italian and go back to “the old country” to visit extended family every couple of years.

    Edit: I did forget there’s an odd exception. Almost all Amish people speak [“Pennsylvania Dutch”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Dutch_language), despite being quite a few generations removed, which is derived from a 19th century German dialect brought over during that immigration wave. But it’s really isolated to those specific communities.

24. For a couple of generations it’s common (like if your parents immigrated from a non-English speaking country). But the longer a family has been in the US, the greater the chances that they speak English only.

25. Yes. I speak English

26. I’m a 7th-8th generation Kentuckian-Virginian and I speak English pretty good so yeah

27. Well, I speak English, so yes.

    But also no becuase not all my ancestors came from England, and I don’t speak German or French or Arabic or who knows what else they may have spoken. But any born in the US in the last hundred years spoke exclusively English, and that covers all grandparents and great grandparents I’ve ever met.

28. Sometimes the third or even fourth generation will study the language in school to reconnect with their roots. I work in language education and a lot of the people in the US who study French, Italian, Polish or German are doing at least in part for heritage reasons. I know that some second generation people from European communities that came after the 1960s (Poles, Greeks, Portuguese, Ukrainians, Bosnians, Russians) will also go to language school at the insistence of their parents. Some of those governments (at least the Portuguese government), provide funding for those schools to teach the children of immigrants.

29. My most recent European ancestor came over from England in the early 1900s. Before that were ancestors from Germany (Prussia, etc.) in the mid-1800s. So I’d say “no” (except for English).

30. Nope- except for English Americans which the vast majority of European Americans are.

    If you go on r/23&me you’ll see most white Americans (even midwestern Americans) have large amounts (>60%) British heritage.

    Even many who claim heavy German/continental European heritage are mostly British.

31. My grandparents (on my mom’s side) immigrated from Switzerland and spoke German as their primary language.

    My mother (born in the US) grew up speaking German and could still carry on a conversation in German as an adult, but English was her primary language.

    I can speak a little bit of German and understand a bit more, but I struggle to carry on a conversation.

    My kids can’t speak German at all except a few words and phrases.