German - Americans

At the student meeting, I was amazed by many of the new faces. Dietmar Doering enumerated the various activities in which students would be involved.

He turned his topic and was proudly telling about some of the German historical and notable personalities. Some of the Germans and their achievements are forgotten by the majority of German people.

Doering was continuing on Germans and German origin names around the world. Ethnic German minorities live in many countries in all six continents including the former Soviet Union, Poland, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Belgium, Italy, the United States, Latin America, Namibia, and Australia. These German minorities, through their ethno-cultural vitality, exhibit an exceptional level of variations.

Amongst them are small groups (such as those in Namibia) and many very large groups (such as the almost 1 million non-evacuated Germans in Russia and Kazakhstan or the near 500,000 Germans in Brazil), groups that have been greatly "folklorised" and almost completely linguistically assimilated (such as the Germans in the USA or Australia), and others, such as the true linguistic minorities (like the German minorities in Argentina and Brazil, in western Siberia or in Romania and Hungary); other groups, which are classified as religio-cultural groups rather than ethnic minorities, (such as the Eastern-Low German speaking Mennonites in Paraguay, Mexico, Belize or in the Altay region of Siberia) and the groups who maintain their status thanks to strong identification with their ethnicity and their religious sentiment (such as the groups in Upper Silesia, Poland or in South Jutland in Denmark).

Dietmar Doering was telling enthusiastically that Frankfurter, Hamburger and other famous fast food names were derived from German places and cities.

He was proud to speak of the well-to-do Americans of German ancestry. While he was telling, the students' faces took on a lively expression. They were talking to each other and nodding and exchanging notes silently among themselves.

Americans of German ancestry are the major European ethnic group in modern America.
As of a 2000 census, more than 45 million Americans claimed they had German ancestry but only 1.5 million of them spoke the language at that time.

German is the second most spoken language in the US states of North Dakota and South Dakota and the third in popular foreign language after Spanish and French in the US.

There are varieties of German dialects in the US. Texas German based in the Texas Hill Country in the vicinity of the town of Fredricksburg is a dying dialect. Hutterite communities speak Hutterite German, an Austro-Bavarian dialect in the US States of Washington, Montana, North and South Dakota and Minnesota and in the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

In Canada there are people of German ancestry throughout the country and especially in the west as well as in Ontario. There is a large and vibrant community in the city of Kitchener, Ontario.

The US state Kansas is having more Mennonites and Volga German communities.
There are German commnuities in Wisconsin and Indiana.

In the early twentieth century immigrants mainly settled in St. Louis, Chicago, New York, and Cincinnati.

The German immigrants after World War II came primarily to New York, Los Angeles and Chicago urban areas and to Florida.

Generally, German immigrant communities in the USA have lost their mother tongue more quickly than those who moved to South America, possibly for the German speakers the Germanic based English was easier to learn than the Latin based Portuguese or Spanish. The strong anti-German sentiment and attacks on German-speakers in the US before and after the major World Wars also contributed to change their mother tongue into English.

The teaching of the German language to latter-age students has given rise to a pidgin variant which combines the German language with the grammar and spelling rules of the English language in the US. This variant is often understandable by the English and the German speakers and is called American German and often referred to as Amerikanisch or Amerikanischdeutsch. However this is a pidgin and not a dialect.

German Americans in the Amana Colonies in the state of Iowa speak Amana German.

The Amish and other Pennsylvania Germans including Mennonites speak a dialect of German known as Pennsylvania Dutch also known Pennsylvania Deutsch (a West Central German variety). The eastern Pennsylvania is a remnant of what was once a much larger German-speaking area.