Lots of Amish maybe?

why, we all know a little German

I've lived in Ohio and Kentucky for all forty-two years of my life and I've never heard anyone speak German. :lol:

When I started Kindergarten, that was when the first big wave of refugees from Southeast Asia started arriving in Fort Worth. The parish my Catholic school was part of had the only Vietnamese priest in the diocese, so a lot of the refugees were enrolled in my school. My teacher was an old Irish nun. Out of the 18 kids in the class, only 6 spoke English. There were 5 Vietnamese kids, 4 Cambodian and 4 Laotian. Only one of that group spoke any English.

The teacher figured out an interesting way to get everyone to understand. The common language for the Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian kids was French. So she would tell us something in English, then the one kid the understood told the rest of them in French, then they would break up into their groups and speak in Laotian, Vietnamese, and Cambodian. Strange, but it worked well. And since this was Kindergarten, none of us realized this wasn't how things were normally done. :)

By the time we were in 1st grade, all of the kids spoke English, and one of them ended up being Salutatorian of our high school class.

I still love this kind of stuff. I do recall that at least here in the West, most applications for small business licenses are in only three languages: English, Spanish and Vietnamese.

I have first-hand experience with the Portuguese (Porgees) communities in coastal New England. In Minnesota, I knew about the Somali communities but not Hmongs.

And Tagalog is the native language of the Philippines.

Oy, missed the new page. Nevermind me.

Amish aren't the reason North Dakota has German as its #2 language. German is basically the default #2 because seemingly 90 percent of North Dakotans are descendants of Germans and Norwegians who immigrated 125 years ago, and no other ethnic group bothers with a state this frigid and boring. :|

Thought for a second that a Native American language could have taken 2nd, though.

(Seriously, I am surprised and delighted every time I see a black person.)

I grew up in the shadows of Fort Benning with a fair number of Koreans, Cambodians, and Vietnamese kids. That, combined with this...

...probably helps explain why I've vaguely wondered for the last 8 years since moving here why I've run into so few Asians in the Lowcountry. Looks like perhaps it's not that there are "so few" here, but that Georgia had an unusually high percentage.

You'd get shot speaking French in Redneckville NC and SC

:D

Mostly this, I think. Here's county-by-county concentrations of Asian-Americans. I figure that ought to go pretty closely with non-American Asian immigration patterns.

I think either I moved away from Georgia too long ago, or perhaps it was not as noticeable where I grew up (East Cobb) but I was actually quite surprised about Korean being listed.

I'm not. Have you ever been to Buford Highway or Gwinnett County?

Or as Neal Boortz dubbed Chamblee-Tucker Blvd "Chambodia" ;)

I think I first started seeing church signs in Korean in parts of DeKalb County somewhere in the late 80s.

:lol:

Well, East Cobb--especially when we grew up, but even today--ain't exactly what I'd call an accurate representation of the demographics of the state of Georgia. ;)

And yes, I was intimately familiar with the "Chambodia" area. From 1994 to 2001ish, my office was right off of Buford Highway, just inside the Perimeter. A friend from the Columbus days who volunteered with YL DeKalb throughout the 12 years I was there worked nearby all the years the office was there. His family had immigrated from South Korea when he was around 8 years old. Without his guidance and company, I would have skipped out on trying any of the good number of seriously-yummy authentic Asian hole-in-the-wall restaurants in the area out of fear of having no idea what to order and eating who-knows-what.

Nope! Didn't make it over to that part of town much! I pretty much was always either around Marietta, downtown Atlanta , north up Hwy 400 into Lake Lanier area or in the Western Suburbs (Six-flags, Carrollton, etc).

Even though I was born in Decatur, I probably didn't go back there for much anything after my doctor moved from there in 1982

I found it is still too soon to ask at a Cambodian restaurant if they serve "Pol Pot Pie"

East Cobb school districts seem to be among the better ones in the State (if that's where Pope is). Just about every person I know at GT, Emory, CDC (including many Asians) live either in East Cobb, Decatur, or Sandy Springs.

Makes sense. And keep in mind that my grade-school days were right on the heels of the ending of the Vietnam War, and we were still stationing a good number of soldiers in South Korea as well at that time. A fair number of kids I knew were the offspring of American soldiers bringing home Korean or Vietnamese brides. I don't know how that chart classifies "half-Asians," but I'm sure I knew more than my share of them in Columbus. ;)

Yeah Pope was built I think my senior year of highschool to take away some of the overcrowding from my highschool (Lassiter). My Senior year, we had 3600 students in the school only really built for like 2400 or so.

It's funny because I live in Decatur and spend most of my time in either Decatur, Buford Hwy, Poncy Highlands, East Midtown, Downtown, etc. I haven't been to Marietta in years, or up 400, or the western burbs (Heck, I don't go into the eastern burbs much - maybe Tucker and Lilburn every once in a blue moon - I live here for the city, not the burbs ;))

That actually might not be a bad way to describe the two primary types of residents (aside from the usual ITP vs OTP description):

Those who live in the area for the city & those who live in the area despite the city.

Yeah, it's kind of the reason I put it that way :D.

If I ever move to the States with my Korean wife and half-Korean kids, I suppose we should consider Georgia or Virginia instead of my native Louisiana. :D

This needs more love.

i question Italian being 3rd in pennsylvania...none of our cities have major "little italy" areas, and we have a whole region of the state called Pennsylvania Dutch (where they ironically speak german)

If it wasn't for English and Spanish, a lot of you would be speaking German!

South Philly may not be primarily Italian anymore, but not ALL of those Italians wound up in Jersey...

Dutch is shortened from Deutsch, which is so dumb.

it isnt shortened so much as it is a result of when the Amish and Mennonites got here and people asked them where they were from, they answered "Deutchland", which the brilliant Pennsylvanians took to mean they were Dutch.

No, whats dumb is calling yourself Dutch when you're from a place called The Netherlands.

Olde German is scary when you're the only "modern" on a bus full of the stinky Amish.

You say in German: "I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you."
It sounds like: "I'm going to cut you open and eat your entrails"

You say in French: "I'm going to cut you open and eat your entrails."
It sounds like: "I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you."

haha

I doubt that German is the next language for Wisconsin. It's gotta be Hmong.

edit: after searching, the most recent finding I could see for the language thing was 2000. There has been a 50% increase in hmong population since 2000. 1% of German speakers in 2000 and .6% were Hmong. With the 50% increase in population and likely miniscule for German, I gotta think it's close for Hmong to be over 1%. But I don't really give a dang. :)

Play around with this map perhaps (if you haven't already). Appears to include data from not only the 2000 Census but also the subsequent ACS where available through 2009. Looks like the difference in WI is a few counties with relatively tons of Hmong speakers but lots of counties recording zero. German meanwhile is fairly stable in with smaller numbers from one county the next & looks like it had speakers in virtually every county.
http://arcgis.mla.org/mla/default.aspx

Well the Dutch existed well before The Netherlands existed.

I think this is probably an urban legend. A few centuries ago, people in England used the word "Dutch" to refer to all Germanic people on mainland Europe and it gradually shifted to refer to just their closest trade rivals (The Netherlands), which happened in the 17th century.

Online Etymology Dictionary

The call us "English". Don't you watch Amish Mafia?

Plus, good luck getting your barn raised with that attitude!

I'm guessing the German is more frequent among the elderly. My 90 year old grandmother spoke German until she learned English when she went to school. She wasn't fresh off the boat from Germany, she is third or fourth generation American. A decent amount of people aged 70+ speak German.

Not sure where to put this, so here it is:

Same with french... 12 satts with French as 3rd language. I never expected that.

Why isn't New York Yiddish? That's the only other language I ever spoke in NYC.

I hope that dog had it's head blown off

Edit:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/we...k-9373043.html

I played that video for our two cats yesterday and explained my expectations for them.

It is jaw dropping to me that Spanish isn't the 2nd most spoken language in AZ.

Take a second look at the picture

If we're considering "Chinese" a language that encompasses all the dialects, I can't believe it's not ahead of Tagalog in CA - suspect there must be some kind of sampling bias going on (that the families that tend to speak Chinese at home don't answer these kinds of surveys or show up on census as much as third or fourth generation Filipino-Americans)

Also - German in a lot of those states is pretty damn surprising.

EDIT - just for the lack of Asian languages given the rate of immigration in the US over the past 5-10 years, I'd either guess this thing is old, or it's using some sort of funky methodology.