Before World War I, more than 6% of American schoolchildren received their primary education only in German. Although more than 49 million Americans claim they have German ancestors, according to the 2005 American Community Survey, more than 96% of them speak English at home[1] and in total only 1.38 million Americans speak German.[2] Today, German is the second most spoken language in two states: North Dakota and South Dakota.[2]
In the United States, German is third in popularity after Spanish and French in terms of the number of colleges and universities offering instruction in the language.[3]
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The Amish and other Pennsylvania Germans speak a dialect of German known as Pennsylvania German (also called Pennsylvania Dutch, where Dutch is a corruption of Deutsch), a remnant of what was once a much larger German-speaking area in eastern Pennsylvania. Most of the "Pennsylvania Dutch" originate from Switzerland, Alsace, or the Palatinate area of Germany.[4]
There is also a significant population of Amish and Old Order Mennonites located in rural areas of Elkhart County and LaGrange County, Indiana, who speak a similar dialect. A much smaller community of Pennsylvania Dutch-speaking Amish is found in Parke County, in western Indiana. Many English words have become mixed with this dialect and it is quite different from High German (Hochdeutsch), but quite similar to the dialect of the Palatinate region.
Usually, Pennsylvania Dutch (often just "Dutch" or "Deitsch") is spoken at home, but English is used when interacting with the general population. The Amish and Old Order Mennonites of northern Indiana often differentiate between themselves and the general population by referring to them, respectively, as the "Amish" and the "English", noting the difference in language. Pennsylvania "Dutch" is sometimes used in worship services, though this is more common among the Amish than the Mennonites. More mainstream (city) Mennonites may have a working knowledge of the language, but it is not frequently used in conversation or in worship services.
There is a dying dialect called Texas German based in the Texas Hill Country in the vicinity of the town of Fredericksburg.
Hutterite communities in the United States and Canada speak Hutterite German, an Austro-Bavarian dialect. Hutterite is spoken in the U.S. states of Washington, Montana, North and South Dakota, and Minnesota; and in the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
An urban legend, sometimes called the Muhlenberg legend after Frederick Muhlenberg, states that English only narrowly defeated German as the U.S. official language. In reality, the proposal involved a requirement that government documents be translated into German.[5][6] The United States has no statutory official language; English has been used on a de facto basis, owing to its status as the country's predominant language.
In Pennsylvania, where the state had a large German-American population, German was long allowed as the language of instruction in schools,[7] and state documents were available in German until 1950. As a result of anti-German sentiment during World War I, the fluency decreased from one generation to the next and only a small fraction of Pennsylvanians of German descent are fluent in the German language.
  | Bastian Sick: ''German as the official language of the USA?'' - German as the official language of the USA? - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten - Kultur |
| | Willi Paul Adams: ''The German Americans.'' Chapter 7: ''German or English'' - The German-Americans-Chapter Seven |
| | Hiwwe wie Driwwe - Deutsch-Pennsylvanisches Privatarchiv |
| | Did Hebrew almost become the official U.S. language? - The Straight Dope: Did Hebrew almost become the official U.S. language? |
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