ISTR reading an article in the '70s that said that Germanic tongues accounted for something like one third of the US population back then. Look at all the place names in the colonial states that have names that derive from German and plattdeutch words and names.
Mike
hey, according to that graph, 224.3% of americans have ancestors!
: )
I think you are adding up the numbers in millions that are on the right, not the percentages that are on the left side. Actually, adding up the percentages shows that 24% don't have ancestors. (:-)
On 9/23/2005 7:34 PM snipped-for-privacy@all.costs mumbled something about the following:
Where'd you learn to add? The numbers on the left are percentages, the numbers on the right are millions of people (224.3 million people sounds about right).
As a matter of fact Tom I have noticed people in general in America do talk a little funny..........mjh
I ken, just didn't think the percentages would have been that high.
Of course, the reason for English as the "official" language wasn't owing to popularity as much as the fact they were English colonies.
New York and much of the surrounding area was originally colonized by the Dutch. I guess you have to call them Germanic speaking, although the Hollanders I've known don't like to be listed too tightly as "Germanic" peoples. Travel up the Hudson River, up to Schenectady's Stockade area where many, maybe most, of the houses were built in the late 1600s. It's all Dutch, as is Fort Orange, AKA as Albany, NY. The Dutch names dominate.
But, as noted, that was in the seventeenth century. I hadn't realized the Germanic migration had been as extensive as it obviously has been, though I did know the German-American Bund was a big group and a minor problem during WWII. The Yorkville area of Manhattan back in the '60s was heavily Germanic, as were areas of both Schenectady and Albany...some of the best restaurants in the area were German back then. Probably all Arby's or the golden arches now, like too much of the rest of the country.
Put it all together, though, and it's still spread out a lot and not convincing until you realize that "Germanic" applies to several other languages, such as Dutch, which was the language of the original colonizers of much of the New World.
Poor Peter Minuet. He really got screwed, getting taken for 24 bucks for Manhattan, when the sellers didn't even own the joint.
I suppose a lot of my perception comes from all my experience in "the East" is from Virginia south where what wasn't English was heavily Scotch or Irish w/ some "Eyetalian".
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