Would it surprise you to learn that in 1890 election instructions in Minnesota were in nine language

[annm4peace]

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2010/08/19/english-only-not-minnesota-history

By Nekessa Opoti, TC Daily Planet
August 23, 2010

Did you know that there was a time when there were non-English speaking towns in Minnesota that had non-English schools and newspapers? Would it surprise you to learn that in 1890 election instructions in Minnesota were in nine languages? The current uproar over English-only ordinances like the one recently passed by the city of Lino Lakes largely ignores Minnesota's (and the nation's) immigrant history.

The sponsor of the Lino Lakes ordinance said it seeks to save translation costs. Those would be unknown future costs, as the city has not had to translate any of its documents to date. And the possible future savings would be limited, as the resolution accommodates translation services in matters of "public health, public safety, the promotion of tourism, the administration of justice and the handling of emergencies."

[wellst0nev0ter]

1. Well I Sure Learned Something Today

I've always been told that the Lino Lakes "English only" resolution was made to save the city money, but I didn't know that they never had to make a translation to date. And I let that slip by during a class debate :banghead:

[geardaddy]

2. No, it wouldn't surprise me at all. n/t

[jgraz]

3. Yeah, but those were nine languages spoken by *white* people

As usual, these people aren't pro-English, they're anti-brown-people.

[geardaddy]

4. Yup.

"Brown" languages aren't welcomed here by the right.

[dflprincess]

5. Didn't Rudy Perpich say he didn't learn English until he went to school? nt

[trotsky]

6. A guy in New Ulm told me that when he was a kid, there was no English spoken in town.

And he was only about 50-60 yrs old.

[dflprincess]

8. When did he tell you this?

I know people who grew up in New Ulm that are quite a bit past 60 (like closer to 80) and they speak no German and never did even though they are of German descent.

[trotsky]

9. It was just this past summer. He was speaking fluent German.

Odd.

[dflprincess]

10. There might have been more truth to what he said before WWI

but about that time a lot of German speakers, or at least those who were bilingual, stopped speaking the language at least in public. I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot of people in New Ulm who know German (it's bound to be offered in the schools) but I don't believe it's been the dominant language in town for a long, long, time.

New Ulm was settled in the 1850s and while it continued to attract German immigrants I would imagine that, like most immigrant groups, the children and certainly the grandchildren moved to English as their first language. If they were like my grandpa (who was Swedish) they didn't want to be mistaken as being from "the old country".

One of my great-grandmothers prefered to speak Swedish, she did okay with English but was very self conscious about her accent. My grandfather understood Swedish pretty well because of his mother but only taught a few words to my mother & her siblings. My grandmother could remember her grandparents speaking Irish (Gaelic) but only when they didn't want anyone to know what they were talking about and they never passed any of the language down. Though they had had the advantage of being able to use English fairly well when they got here so switching to English all the time wasn't that big a deal.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. My grandmother (born in 1899) told me that when she was growing up

a person could get along perfectly well in North Minneapolis with only German or Yiddish.

[happyslug]

11. And hiring people speaking different languages was a known anti-union tool

In Western Pa coal patches it was common to be a Pole or other Slavic speaker to work with an Italian or other non-slavic speaker in the same hole. The reason for this was simple, all they could do was what they could communicate by hand signals and the few English words they knew. It meant they could NOT talk to each other about the bosses.

In many immigrant groups retaining the home language was seen as a tool by employers to keep the employees separated, thus, while keeping their traditions, many members of such groups taught their children only English. English was the "lingua franca" of the USA and sooner or later the immigrants of the late 1800s and early 1900s learn that to speak any other language was NOT to their advantage. Language was one of many ways employers tried to keep workers divided, but it was also one of the most effective and for that reason most, but not all, immigrants learned to hate their own language and speak English only. It was NOT their language their hated, but how it was used against them by their employers and for this reason teaching their children their native tongue was not done after about 1940 and the founding of most Industrial labor unions.