Saturday, March 25
i found this on the internet in response to some question...
The base case I have in mind is the survival of Dutch in the Hudson Valley after the English took over in 1664. In various rural pockets as well as among well-to-do people of Dutch heritage, Dutch continued to be spoken for close to 300 years. (In the 1800s, Martin Van Buren and his wife spoke Dutch in the White House; Teddy Roosevelt learned some Dutch from his grandparents who spoke it at the dinner table; Sojourner Truth grew up on a New York farm speaking Dutch only until she was 12 years old; there is evidence of Dutch surviving in the NJ Ramapo hills into the 1920s and in the Catskills until after WWII). I'm trying to get at what cultural factors enabled this survival, but I'd also like to know how unusual it is. For example, languages like German, Polish and Italian seem to die out among immigrant families within a generation or two, despite plenty of critical mass in immigrant communities and the survival of many other cultural attributes among them.
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My great grandfather grew up in the hill country of rural texas (west of san antonio) and spoke only german until he was in his early teens. His grandfather had emigrated along with many other germans through Corpus Christi in 1880s. These were real "sack-up" guys fighting there way up from the coast through swarms of hostile mosquitos and Comanches to scratch out an existence in the rocky hills west of the coastal plains. Out of extended family of approximately 20 that landed on the Texas coast, only about 3 were alive 3 years later.
those same germans are responsible for making one of the best beers in the states, shiner bock!
God I love Shiner.
Celis White, too, but I think that's from the Texas Dutch community. My wife lives off that stuff.
Lone Star aint bad on a hot day with BBQ.
Hell, I could write a doctoral thesis on the under-appreciated beer swilling communities of Texas, Pennsylvania, South Africa, Kenya, and Tanzania.
the germans are responsible for the low brass and oompah bass lines of that nutty mexican music you hear...
true...
my great grandparents came from germany before ww2...
and we had always kaiser crowns on our xmas trees...
I live at the base of those NJ Ramapo Mountains. Don't get lost Mountain Biking up there.
Some of those Indians still have Dutch last names.
In fact, I think the Chief's name is Chief Van Dunk.
http://www.fws.gov/northeast/njfieldoffice/Native_American/NativeAmerican.htm
The endurance of Dutch vs. Polish, German, and Italian could be tied to an imbalance in racial stereotypes and prejudice against these different immigrant cultures over the years.
Graham
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