This paper is an updated and expanded version of the final chapter, “The Dynamics of Language maintenance,” in German language maintenance: A handbook (Sherwood Park, 2004).

One of the most vexing issues in the analysis of the maintenance of Ger­man as a mother tongue and home language in Canada is the demon­strated readiness of some “Germans” [17] to abandon their linguistic heritage and the equally well demonstrated stubbornness of others in trying to retain it. Any attempt at explaining this curious phenomenon must resort to abstraction from individual cases and to generalization, a process which is fraught with the dangers of overgeneralization, the im­putation of motives, and the stereotyping of cultural and linguistic be­haviour. After all, it is clearly inappropriate to refer to “the Germans” in Canada as if they were a homogeneous ethnic, linguistic, or sociocultural group, adhering to and motivated by a common set of social values and beliefs (see Prokop and Bassler, 2004, pp. 6-9 for a discussion of the difficulties in defining ‘German’).

Keeping in mind this caution, the following discussion endeavours to identify possible factors contributing to varying rates of language maintenance. Some or all of these factors may act, or may have acted, individually or in concert with others to motivate the immigrants to retain or abandon their linguistic and sociocultural heritage. In some instances, statements can be made with confidence, especially where readily identifiable groups are concerned; in other cases, individual or family motives may have been the main de­terminers, outweighing the general pattern in importance. [18]

2.1 “Old” and “new ethnics”. The Canadian census has repeatedly addressed the differences in the features characterizing the immigrants (or their ancestors) who arrived in Canada before the Second World War – the “old ethnics” – and after the War – the “new ethnics”. [19] Criteria examined were, for instance, age, gender, schooling, fertility, occupational choice, religious denomination, and average income.

The “old ethnics” tended to have an occupation in agriculture and therefore were likely to live in the rural areas, while the new ethnics more often had marketable skills required in a more industrialized society and therefore chose to live in the urban, especially the metropolitan areas.

For example, as early as 1961 the Census of Canada reported a substantial difference between the places of residence chosen by the “old” and the “new” immigrants: 56% of the ethnic Germans who had immi­grated before 1946 (N=88,016) settled in the urban areas of Canada while as many as 84% of the those who arrived between 1946 and 1961 did so (N=199,119). [20] Among the German ethnic group, the “new ethnics” were particularly distinguished by bringing manufacturing skills along. [21]

1971 Census data show that the distinction has had a strong impact on language retention (see Table 3). Except for Dutch (the Dutch appear to be the group most likely to surrender their mother tongue [22]), the “new ethnics” used the same mother tongue and home language to a greater extent than the “old ethnics.” Almost 50% of the new ethnics in the German group used German as their home language while of those who had immigrated before World War II only some 26% employed German as the primary language of the home.

While there are, in fact, demographic differences of consequence between the two groups of immigrants, it might be argued that the variation in home language use is simply due to the fact that the new immigrants were simply more likely to have retained their home language for a while as their mother tongue than those ethnics who either had immigrated long before World War II or were even in the second generation.

Table 3 Mother tongue and home language used by “old” and “new ethnics”, for Canada, 1971 [23]

The factors governing the preservation of an ethnic language in Can­ada, especially after World War II, are quite well understood. Language maintenance or loss is a function of a number of social and personal vari­ables (among them age, residence in a rural or urban area, occupation, and rate of intermarriage). Another important factor is generational shift. It implies that the immigrant generation usually succeeds in maintaining an active competence in the mother tongue (although it may not be used as the language of communication any longer), while mem­bers of the second and certainly the third generation usually have little or no proficiency in the language of their ancestors. [24]

But why did “the Germans” retain their knowledge of German from gener­ation to generation in areas of Central and Eastern Europe where they were surrounded on all sides, for centuries, by speakers of other lan­guages? Why did so many of their sons and daughters acquire English readily and quickly after their immigration to Canada?

2.2 Factors affecting German language maintenance among the “old ethnics”

The following factors are possible contributors to differential rates of language maintenance in Canada between the 1880s and the 1940s: [25]

a. the extent of cultural, linguistic, and spiritual homogeneity of the group concerned;

b. the prestige value of the language and culture as perceived by the group itself and by outsiders;

c. the ideologically motivated strength of cultural, linguistic and spiri­tual traditions and values;

d. the strength of the in-group support network and the resulting group cohesion;

e. the extent of the desire to remain independent, autonomous, remote and aloof from the outside world;

f. the extent to which the group is permitted and able to conduct and control its own internal affairs regarding local government, the eco­nomic system, and educational and church affairs; this includes also the group’s own perceptions of its ability to do so;

g. the extent of voluntary identification with and acceptance of the so­cial and political values held by the outside group(s); and

h. the presence of settlement patterns encouraging in-group interaction over interaction with the outside world.

The “German” colonists in Russia had been lured there by the promises made by various rulers, in particular by Catherine the Great and Alexander I, and while patterns varied from region to region, [26] the immigrants settled in colonies which, into the late nineteenth cen­tury, remained relatively autonomous in the administration of local gov­ernment, education and the exercise of religion. Moreover, on the whole, they remained remote and aloof from their Slavic neighbours, and there was little contact even among the various German settlements there. [27] Some settlers may have harboured feelings of superiority for being “German” (an attitude which prevailed, with some, into the twentieth century [28]), for had not they and their ancestors been called in to help settle and colonize the land where others ostensibly had not been able to do so? The relative prosperity in villages and towns very likely reinforced the “Germans”’ pride in their language and culture. There probably were some who valued and treasured the German language as the lan­guage of Goethe and Schiller, the language of the “people of poets and thinkers.” [29] It may well be that this self-perception was respected and even reinforced by some officials and some members of the surrounding ethnic groups. At any rate, before the Russification in the late nineteenth century, German was indeed a language endowed with social, economic, and even political prestige. [30] Given the freedoms available to them, it would seem natural that the colonists would have tried to pass on their proud cultural and religious heritage in the churches, schools, and at home – particularly when German-language books and newspapers became more readily available and when more settlers had achieved more than a minimal education.

Originally, each community had had the freedom and the responsibil­ity to organize its own schools. Because the school was each community’s responsibility, its nature and quality depended on local attitudes and fi­nance, but for this reason, German also became the language of instruc­tion.

The schools were supervised by the churches, which for ideological reasons, sought to perpetuate the tradition of holding services in High German or the local dialect. After all, for most members of religious groups such as the Mennonites and Hutterites, German was also the language of their faith which they desired to defend at all cost. Because of the restricted extent of contact with the surrounding population, there was little need to switch to, say, Russian, to accommodate immigrants from other countries and the na­tive population. This need would change significantly upon emigration to Canada, where the churches had to fight the loss of the younger gener­ation to the anglophone culture and where they often thought that they had to minister to the spiritual needs of recent immigrants from other countries or the local population already present.

Among the “German” colonists in Eastern Europe there was thus a feeling – however tenuous – of linguistic and cultural communion based on common ethnic, cultural and linguistic roots in the parts of the “Germany” where they had resided before their emigration to the East. They often shared a com­mon spiritual bond to the exclusion of other religious beliefs, and they supported each other as members of a closely knit family would. They showed pride in their sociocultural heritage and were able to look back on a long tradition of success. They settled in villages which allowed fre­quent and reinforcing social, cultural, linguistic and religious contacts, and they lived in communities which were functionally complete and autonomous from the rest of the world. Until the 1870s, they enjoyed the freedom to arrange their own educational and religious affairs in their own language without outside interference. They remained aloof from or rejected the political structures outside their own communities; they did not at all identify with the system and the values which it repre­sented. Thus they remained intentionally remote from the surrounding population and from the worldliness of that society.

However, when the Russian state broke the promises made and interfered with the autonomy of the settle­ments, when the established religious and economic privileges began to erode, when the school lost its autonomy, when Russian became a com­pulsory subject, and when Russian became the sole language of instruc­tion with Russian supervisors of the curriculum, it would not have been surprising for the settlers to develop a “siege mentality” for the defence of what appeared to be, or was in fact threatened, rejecting the outside world and emphasizing their own internal group values and practices even more than had been the case before. [31] For some, the situation became un­bearable and they sought other lands where their former freedoms and privileges would continue to be available to them. Accordingly, thousands of Mennonites and Hutterites emigrated to the western United States and western Canada where they hoped to be able to continue their life in isolation.

But in the meantime those who stayed, wherever they were in Eastern Europe, did learn Russian in school (or the respective dominant language). [32] The state’s intimidation worked: the settlers came to avoid or at least hesitate to use German outside the home and the church and in dealing with the surrounding villagers and townspeople. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, outside the German-speaking enclaves, German ceased to be a prestige language.

Consequently, the situation facing the settlers upon their arrival in Canada may not have been totally unfamiliar: German surely was not a language with an intriguing, prestigious aura when the settlers came to western Canada, especially during and after the Great War. [33] Here, as well, pressure was exerted on them to abandon their sociocultural and linguistic heritage and to become “good Canadians,” and often English simply took the place of Russian or Polish as the official language which had to be learned.

The settlers enjoyed the freedom to use German in the home, with friends and neighbours, [34] and in the church, supported by church leaders who were convinced that in the absence of spiritual leadership and education in the native language, assimilation would have progressed much faster. [35] Many colonists formed close bonds with the members of their community and helped each other out. However, they were not as free to teach the German lan­guage in their schools as they might have wished. There were strict laws governing the use of languages other than English in the Prairie prov­inces, restricting the teaching of languages other than English to after-school hours and requiring the parents to pay for such instruction. Private German-language schools, because of the effects of animosities against Germans during and after World War I, were closed down altogether. When they were permitted to reopen, German was no longer the language in which instruction was given. [36]

Although emigration from Eastern and Central Europe tended to take place in groups of five to ten families, [37] sometimes emptying entire villages in the “old country,” there was more mixing of various linguistic, sociocultural and even religious backgrounds in the settlements in the Canadian West, less unbroken continuity with the past than had existed in Eastern Europe. As a result, there was greater linguistic and cultural heterogeneity inside and outside the ethnic group. Apart from the bloc settlements in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, the German-speaking settlers came from all parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire, from Germany itself and from Austria, who did not think of themselves as “Germans”. If they had been recent immigrants from Germany, their own political histories, their dialects, and their religions divided them and prevented them from achieving some sort of “Pan-German” identity. [38] True, many immigrants still tried to settle in ethnically and spiritually homogenous configura­tions, [39] but often they were scattered across the countryside on their homesteads, and although they may have lived only a few miles apart, the feeling of communion had lessened, as well as the group cohesion which had ex­isted in a village where everyone lived close by and drove out to work their strip of land, in the fashion of the traditional German village in “Germany.” True, German could and certainly was still spoken within the families and with the friends and relatives nearby, but one had to walk or drive to the centrally located church (often in the middle of nowhere, put there simply because it was more or less equidistant to the various homesteads of the faithful [40]) and to the nearest town for shopping. A knowledge of German would not have sufficed for buying and selling if the settlers around them were of Ukrainian, Swedish, or Dutch ethnic background. Thus English became the lingua franca for those who had to go out “into the world,” especially for the men, while the women re­mained at home, came “into town” only rarely, met speakers of English only rarely, and thus experienced much greater difficulty in learning English. [41] Therefore, the women became responsible for teaching the chil­dren German (they could not speak English very well themselves and often learned their English from the children when they went to school [42]), while the men tended to become bilingual to a greater extent. Eco­nomic success necessitated a greater openness to the world and, therefore, to the anglophone culture; English quite literally was required as the language of communication with the ethnically and linguistically heterogeneous outside world and served as the means for ed­ucational advancement. [43]

A factor which might have played a significant role in the Anglicization of immigrants of German ethnic origin is the possibility that they identified with and supported the political and social system in Can­ada, which appeared to be fairer to the “little man” than the autocratic and arbitrary regimes of the European East. [44] The positive evaluation of the social and political system would have caused a greater inclination to accept it for itself and the language in which the system functioned.

It may be concluded that those settlers who arrived by themselves or were accompanied only by their immediate family and sought admission into established groups, or who did not arrive in ideologically well-defined groups in Canada, were more prone to accept the anglophone culture and to abandon the German language because of the geographic, ethnic, social, cultural, and religious fragmentation of the group, because of the discontinuity with the past, and because of a greater heterogeneity within the “German” ethnic group and a greater heterogeneity outside it. Moreover, German was not a domi­nant or status language in western Canada, and in order to achieve eco­nomic success, English had to be accepted and acquired as the language of everyday life.

New social, cultural, and religious pressures towards Anglicization were added over the decades after the 1920s, increasing ur­banization, improving educational opportunities, a shift from farming to the trades, greater geographical and social mobility, greater seculariza­tion of life, and increasing acceptance of the importance of material wealth over traditional suspicions of the “corruptness of this world.” Later on came more efficient means of transportation from the farms to the towns and cities of the province, the building of highways and the inven­tion of the radio, all of which further decreased the real and perceived geographical isolation by facilitating access to the anglophone world and thus further broke down the remnants of group cohesion.

The fact that post-World War II immigration brought people to Canada who spoke High German and who equated the use of dialects with lack of education made the immigrant generation uncomfortable, [45] and thus they tended not to use their own dialect anymore except within their own dialect group be­cause they were ashamed of it; they tried to imitate a High German pro­nunciation where they could, or switched to English altogether. More or less covert anti-German sentiments held by some Canadians after the War caused many German immigrants to hide their heritage. Finally, the first Canadian-born generation wanted nothing to do with a language which made their parents sound different, foreign, and funny, and thus they readily switched to English.

What has been said above in general terms about ‘‘the Germans” in the “old country” was particularly true for certain closely knit religious groups who valued their spiritual independence and their remoteness from the material, physical world even more than others did, namely the Mennonites and the Hutterites.

In Russia, the Mennonites had been singularly intent on retaining their religious freedom, the freedom from military service, and the freedom to organize their own affairs, and they had vigorously resisted Tsarist at­tempts at intervention. They had not identified with the state nor had they given it fully the obedience and subservience which had been de­manded. They had remained remote from the outside world, had erected their own closely built villages, and had run their own internal affairs; and their strong ideological commitment to their religion had required a strict and reserved life style from the members of their community. Their group had had common cultural, social and linguistic roots and a long, proud tradition to look back on, and the feeling of intra-group cohesion was very strong. When the situation in Russia became intolerable for them, the Mennonites asserted their independence and sought, en masse, a country or countries which would accept them and would guarantee to preserve the rights and privileges previously enjoyed in Eastern Europe. Upon immigration to Manitoba, for example, they were determined to “remain separate from the materialism and godlessness which they asso­ciated with the larger prairie community,” [46] and they brought along their system of housing and farming arrangements, albeit adapted, at least for­mally, to the Canadian square survey system. Rather than living on indi­vidual homesteads as their neighbours did, they lived in villages, and it was the village government which decided on matters of land allocation, local government and school and church affairs. As the noted prairie historian Gerald Friesen observed, “with their own schools, churches, and agricul­tural systems, the villages seemed remote from the Canadian society that surrounded them.“ [47]

Clearly the Mennonites were able to resist the Anglicization and Canadianization of their community better than individual families and ideologically less strongly committed groups. This latter point is of great significance because the various factions within the Mennonite religious community have displayed differing attitudes towards schooling and worldliness and the need to maintain their linguistic heritage. It was shown by Prokop and Bassler (2004) that the conservative Mennonite groupings in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia have passionately defended their rights regarding their children’s education and their life style, and have rather fled to other countries than be overwhelmed by secular society. In the case of the Old Order Mennonites and Amish (see Appendix for details), Pennsylvania Dutch has been able to survive very well because in their communities English and Pennsylvania German have their own separate domains of use; there is absolutely no mixing of the two languages. As a matter of fact, the Old Order people are triglossic: Pennsylvania Dutch is only spoken and is the language of home and the community. English is read and written, and is only spoken when dealing with non-Pennsylvania Dutch-speaking outsiders. The Luther Bible version of High German – in very restricted functionality – is used only for church purposes. Each language has its own distinct function and no language appears to dominate over the other. Sociolinguists maintain that this type of “compartmentalization” is apparently necessary if languages are to survive alongside one another. [48]

The Hutterites have been able to preserve their original identity to an even greater degree than the mainstream Mennonites. They share a long common eth­nic, sociocultural, religious, and linguistic history, and they enjoy a strong in-group feeling. They live in village-like colonies and have a fierce ideological commitment to the preservation of their religious beliefs and their autonomy. They have remained remote from the outside world in spite of their economic success, which necessitates regular contacts with it. They have preserved their agricultural life style and have resisted ur­banization, secularization, and attempts at integration into society at large and into the “welfare state.” In short, they are just as fiercely inde­pendent and economically and politically autonomous as they had been before their emigration to the United States and Canada. [49] Even today, their own German dialect, which has remained virtually unchanged over the centuries, is the first language taught in the home, and “German school” is held before and after the “English” school which offers the public school curriculum. It is, therefore, not surprising that in those areas of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba where the Hutterites form a major part of the German-speaking population, the Canadian census has recorded the highest lan­guage maintenance rates for German, both as a mother tongue and as a home language.

Unfortunately, there is little direct evidence regarding the maintenance of the German language by immigrants who settled in the urban regions of Canada two generations ago, but it may be surmised that linguistic assimilation proceeded in a manner very similar to what could be observed with the German-speaking immigrants after World War II who tended to settle in Canada’s towns and cities: frequency of contact with the anglophone outside world, including the impact of the mass media, promoted the use of English by men as well as women. They were more likely to have anglophone friends than were heir rural counterparts; their children not wanting to appear “foreign” to their English-speaking classmates, they tried to learn English as quickly and correctly as possible and to avoid the use of German as much as possible. The opportunities and affairs of the English-speaking world impinged more strongly on the urban family than on a family living in relative isolation from the rest of the population.

[1] For present purposes, a “German” is someone who considers himself, or is considered by others, to be German. Among the criteria for referring to someone as being of German origin include having a connection with German culture, speaking the German language, or having ancestors who lived in Germany or an area which at that time was part of Germany or was otherwise considered German. In a broader sense, the term refers to all who learned German as their mother tongue. – For various attempts at defining “German,” see, for example, Manfred Richter, “Who are the German-Canadians?” in Peter Liddell (ed.), German-Canadian Studies: Criti­cal Approaches (Vancouver: CAUTG, 1983), pp. 42-48. In addition to dis­cussing the difficulties involved in interpreting census statistics, Richter reviewed various approaches to defining an ethnic group. Leo Driedger (“In Search of Cultural Identity Factors: A Comparison of Ethnic Students,” The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 12, 1975, 150-162) identified six cultural components in the definition of a cultural group, viz. language use, endogamy, choice of friends, religious denomination, parochial schools, and voluntary organizations. Alan B. Anderson and James S. Frideres (Ethnicity in Canada: Theoretical Perspectives, Toronto: Butter­worths, 1981, p. 40) maintained that cultural groups can be defined by eth­nic origin, ethnic-oriented religion, and folkways, i.e., the practice of certain customs unique to the group. David Artiss (“Who Are the German-­Canadians—One Ethnic Group or Several?” In Peter Liddell (ed.), German-Canadian Studies: Critical Approaches, Vancouver: CAUTG Publications, 1983, pp. 49-55) struggled with the difficulties in defining what is “German.” He suggested four tests of “German-ness”: historical, linguistic, cultural, and geographic. In relation to Lunenburg’s history, Artiss would have us ask this question: “Has this piece of land been owned and occupied by German settlers and their descendants uninterruptedly from the first days of colonization until now? If the answer is yes, may we not describe the pres­ent occupiers as German-Canadian, whether they speak German or not?” (p. 55). The difficulties inherent in dealing with immigration statistics and in defin­ing “German” were also discussed at length by Gerhard P. Bassler, “German Overseas Migration to North America in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Cen­turies: Recent Research from a Canadian Perspective,” in Hartmut Froeschle, ed. German-Canadian Yearbook, Vol. VII (Toronto: Historical Society of Mecklenburg Upper Canada Inc., 1983), pp. 8-21.

[2] Joshua A. Fishman’s (1966) Language Loyalty in the United States. The maintenance and perpetuation of non-English mother tongues by American ethnic and religious groups is the definitive pioneering work on language maintenance. Among many other issues, it explores the characteristics of ethnic groups and the impact of ethnic-language media, schools and churches on individuals and groups, and examines interacting language maintenance contexts and processes in the family and the ethnic organization. For German, Heinz Kloss contributed an immensely readable chapter on “German-American language maintenance efforts” (pp. 206-252); see Notes 6 and 7. In The survival of ethnic groups, Jeffrey Reitz (1980) focussed on ethnic community formation, ethnic group cohesion, and the economic position of ethnic groups. See also David Bobaljik et al. “A preliminary bibliography on language endangerment and preservation” (1996) for an extensive bibliography on language endangerment, esp. pp. 193-212.

[3] See, for example, CC 1961, Vol. VII, Bull. 7.1-5, p.24) and CC 1971, Vol. V, Bull. 5.1-9.

[4] Canada. Dominion Bureau of Statistics, CC 1961, Vol. VII., Bull. 7.1-5, p. 24.

[5] See CC 1931, Vol. 7, Table 69; CC 1931, Vol. 7, Table 49; CC 1941, Vol. 7, Table 12; CC 1951, Vol. 4, Table 12; CC 1961, Vol. 3.1, Table 21; CC 1971, Vol. 3-3, Table 4; CC 1981, 92-918, Table 1; CC 1986, 93-154, Table 2; “Immigration Statistics,” annual reports (Ottawa: Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Statistics Section); Canada. Statistics Canada, CC 1971, Vol. V, Bull. 5.1-9, Chart 10. For a detailed analysis of Canadian immigration policy between 1951 and 1957 and the occupational characteristics of the German immigrants see Ron Schmalz, “A Statistical Overview of the German Immigration Boom to Canada, 1951-1957,” in Lothar Zimmermann and Hartmut Froeschle (eds.), German-Canadian Yearbook, Vol. XVI (Toronto: Historical Society of Mecklenburg Upper Canada, 2000), pp. 1-38.

[6] See discussion in Jetske Klatter-Folmer and Sjaak Kroon, “Introductory remarks on Dutch as an immigrant language” in Jetske Klatter-Folmer and Sjaak Kroon (eds.), Dutch overseas. Studies in maintenance and loss of Dutch as an immigrant language (Tilburg: Tilburg University Press, 1997), pp. 1-19; the “Dutch-Canadian can be considered a ‘vanishing species’, as his language (H. Ganzevoort, “The Dutch in Canada: the disappearing ethnic.” In R.P. Swierenga, ed., The Dutch in America. Immigration, settlement and cultural change. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1985), pp. 224-239. Michael Clyne and Anne Pauwels (“Use, Maintenance, Structures, and Future of Dutch in Australia, in Klatter-Folmer and Kroon (eds.), pp. 33-49) have shown that “the Dutch have consistently experienced the highest rate of language shift to English [in Australia] of any of the larger ethnic groups. In 1991 it was 57% in the first generation, 88.7% in the second where both parents were Dutch, and 97.5% in the second generation where only one parent was Dutch.” (p. 35). See also Clyne and Pauwels’ (pp. 38ff.) detailed discussion of factors promoting language maintenance or language shift.

[7] Adapted from CC 1971, Bull. 5.1-9, Table 16.

[8] Heinz Kloss, “German-American language maintenance efforts,” in Fishman (1966), pp. 206-252, observed that “we can only (at best) expect the children of immigrants, but never their grandchildren to consider German as their native tongue” (p. 214). Ursula Irwin (“A study of German language maintenance in the San Francisco Bay area,” M.A. thesis. San Francisco: San Francisco State University, 1985) confirmed this observation in her investigation. She noted, however, that “a rekindling of interest seems to take place in the fourth and fifth generations which may, perhaps, be related to current interest in one’s ethnicity” (p. iii).

[9] Kloss identified a number of factors that influence language maintenance, six of which are said to contribute directly to language maintenance:

· religio-societal insulation,
· time of immigration: earlier than or simultaneously with the first Anglo-Americans,
· existence of language islands,
· affiliation with denominations fostering parochial schools,
· pre-immigration experience with language maintenance efforts, and
· former use as the only official tongue during pre-Anglo-American period.

Nine other factors—which according to Kloss may work either for or against language maintenance—are:

· high educational level of immigrants:
· low educational level of immigrants,
· great numerical strength,
· smallness of the group,
· cultural and/or linguistic similarity to Anglo-Americans,
· great cultural and/or linguistic dissimilarity between minority and majority,
· suppression of minority tongue(s),
· permissive attitude of majority group,
· sociocultural characteristics of the minority group in question (pp. 206, 209-213).

[10] The Volga Germans settled in compact colonies and were isolated from the remaining population and could thus preserve more easily their dialects, customs, and traditions. The Black Sea Germans, on the other hand, adopted a system of entailed estates, bought additional land and had closer contacts with the native population (James Long, The German-Russians: A Bibliography, p. 4). Settlers in other areas, such as the Bukovina or Volhynia were even less isolated.

[11] Arthur Stelter from Volhynia, in Yedlin, ed., Germans from Russia in Alberta: Reminiscences (Edmonton, CEESSA, 1985), p. 3 remembers that “[if] you were German speaking, the top authorities at that time were the Lutheran Church officials. German Lutherans, however, could not try to convert any of the Russians. This was not allowed and both the Russians and Germans would go to jail. Their lives in general were very separate. They went to separate schools even though the Germans eventually had to also teach Russian in their schools.”

[12] “[My father said] that the Ukrainians who lived there were very backward. He said that they knew absolutely nothing about farming. He said the only things that Germans ever learned from Ukrainians was how to cross swamps” (Arthur Stelter, in Yedlin, p. 2).

[13] This love for the German language and German culture was then transferred to Canada; the German-language newspapers at that time were full of ex­hortations to the immigrants and their children not to abandon their linguis­tic and cultural heritage. See the review of such arguments by Kurt Tischler (“The efforts of the Germans in Saskatchewan to retain their language be­fore 1914,” in Hartmut Fröschle, ed., German-Canadian Yearbook, Vol. VI. Toronto: Historical Society of Mecklenburg Upper Canada Inc., 1981, p. 43).

[14] See Tischler (1981, p. 42) for an account of Anderson’s and Driedger’s hy­pothesis about why the Mennonites lost the Dutch language in their move to Germany, but not the German language in their move to Russia: “They speculate that when a minority exists where the majority is consid­ered by the minority to be more advanced in culture and education, the minority will become linguistically assimilated. However, when the mi­nority considers its own culture to be superior to that of the majority, they will retain their language.”

[15] See, for example, Elvire Eberhardt, The Bessarabian German Dialect in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Ph. D. dissertation (Edmonton: University of Alberta, 1973), pp. 20-21.

[16] See, for example, “Edward Wolter from Volhynia,” in Yedlin, p. 111; “Bernhard Krueger from Solonovka,” p. 160, and “Jacob Eichele from Ochakov,” p. 177.

[17] “[After World War I], pupils were sent to public schools where they came into closer contact with English, and no doubt felt the suspicion their lan­guage aroused in their classmates. One might conjecture that before long they became infected with the notion that German was in some way inferior and so adopted English enthusiastically” (Richard d’Alquen, Phonology of the Galician dialect of Stony Plain, Alberta. M.A. thesis (Edmonton: University of Alberta, 1962), p. 7; see also Gerda Alexander, Three German dialects in Barrhead, Alberta. M.A. thesis (Edmonton: University of Alberta, 1975), p. 8.

[18] Alexander, p. 8; “Arthur Stelter from Volhynia,” in Yedlin, p. 25.

[19] Yedlin, p. xv.

[20] “At the public school, German was prohibited from being spoken on the school grounds, because ‘the war was on”’ (“Arthur Stelter from Volhynia,” in Yedlin, p. 16); Bertha Knull from Volhynia remembers these times: “The war years were difficult years for the Germans. They were not al­lowed to speak German in public, but some of the people couldn’t speak English, so they spoke German anyway. One time I was talking to my husband in German in a restaurant and they came over to tell me to stop. I was about to answer them when a lawyer we knew came over and said I shouldn’t say anything. In the countryside it was different. It wasn’t too bad in Leduc, but we heard that it was bad in Edmonton. They hated the Germans there (“Bertha Knull from Volhynia,” in Yedlin, p. 55).”

[21] For example, in the case of German Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists and Moravians, but not with the Mennonites who came in large groups (Yedlin, p. xiii).

[22] Gerald Friesen, The Canadian Prairies. A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), p. 262.

[23] “The war years really hastened the process of assimilation. . . The German people settled in little colonies at first, but the schooling in English and the war years really broke up the group and ethnic identity” (“Joe Frison from Selz,” in Yedlin, p. 69).

[24] For a detailed description of the role of the churches in German language maintenance in Alberta see Prokop, The German language in Alberta. Maintenance and teaching, pp. 116-137.

[25] This point is repeatedly made in the Germans from Russia in Alberta and elsewhere, for instance, by “George Webber from Norka, Volga Region,” in Yedlin, p. 41; by “Julius Oswald from Volhynia,” ibid., p. 31; Alexander, p. 8; d’Alquen, p. 6. Joe Frison from Selz reported that “the first generation of men picked up English through interaction with others. They became involved with municipal politics—town counsellors, etc. and were able to function fairly well in English. In his own family, de­spite the fact that he married a German-speaking woman, they did not speak German with the children, except when the grandparents were around “ (in Yedlin, p. 68). Eberhardt provides the following description: “For some years, a few of the men worked in [Medicine Hat] until farming sustained the family. Thus almost all men of this group understand English and speak it to some degree, but the women who spent most of their life at home often have no knowledge of English. Families of this type have moved to the city only at retirement age and still associate mainly with German speakers” (Eberhardt, pp. 25-26).

[26] Minnie Grunwald from Volhynia reminisces: “I learned a little English from the young people when I arrived in Canada. But I studied English with my children. I would look at the books they brought home and help them with their school work” (in Yedlin, p. 48). Erdman Rosenau (in Yedlin, p. 64) tells how his mother did not see any need to learn English. She said that she had lived in Russia without learning Russian, and did not see why she had to learn English.

[27] “When my children went to school we tried to speak English at home as much as possible so that they could learn the language better. There were some in our district, however, that were against the use of English in the home and would not let their children use it. Later the children had a terrible time when they had to use English” (“Minnie Grunwald from Volhynia,” in Yedlin, p. 48); “We spoke German at home until the kids went to school and then we tried to speak English.... We spoke English so that when the girl started school she would know how to speak English. She learned it quickly” (“Bertha Knull from Volhynia,” in Yedlin, p. 54).

[28] See, for example, “Julius Oswald from Volhynia,” in Yedlin, p. 30.

[29] See several statements to this effect in Eberhardt, p. 174, and Alexander, p. 11.

[30] Friesen, p. 267.

[31] Friesen, p. 268.

[32] Kate Burridge, “Steel tyres or rubber tyres—Maintenance or loss: Pennsylvanian German in the ‘horse and buggy communities’ of Ontario,” in David Bradley and Maya Bradley (eds.), Language endangerment and language maintenance (New York: Routledge Curzon, 2002), pp. 216-217.

[33] Friesen, p. 271.