The data presented in this investigation have shown unequivocally that German can only be kept alive when there is a strong, ideologically motivated, motivation to use it at home so that the children may pick it up as their mother tongue and develop sufficient facility in it to continue using it as their home language. Parental attitudes towards language retention are therefore of the utmost importance. They are strong among the Hutterites and conservative Mennonites, but weak among urban German-Canadians.
5.1 Parental attitudes towards language maintenance
The frequently-heard comment that German-speaking parents, on the whole, have not been overly concerned about their children learning English rather than German as their mother tongue and home language and that the children frequently offered strong and vocal resistance to being “forced to learn German” is nothing new in the history of the “German presence” in Alberta, and likely across Canada. Occasionally, this “problem” was raised by scholars and even by the media. The Alberta Herold, for example, in its edition of October 29, 1909, offered a little anecdote, coupled with an earnest admonition to its readership. It suggested that Germans who considered English more “fashionable” but spoke it miserably amongst themselves and with their children should be told to “speak German,” while those who were equally fluent in both languages should be gently reminded of the fact that they could, and therefore should, speak German. [1]
A few years later, a “poem to the editor” exhorted the German-speaking youth (particularly the girls) of the province to speak German. Why? After all, German was their mother’s tongue and did she not always look after her children and wish upon them the very best? Moreover, German, in addition to being taught in school, should unite the speakers of German outside the schools in love and harmony, and was it not a language worth fighting for? [2]
In 1938, Gerwin, in her inventory of the “German presence” in Alberta [3] made scathing remarks about the maintenance of German in the home. It was true, she noted, that the oldest children usually spoke German in the home and often entered school without knowing any English. But soon they began to speak English among themselves and would use German with parents, neighbours and ministers only when those would insist. She ascribed this development to the fact that in the early twenties, people would not have heard anything but German for weeks on end, isolated as they were, but with the advent of modern means of transportation and communication an exciting new world had been opened up to which the young people felt drawn very strongly. The result was, Gerwin continued, that the children forgot the language of their childhood altogether, would only claim to understand it, or would not be especially interested in learning it in school; nor could they expect the support of their parents or of Albertan society at large in this endeavour. The children complained that it was hard work, almost an imposition, to learn and maintain German, a language which held no prestige for them and the outside world and which marked their parents as foreigners.
Gerwin concluded that German was being very poorly maintained. True, some Hutterites could speak it quite fluently, but only incorrectly, and they did not know how to write it correctly. Most parents spoke a terrible dialect and mixed English into their German. The result of all of this was, in her opinion, an embarrassment to both recent immigrants and Alberta’s German speakers. She continued that the parents would usually leave the instruction of German to the church schools. Although they deplored the loss of German as soon as the children entered school, they did not deplore their acquisition of English.
A study carried out by O’Bryan et al. 35 years later found a very predictable relationship between the parents’ attitudes towards the retention German in Canada and their attitudes towards the retention of German by their own children.
• Of those parents of German ethnic origin who thought it was “very desirable” to retain German in Canada, four-fifths felt “very strongly” that their own children should obtain a knowledge of German, and another 15% were “somewhat in favor” of their own children learning German.
• Of those who thought it was “somewhat desirable” for the language to be retained in Canada, 32% were strongly in favor of their children acquiring German, another 43% were “somewhat in favor,” but 25% were already “indifferent.”
• Of those who were “indifferent,” only 3% were “strongly” in favor of their children retaining German; 33% were “somewhat in favor,” but 58% were “indifferent.” [4]
Regarding who should be responsible for teaching children German, 49% of the respondents said that the school should be the primary agent for this task. [5]
Among those parents who considered the retention of German in Canada “very desirable,” 49% said that German was “useful as a second language” for their children; 25% gave “communication with others” as the reason for encouraging their children to learn German, and 13% thought that German was necessary for “keeping up customs and traditions.”
The Germans were exceeded only by the Dutch (63%) and the Polish groups (35%) in according their ancestral language mainly “value as a second language.” Among the parents who thought it was “somewhat desirable” for German to be maintained as an ancestral language, 64% listed “value as a second language” as the most important reason for wanting their children to retain it. [6]
5.2 Using German in the family context
Stadler investigated the issue of language maintenance and linguistic assimilation among German-speaking immigrants and their children in Vancouver. [7] Although her findings are limited by the characteristics and size of her sample, they are likely typical of German language use by families in large urban centres in Canada who sent their children to a German language school.
Stadler’s sample consisted of 137 children and their parents (138 adults of German-speaking origin, 18 adults of English-speaking origin, and nine adults of other origin, all of whom were married to German-speaking immigrants). Almost three quarters of the children had learned German as their first language and English as their second language; 70% of the children came from families of mixed parentage where only one parent was of German-speaking origin. Seventy-seven percent of the children attended a German language school for three hours per week outside regular class hours; the remaining 23% served as a control group. [8]
The data collected by questionnaire from children and parents, supplemented by personal interviews, dealt with such variables as language background (home language, family type, language dominance, and length of residence) and social/demographic features (sex, age, extra-curricular schooling in the ethnic language, and socio-economic status). Although Stadler repeatedly, and justifiably, sounded a note of caution because the number of respondents in one or the other sub-category was relatively small, it is nevertheless worthwhile to examine some of her findings. Among the conclusions most relevant for the present investigation were the following:
1. Seventy percent of the German-German parents spoke German “always” or “most of the time” to each other, while none of the English-German or German-English couples did.
2. During the pre-school years, 51% of the German-German parents had “always” spoken German to their children, and 32% had done so “most of the time.” However, only 17% and 35%, respectively, spoke German “always” or “most of the time” when Stadler carried out her study in the early 1980s.
3. Children of mixed-origin families hardly ever used German in the home; 28% of the children in German-German families did, but none in families of mixed parentage used “mostly” German with their parents.
4. Although German was spoken considerably more often between children in German-German families than between children in families of mixed parentage, only a small minority did so “frequently” (14%).
5. Almost 6o% of the mothers with German origin spoke German “always” or “most of the time” with the child; only about 7% of the mothers did so in families where the father was not of German origin, and none of the mothers of English origin spoke German with their child “always” or “most of the time.” The percentage of fathers who spoke German with their child “always” or “most of the time” resembled very much the pattern obtained for mothers.
6. About one-quarter of the children in the German-German families spoke German with their father and their mother “always” or “most of the time”; in mixed-origin families, the number of children speaking German with their father or their mother was practically nil. [9] In 83.5% of the German-German families, German was spoken as the home language to the children in their pre-school years; in about one third of the English-German or the German-English exogamous marriages, German was used as the home language when the children were small. Again, a large decrease in the percentage of families using German as the home language in their children’s preschool years could be observed between then and the time of the study: 58% spoke German with their child before she or he went to school compared to 20% at the time when the study was conducted. [10]
7. After approximately ten years of residence in Canada, the percentage of parents using German with each other “all the time” decreased substantially from 67% (under ten years) to 16% (ten years and over). Of the parents who had been residents of Canada for ten years or less, 92% used German “always” with their child before he or she went to school, compared with only 42% of those who had immigrated between ten and twenty years ago, and 33% who had immigrated more than twenty years ago. At the time of the study, however, only 58% of the parents with ten years of residence in Canada or less used German with their child; this compares with 13% of parents with between ten and twenty years of residence, and 4% of those who had come to Canada twenty years ago or earlier. [11]
8. Children spoke German more often to both parents and siblings in homes in which the children had an average age of less than ten years. [12]
9. Only minor differences in the use of German by mothers or fathers vis-à-vis their children were observed; however, mothers did tend to use German slightly more often with their children than did fathers – about 5% more often.
10. The use of English increased with rising socio-economic status. Parents in the lowest of three socio-economic status groups (i.e., parents with elementary and high school education involved in manual work; versus parents with additional vocational training and/or a more advanced level of education; versus parents with university education involved in professional work or holding other high status jobs) used German most frequently to each other (91% vs. 59%, and 38%, respectively), to their children before school (92%, 77% and 56%), and at the time at which the study was carried out (75%, 45% and 34%). Children in the low-economic-status group also used German with their parents most frequently (55%, 17% and 29%, respectively). In the high socio-economic status families, children were considerably less likely to use German with their siblings (20%) than in low (36%) or the middle socio-economic status groups (47%). In general, the percentage of families having German as their home language decreased coincident with higher economic status (92% for the low status group vs. 78% for the middle and 63% for the high-status groups). [13]
11. Language dominance (determined by informants’ responses to two questions: a. In which language do you feel more comfortable? [for children] and b. In which language can you express yourself better in personal/non-personal matters? [for adults] [14]) was a significant variable in Stadler’s analysis. There was a direct relationship between home language and language dominance for adults: German-dominant parents mainly chose German as their home language, and English-dominant parents mainly chose English. As socio-economic status increased, German language dominance fell (83%, 63%, and 47% in “personal matters,” and 83%, 37% and 28% in “non-personal matters.” Members of the two highest socio-economic groups actually felt that they could express themselves better in English in non-personal matters than did members of the lowest socio-economic group.
12. Only very few children considered themselves dominant in German, while the vast majority of the parents still felt that they had an excellent command of German and a very good command of English. It can be concluded that the rate of linguistic assimilation displayed by children was substantially higher than that of their parents, which was in itself already very high.
13. Long-term residence in an English-speaking area by the parents revealed the strongest English-language dominance; among children, German proficiency and language dominance tended to decrease as age increased. [15]
14. While home language, language preference, and language dominance were closely related in the case of parents, a slightly different picture emerged for their children: regardless of their home language, children exhibited comparatively low German language preference, but high allegiance to Canada. [16]
Clearly, the maintenance of German as a home language among these children (who were by no means typical of the overall ethnic German population because more than three-quarters of them attended a German language school; one wonders about the success of maintaining German in homes where the parents were not motivated – by guilt? – to send their children to a language school!) was related to several important factors: whether both parents were of German origin; whether German was spoken by the parents in the home before their children began school; when their parents had immigrated to Canada; the children’s age; the parents’ socio-economic status; and the confidence with which the children spoke the German language.
5.3 Children’s acquisition of German as a mother tongue and as the home language in various family types
A detailed study of the relationship between ethnic indicators and German language use by Prokop [17] shed additional light on the relationship between various predictors and language use and maintenance using 1981 census data. It did so more reliably than other investigations because the analysis was performed with the entire census population universe of ethnic Germans in Alberta (N=339,135). In addition to using the entire Albertan population of ethnic Germans as the data base, this investigation also dealt with all speakers of German as a mother tongue in Alberta (N=90,410), and all speakers of German as a home language (N=25,700).
Three criteria of family ethnicity were investigated in relation to the children’s acquisition of German as a mother tongue and as a home language: parental ethnic origin, parental mother tongue, and parental home language.
5.3.1 Parental ethnic origin and the acquisition of German as the children’s mother tongue and home language. Five configurations of German origin in the family unit were analyzed:
• families where both husband and wife were of German origin;
• families where the husband was not of German origin, but the wife was;
• one-parent families where the wife was of German origin;
• one parent-families where the husband was of German origin;
• and families where the husband was of German origin, but the wife was not.
In families where both parents were of German origin, the likelihood of children acquiring German as their mother tongue was greatest (17%); in mixed marriages, the chance of children learning German as their mother tongue was practically nil: certainly when the husband was of non-German origin, and very low (2%) when the wife was of non-German origin.
In the one-parent families where either the father or the mother was of German origin, children learned German as their mother tongue in about 10% of the cases. Let us take the analysis one step further: in how many families did the children subsequently learn German well enough to use it as their home language? In only 9% percent of the families where both parents were of German origin did the children use German as the home language, and in all other family types, German was virtually not used as the home language at all, even in those single-parent families where the children had originally acquired German as their first language.
The Family Language Maintenance Ratio (number of family units where the children speak German at home divided by the number of family units where children learned German as their mother tongue) amounted to 0.54. Thus one may conclude that the children acquired German as their home language only in those families where both parents were of German origin; in such cases, the odds were one in two that they would come to use German as the language of the home if they had learned German as their first language in early childhood.
5.3.2 Parental mother tongue and the acquisition of German as the children’s mother tongue and home language. When the parents’ mother tongue is used as the criterion for establishing the five family types, it can be seen that the overall pattern is very similar. In about one-third of the families (34%) where both parents had learned German as their mother tongue, the children acquired German as their mother tongue as well. Again, in the mixed marriages where one of the parents did not have German as his or her mother tongue, practically none of the children learned German as their mother tongue (certainly not where the husband did not have German as his mother tongue). Children learned German as their first language in 20 to 40% of the one-parent families where the father or the mother had German as the mother tongue. [18]
In only half of the families where both father and mother had acquired German as their first language did the children also use German as their home language (Family Language Maintenance Ratio=0.50). In none of the other family types was German used at home by the children.
5.3.3 Parental home language and the acquisition of German as the children’s mother tongue and home language. The most interesting of the three criterion conditions is the case where German is used as the home language by one or both parents. In 76% of the families in Alberta where both parents used German as their home language, the children also acquired it as their mother tongue. In families where only one partner spoke German at home, the percentage of children who actually learned German as their first language was very small. Because of the small number of such families it is difficult to make a firm statement, but it appears that in mixed home-language families where the father did not speak German at home, the rate of acquisition of German as the mother tongue was substantially lower than in families where the wife did not speak German in the home.
The rate of Family Language Maintenance from mother tongue to home language for the children in families where German was spoken at home by both parents was quite high (0.68), which means that in 68% of the families where both parents spoke German at home when the census was taken, the children also learned it well enough to use it as their own home language. In the other four types of use of German as a home language within the family unit, the likelihood of the children using German in the home was virtually zero.
The implication of these data is that the chances for survival of German as a home language into the next generation are greatest in families where both partners speak German in the home; however, the number of such families was relatively small in 1981, an estimated 2,500 in all of Alberta – including the Hutterite families where German is the de facto home language.
Supportive evidence for the German data presented here is offered by research in the effectiveness of bilingual English-Ukrainian instruction. Isajiw concluded after a study of ten major ethnic groups, among them especially the Ukrainian, that the home was the most important socializing agency for bringing about a general knowledge of the language. Where parents spoke to children only in Ukrainian, 100% of the children knew Ukrainian, at least in a general way. This was also the case where the parents spoke to the children in both English and Ukrainian, but where only English was spoken by the parents, most children (62%) had no knowledge of Ukrainian at all. Those whose parents spoke Ukrainian to them also used the language “every day” or “often,” whereas others whose parents spoke English to them used Ukrainian “rarely” or “never.” It appears that if parents wish their children to have Ukrainian as their mother tongue they must speak to them in Ukrainian, or in English or Ukrainian, when they are very young. [19]
Chumak [20] examined this issue in more detail: The author studied the use of Ukrainian in homes where both parents spoke Ukrainian, had been born in Europe, and had come to Canada as young children; both spoke Ukrainian only in the home and both had a keen interest in preserving and maintaining the use of Ukrainian in the home. It was found that young children in this ideal linguistic environment verbalized spontaneously in Ukrainian more often than their older siblings who already went to school, responded more frequently in this language, and preferred to speak Ukrainian. It was noteworthy that parents differed in their patterns of interaction with the children: With older children, they used less Ukrainian, encouraged them less to use the language in the home, and read less to them. They also tended to address them in English or in Ukrainian while they used Ukrainian only with young children. Because of this difference in interactive support by the parents, the older children lost confidence and competence, and thus their frequency of use of Ukrainian declined accordingly.
5.4 Teaching and learning German in the home
It may be hypothesized that in German-speaking families, where the children are encouraged to take German formally in a public or private school, the motivation to maintain and develop the linguistic heritage is much stronger than in families where the language is either taught informally by the parents or only implicitly by the parents’ language use with each other and the children, or where it is not used at all. In addition to the facts presented above, there is some evidence for this assertion. Reitz concluded that the use of the ethnic language in the home was very strongly related to language retention (gamma=.911), [21] and in each of three generational groups, an ethnic group member who learned the ethnic language (as a child) was far more likely to participate in the ethnic community (as an adult). [22]Extending the line of enquiry outlined above, an interesting question is, therefore, whether the children’s initial contacts with German in the family are indeed of some importance in developing a set pattern for learning German and whether these contacts predict a certain level of use later on in life.
To test this hypothesis, a short questionnaire was developed and administered by Prokop [23] to 397 students in German classes in public and private elementary and secondary schools in Edmonton and vicinity. [24] The questionnaire sought to identify the mode of linguistic functioning in the family used by the students “in their early childhood (ages 3 to 6)” and “at present (ages 6 to 10, and 15 to 17).” Four modes of such linguistic functioning were defined operationally: Levels 2 to 4 represent a hierarchy where the higher-order behaviours include the lower-order:
1. The students spoke no or very little German at home, but heard German spoken regularly between the parents, or between the parents and other relatives or friends. When spoken to in German, the students would answer in English.
2. The parents usually spoke German with each other and the children, and the children would usually respond in German.
3. The parents usually spoke German with each other and the children; the children would usually respond in German and would speak German freely and spontaneously with parents, grandparents, and friends.
4. The parents usually spoke German with each other and the children; the children would usually answer in German, would speak German freely and spontaneously with parents, grandparents, and friends, and would, once in a while, and as their knowledge of German permitted, read German books or newspapers and/or would write short letters to relatives or friends in Germany.
At the time of the investigation, German at the elementary level was taught in three bilingual schools in Edmonton and vicinity (where it is the language of instruction for up to 50% of class time) as well as in church and other private schools (where German is often taught as the mother tongue [muttersprachlicher Unterricht] or as a second language [Deutsch als Fremdsprache]). In both public and private elementary schools almost 80% of the children enrolled had some German background. The following results were obtained for the elementary and secondary school levels.
In the bilingual classes of the public schools, the distribution of children over the four modes of linguistic functioning in the home was about equal when the children were small, changing only slightly between ages 4 to 6 and the present. About one-quarter of the children in the bilingual program responded to their parents in English, a quarter responded in German, a quarter spoke German freely and on their own initiative with their parents, and a quarter, within the range of their abilities, occasionally read a short book or magazine or wrote a letter to relatives or friends in German.
In private schools, the distribution was decidedly skewed. Only about 10% of the students answered their parents in English when they were small, and more than two-thirds used German freely and on their own initiative with them. When compared with their present mode of language use, it appears that children who had used German at home spontaneously and read and wrote in German once in a while still did at the time of the study in 1989. For the other three groups, a downward trend could be observed: some who spoke German freely at home when they were small said that they now only responded in German or English, and some who had answered in German now stated that they answered their parents in English. Clearly, the group of children who used German more or less as a native speaker would use it in a German-speaking country maintained their knowledge of German better than those groups where English intruded to a greater or lesser extent.
It is of interest that the distribution patterns of usage of German in the home for the two school populations resemble one another much more at present than when the children were very small. More students in the private school elementary classes now respond to their parents in English than when they were younger.
German 10, 20, and 30, the high school German courses, are offered in Alberta’s public schools, as well as in some private and church schools in which German is the subject of instruction, although in some classes German 15 used to a very large extent as the means of communication as well. In the secondary school classrooms, there were substantial differences between public and private schools in the ratio of students with no German family language background to those who had learned some German at home. At the beginners’ level, 60% of the students in the public schools had no German family language background, compared with only 15% in the church and private schools. These ratios decreased to 44% and 5%, respectively, by German 30.
German 10: Nearly two-thirds of those students in the public schools who had learned some German at home said that they had usually answered in English at ages 3 to 6 when their parents talked to them in German, and only 10% had responded in German. Equally small numbers of students spoke German at home spontaneously or sometimes read or wrote in German. The change to present modes of linguistic functioning was insubstantial: a few more students who had then answered in English, now responded in German, presumably as a result of learning German in school. There was no change at higher levels of language use. In the private schools, the same pattern prevailed: no change in the top two levels of linguistic functioning and substantially fewer students responding in English now than when they were small.
As with elementary students, the percentage of secondary students capable of operating at Levels 3 and 4 was considerably higher in the church and private language schools than in the public schools (70% vs. 25)
German 20: In public school classes, a general trend towards higher-level use of German could be observed: fewer students who responded to their parents in English at the time of the investigation, more who responded in German, spoke German at home spontaneously, and used it in reading and writing.
All students in the private schools who said that they had responded in English to their parents when they were small now said that they answered them in German. This development continues the shift previously observed for private school students.
German 30: In the public schools, the number of those students employing higher-level spontaneous use of German in the family context remained essentially the same since their childhood, while fewer students said that they now used English.
In the private schools, previous tendencies are repeated: a high rate of spontaneous use of German and more reading and writing in German than before by those students who had previously responded to their parents in English when they were small.
One may conclude from these results that the skill level to which a child is brought at an early age by the parents predicts very strongly the level at which the youngster will be able to function later on in life. There is a high stability in the level of functioning in German over the short as well as the long term, especially on those levels which require the spontaneous oral and written use of the language, but formal instruction may encourage students who had previously responded in English when their parents had used German with them to switch to more frequent – albeit merely responsive – use of German.
5.5 Discussion
Several investigations have documented the apparent preparedness of “the Germans” to give up their mother tongue in favour of English as their main language of communication and as their home language. The issue is not a new one: for more than a century, concerns have been voiced about the German-speaking parents’ relative apathy regarding the future of their mother tongue, and whenever changes in Canadian immigration policy slowed the influx of speakers of German to Canada, dire predictions were made about the survival of German beyond the “present generation.” Nevertheless, the attitude of “the Germans” towards the future status of their language in Canada has been ambivalent. Not surprisingly, the support for language retention is highest among the immigrants (but even of them, only about a quarter considers it to be very important to ensure the survival of German in Canada – lowest among all ethnic groups surveyed). Among the members of the second generation, such support is even lower. As would be expected, parents who think that the retention of German in Canada is very desirable have a strong positive opinion regarding their children’s acquisition of the language while of those who are indifferent about the future of the German language in Canada only a very small number is strongly in favour of their children learning German as well.
The fact that the parents were found to have ill-defined reasons for wanting their children to learn German (more than half thought that German was “useful” as a second language and only a small number wanted their children to learn German to keep customs and traditions alive) also reflects the uncertain attitude of the German community towards the need to foster the retention and growth of linguistic and cultural traditions. When asked who should be responsible for teaching their children German, almost half the parents surveyed considered the home to be the primary agent. In view of the attitudes expressed and the fact that most Germans tend to marry non-”Germans,” in which case German is not spoken at home, it is not surprising that the home, in practice, is not a very effective agent for passing German language and culture on to the next generation. |
[1] Alberta Herold, “Sprechen Sie Deutsch!”, October 29, 1909, p.1.
[2] Alberta Herold, “Sprich deutsch!”, March 23, 1911, p. 3.
[3] Elizabeth Gerwin, A survey of the German-speaking population of Alberta. M.A. thesis (Edmonton: University of Alberta, 1938), pp. 59-67.
[4] O’Bryan et al., pp. 120-121.
[5] O’Bryan et al., pp. 125.
[6] O’Bryan et al., pp. 123-124.
[7] Beatrice Stadler, Language maintenance and assimilation: The case of selected German-speaking immigrants in Vancouver, Canada (Vancouver: CAUTG, 1983).
[8] Stadler, p. 22.
[9] Stadler, pp. 30-34.
[10] Stadler, pp. 36-37.
[11] Stadler, p. 39.
[12] Stadler, p. 40.
[13] Stadler, pp. 43-44.
[14] Stadler, p. 16.
[15] Stadler, pp. 50-58.
[16] Stadler, p. 83.
[17] Prokop (1990), pp. 99-102.
[18] The data reported in this section are from Alberta alone. However, there are two studies using 1986 Census data which examined the issue of transmission of German as a mother tongue to children between the ages of 0 and 14, both considering only transmission from mother to child. Harrison (1990) found that German ranked 16th (with 26% transmitting German only to their children) after Italian (38%) and before Ukrainian (20%) and Dutch (8%). 69% of the children in the German group adopted English only, compared to 49% of the Italians and 76% of the Ukrainians and 89% of the Dutch (p. 38, Table 9). Kralt and Pendakur (1991), using 1986 data for Canada excluding Quebec, found a transmission rate of 27.4% for the Germans, 30.8% for the Italians and 8.2% for the Dutch (Table 13a).
[19] Wsevolod W. Isajiw, “The process of maintenance of ethnic identity: The Canadian context,” in Migus (1975), pp. 226-227.
[20] Roma Chumak, “Language behaviour in the Ukrainian home: An interactional perspective,” in Manoly R. Lupul, ed., Osvita. Ukrainian Bilingual Education (Edmonton: Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies, 1985, pp. 187-190).
[21] Reitz, p. 120.
[22] Reitz, p. 115.
[23] Prokop (1990), pp. 104-108.
[24] Number of students in high school German 10, 20, and 30: 134 students; in private schools: 84; in bilingual schools: 93; in non-credit pre-school and elementary courses in private language schools: 86. |
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