Two Foreign Languages Every American Man Should Learn

[momopi]

In America, everything German is villified, but German culture is as legitimate as any other culture, and Germany existed long before WWII!

Prior to WW2 many German families in the US still lived in ethnic enclaves and spoke Germn at home. With WW2 they stopped teaching their kids German and Americanized their names ("Metz"). The Japanese Ameican community also did the same while living in concentration camps.

The issue with preservation of German American culture and language today is the lack of Germans and Germsn immigration. Here in CA you will find Japanese schools and culture centers funded mostly by post-WW2 Japanese immigrants. My 1st and 1.5 gen Japanese friends send their kids to Japanese schools on weekends, versus 3rd and 4th gen Japanese Americans are already assimilated and inter married with others in Hawaii.

If you were to open a German school and Barvarian culture center in Anaheim today, I doubt you'd get many hitler jokes or opposition. The biggest challenge would be to actually find ethnic Germans to attend your language school. Anaheim was founded by Baravian wine makers in 1857, when I attended elementary school there in 1982 the class was mostly white and I was one of only 2 orientals in class. Today the city is 46% Mexican and the cooks and servers at Jagerhaus are all Mexican.

Here in LA we have many ethnic Russisns with Russian language schools and summer camps for kids. There are local Russisn cable TV, "little Moscow", Russian churches, etc. This is made possible by the influx of Russian immigrants in post cold war era.

[Jester]

In America, everything German is villified, but German culture is as legitimate as any other culture, and Germany existed long before WWII!

Prior to WW2 many German families in the US still lived in ethnic enclaves and spoke Germn at home. With WW2 they stopped teaching their kids German and Americanized their names ("Metz"). The Japanese Ameican community also did the same while living in concentration camps.

The issue with preservation of German American culture and language today is the lack of Germans and Germsn immigration. Here in CA you will find Japanese schools and culture centers funded mostly by post-WW2 Japanese immigrants. My 1st and 1.5 gen Japanese friends send their kids to Japanese schools on weekends, versus 3rd and 4th gen Japanese Americans are already assimilated and inter married with others in Hawaii.

If you were to open a German school and Barvarian culture center in Anaheim today, I doubt you'd get many hitler jokes or opposition. The biggest challenge would be to actually find ethnic Germans to attend your language school. Anaheim was founded by Baravian wine makers in 1857, when I attended elementary school there in 1982 the class was mostly white and I was one of only 2 orientals in class. Today the city is 46% Mexican and the cooks and servers at Jagerhaus are all Mexican.

Here in LA we have many ethnic Russisns with Russian language schools and summer camps for kids. There are local Russisn cable TV, "little Moscow", Russian churches, etc. This is made possible by the influx of Russian immigrants in post cold war era.

I suspect most Los Angeles viewers of Russian TV are Armenians, not Russians. This goes back to Ladislav's point about Russian now beig a colonial language.

Re German, there used to be a community in or near Torrance, most relocated to Glendale where they have assimilated, leaving lampposts with schwastikas until recently. I know men here on HA are not generally raising families locally here in the U.S., but just for the record, award-winning Glendale Schools offer middle school immersion in German, Italian, Korean, and Armenian. Local foreign consulates love to support this stuff.

PM me if you want to buy a house here in multilingual Glendale!!