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With 1/2 of the U.S. population having German ancestry- we almost ended up speaking German anyway. I have ancestry from the Rhineland, Bavaria and Austria and while my Germanic ancestry has been in America since at least the 1730s my grandmother had grandparents who still knew their Rhenish version of German as recently as the 1930s. There is a story about a Pennsylvania National Guard unit that was in France during World War I. This unit strayed over enemy lines and was about to be fired upon by a German artillery unit- until the Germans heard the Americans speaking in their Pennsylvania Dutch dialect.Apart from this there is little chance that Americans would have had to learn German. The English have always imposed their language on anybody who has ever invaded their Island and on anybody they have ever conquered. The English supplanted the Gaelic and the Latin of the Britons they conquered and then the Danes could not impose their dialect on the English and neither could the Normans impose their French. Even if the Hun had managed to invade England, the Hun would speaking English by now.
With 1/2 of the U.S. population having German ancestry- we almost ended up speaking German anyway. I have ancestry from the Rhineland, Bavaria and Austria and while my Germanic ancestry has been in America since at least the 1730s my grandmother had grandparents who still knew their Rhenish version of German as recently as the 1930s. There is a story about a Pennsylvania National Guard unit that was in France during World War I. This unit strayed over enemy lines and was about to be fired upon by a German artillery unit- until the Germans heard the Americans speaking in their Pennsylvania Dutch dialect.
Apart from this there is little chance that Americans would have had to learn German. The English have always imposed their language on anybody who has ever invaded their Island and on anybody they have ever conquered. The English supplanted the Gaelic and the Latin of the Britons they conquered and then the Danes could not impose their dialect on the English and neither could the Normans impose their French. Even if the Hun had managed to invade England, the Hun would speaking English by now.
