Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Study rebuts perceptions of migrants' English use: Immigrants in 1800s avoided new language. Joseph Salmons, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has done a study that indicates that many German immigrants who arrived in the 1800s didn't learn English and that their children and grandchildren often didn't learn English, either. The findings probably apply to other waves of immigrant groups of the late 1800s and early 1900s, Salmons said. Other research shows that Latino immigrants in more recent decades are learning English quickly and that, by the third generation, speak only English.