Americans have nothing to apologize for at all

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[–]dissent 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (6 children)

You do know.. America did not invent... English. I can give you a tip on who did. It's spelt similarly. "England". Did you know there were so many native german speakers in America at one point that a vote had to be held to see what would be the national language and English only just won. You could be speaking / writing German right now if the vote had of gone the other way.

[–]Dragonerne 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

With this kind of logic you could call English a danish invention, because England is Eng-land, land of the Engels - Anglos in english. Anglos are from Denmark, south Jutland.

[–]dissent 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

...and I'm not downing another country's citizen for not having English as their first language and claiming they're lesser people for it. FFS the North American making the noise has inherited their language from another country and downing on someone else for not also inheriting another countries language as their main language. Lame. Dumb.

[–]Dragonerne 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

He was trying to down on America. He was ironically doing that in English.

It is not "another countrys" language. English is the language of Americans.

[–]dissent 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Only due to a vote. It was nearly German. But either way a north American who took on English can't down others who didn't

[–]Dragonerne 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They didnt take on english. English was their language.

[–]Countach_3D 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Did you know there were so many native german speakers in America at one point that a vote had to be held to see what would be the national language and English only just won. You could be speaking / writing German right now if the vote had of gone the other way.

As a language lover I must debunk this urban myth. The vote was only about federal funding for official translations of government documents, the same way many jurisdictions have Spanish versions of informational pamphlets and voting ballots today.

That said, up until the First World War a large number of proud Americans went to school in German, did their shopping in German, raised their children in German, and there was a thriving German-language press. (The publisher of the first German newspaper in the New World? A certain "B. Francklin" [sic].) The most American author ever, Mark Twain, was proud of his second language and wrote a few short stories and speeches in it.

What the U.S. did to German, and ethnic Germans - its own citizens - during the virulent xenophobia of the World Wars, effectively wiping out a language in a generation, is a tragedy, one today unknown by most Americans, of German descent and not.