Benefits of learning a second language
With more online learning resources available than we know what to do with, there’s really no reason for you to not know a second language.
Being bilingual not only gives you some fun bragging rights, but it also makes you stand out in the increasingly competitive job market.
Learning another language can pave the way for salary increases and open up tons of amazing job opportunities that would be far beyond reach for someone who only knows one language. But it doesn’t stop there. Did you know it can help keep your brain healthy, for longer?
If you’ve ever considered learning a second language, below are just some of the many reasons why you should finally commit to becoming bilingual.
Being bilingual earns you more money
Today’s job market is tough.
Even with the recent addition of 295,000 U.S. jobs, there are still many people seeking full-time positions who simply can’t find them and are forced to take part-time jobs instead. On top of that, job openings aren’t very readily available for people with degrees outside of the STEM industries (this is especially true for recent college grads.).
The result of few jobs and lots of applicants means getting a full-time position today requires the ability to stand out from other, equally qualified candidates. Learning a second language is one way that you can make that jump to stand out.
For the already-employed reader, knowing a second language can lead to salary bonuses. The exact value of bonuses earned from knowing another language is debatable. One //Freakonomics// podcast suggests that English-speaking Americans who learn a foreign language can expect to earn only about $600 more than someone who knows only English. However, as this //Economist// article points out, even small language bonuses can add up over time.
Supposing you only earn a 2 percent language bonus on your salary, you easily stand to earn an additional $25,000 during your career (likely more with salary increases).
What’s more, salary bonuses vary depending on the exact language in which you’re proficient. Here’s a quick breakdown of a few different secondary languages and their annual bonuses as reported by The Economist:
You can learn any language and still find career benefits. There are tons of amazing job opportunities for people with various secondary language skills. The next section highlights just a few.
Knowing another language gives you awesome job opportunities
Aside from potentially working as for a company or individual, you can find unique and fun career opportunities in a variety of different fields.
Below are some of the (in my opinion) coolest jobs you could get with knowledge of another language.
Game Translator for Nintendo – Get paid to translate the in-game text, manuals and more for Nintendo of America, Inc. There are six openings for a Japanese to English translator right now, but it’s also not unlikely that the company would need similar translators for other languages also.
Some actual job postings:
-TV Subtitler for Cinematext Media USA – Want to translate Spanish TV shows to English? Cinematext Media is affiliated with large American networks like TNT, Cartoon Network, MTV and a variety of big-name Spanish-only channels..
-Anime Translator for Crunchyroll – Love to watch anime? You can get paid to translate Japanese subtitles and text to English for the manga and anime mega-giant, Crunchyroll. Similar jobs are also available for English to Italian and English to Arabic translations.
-Community Representative for Blizzard Entertainment – Blizzard, who produces well-known video games like WoW and Diablo, is looking for a bilingual Spanish/English speaker to engage with their Latin American player communities. The job includes helping with game development and supporting the company at events, including BlizzCon..
-Brand Specialist for Google – Notorious for being a great company to work for with lots of extra perks, Google is looking for a brand specialist fluent in German and English to help manage German market clients. Brand specialists work with customers and larger regional teams to assist in ongoing Google product improvements..
Are you dying to learn a new language yet? Maybe these additional benefits of becoming bilingual will finally convince you.
Protects against Alzheimer’s and dementia
Studies have shown that adults who speak two or more languages experience the onset of Alzheimer’s and dementia later than monolingual adults. This mental health advantage even extended to people who were illiterate, meaning that simply knowing how to speak two languages is beneficial even if you can’t read.
Improves decision making
Learning a second language has also been shown to help eliminate some biases that can otherwise muddle our decision-making processes. Interestingly, the most common bias eliminated is our consideration for potential losses, which can cause us to ignore promising opportunities when there is any risk of loss present.
For people who learn a language during adulthood, this bias tends to decrease, causing researchers to suggest that our rational mind takes the lead when we make decisions in a language that isn’t our native one.
Improves your memory and attention span
Lastly, taking the time to learn a second language can have some very positive side-effects on your attention span and memory. A study conducted by Northwestern University in 2012 showed that knowing multiple languages forces your brain to pay attention to relevant sounds, while blocking out irrelevant sounds. The study provided the first biological evidence that being bilingual improves your hearing and helps with attention span and working memory.
Learning a second language may seem intimidating to adults who have been monolingual their entire lives. In fact, many of us were told at one time or another that becoming proficient in a new language is unlikely for beginning adult learners.
Yet, research from the University of Illinois at Chicago shows that adults learning a foreign language are completely capable of becoming highly proficient in it.
There’s really no reason not to learn another language. Even if you like your current job and find your pay suitable, wouldn’t you at least like to stave off memory loss and make better decisions?
With more online learning resources available than we know what to do with, there’s really no reason for you to not know a second language.
Being bilingual not only gives you some fun bragging rights, but it also makes you stand out in the increasingly competitive job market.
Learning another language can pave the way for salary increases and open up tons of amazing job opportunities that would be far beyond reach for someone who only knows one language. But it doesn’t stop there. Did you know it can help keep your brain healthy, for longer?
If you’ve ever considered learning a second language, below are just some of the many reasons why you should finally commit to becoming bilingual.
Being bilingual earns you more money
Today’s job market is tough.
Even with the recent addition of 295,000 U.S. jobs, there are still many people seeking full-time positions who simply can’t find them and are forced to take part-time jobs instead. On top of that, job openings aren’t very readily available for people with degrees outside of the STEM industries (this is especially true for recent college grads.).
The result of few jobs and lots of applicants means getting a full-time position today requires the ability to stand out from other, equally qualified candidates. Learning a second language is one way that you can make that jump to stand out.
For the already-employed reader, knowing a second language can lead to salary bonuses. The exact value of bonuses earned from knowing another language is debatable. One //Freakonomics// podcast suggests that English-speaking Americans who learn a foreign language can expect to earn only about $600 more than someone who knows only English. However, as this //Economist// article points out, even small language bonuses can add up over time.
Supposing you only earn a 2 percent language bonus on your salary, you easily stand to earn an additional $25,000 during your career (likely more with salary increases).
What’s more, salary bonuses vary depending on the exact language in which you’re proficient. Here’s a quick breakdown of a few different secondary languages and their annual bonuses as reported by The Economist:
- Spanish – 1.5 percent bonus
- French – 2.3 percent bonus
- German – 3.8 percent bonus
You can learn any language and still find career benefits. There are tons of amazing job opportunities for people with various secondary language skills. The next section highlights just a few.
Knowing another language gives you awesome job opportunities
Aside from potentially working as for a company or individual, you can find unique and fun career opportunities in a variety of different fields.
Below are some of the (in my opinion) coolest jobs you could get with knowledge of another language.
Game Translator for Nintendo – Get paid to translate the in-game text, manuals and more for Nintendo of America, Inc. There are six openings for a Japanese to English translator right now, but it’s also not unlikely that the company would need similar translators for other languages also.
Some actual job postings:
-TV Subtitler for Cinematext Media USA – Want to translate Spanish TV shows to English? Cinematext Media is affiliated with large American networks like TNT, Cartoon Network, MTV and a variety of big-name Spanish-only channels..
-Anime Translator for Crunchyroll – Love to watch anime? You can get paid to translate Japanese subtitles and text to English for the manga and anime mega-giant, Crunchyroll. Similar jobs are also available for English to Italian and English to Arabic translations.
-Community Representative for Blizzard Entertainment – Blizzard, who produces well-known video games like WoW and Diablo, is looking for a bilingual Spanish/English speaker to engage with their Latin American player communities. The job includes helping with game development and supporting the company at events, including BlizzCon..
-Brand Specialist for Google – Notorious for being a great company to work for with lots of extra perks, Google is looking for a brand specialist fluent in German and English to help manage German market clients. Brand specialists work with customers and larger regional teams to assist in ongoing Google product improvements..
Are you dying to learn a new language yet? Maybe these additional benefits of becoming bilingual will finally convince you.
Protects against Alzheimer’s and dementia
Studies have shown that adults who speak two or more languages experience the onset of Alzheimer’s and dementia later than monolingual adults. This mental health advantage even extended to people who were illiterate, meaning that simply knowing how to speak two languages is beneficial even if you can’t read.
Improves decision making
Learning a second language has also been shown to help eliminate some biases that can otherwise muddle our decision-making processes. Interestingly, the most common bias eliminated is our consideration for potential losses, which can cause us to ignore promising opportunities when there is any risk of loss present.
For people who learn a language during adulthood, this bias tends to decrease, causing researchers to suggest that our rational mind takes the lead when we make decisions in a language that isn’t our native one.
Improves your memory and attention span
Lastly, taking the time to learn a second language can have some very positive side-effects on your attention span and memory. A study conducted by Northwestern University in 2012 showed that knowing multiple languages forces your brain to pay attention to relevant sounds, while blocking out irrelevant sounds. The study provided the first biological evidence that being bilingual improves your hearing and helps with attention span and working memory.
Learning a second language may seem intimidating to adults who have been monolingual their entire lives. In fact, many of us were told at one time or another that becoming proficient in a new language is unlikely for beginning adult learners.
Yet, research from the University of Illinois at Chicago shows that adults learning a foreign language are completely capable of becoming highly proficient in it.
There’s really no reason not to learn another language. Even if you like your current job and find your pay suitable, wouldn’t you at least like to stave off memory loss and make better decisions?
Interesting Facts about Germany
Land & People
History
The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed ContributorWhatever Happened to German America?By ERIK KIRSCHBAUMSEPT. 23, 2015
Photo
Credit Otto Steininger
Berlin — WHAT is America’s largest national ethnic group? If you said English, Italian or Mexican, you’re wrong. Today some 46 million Americans can claim German ancestry. The difference is, very few of them do.
Indeed, aside from Oktoberfest, German culture has largely disappeared from the American landscape. What happened?
At the turn of the last century, Germans were the predominant ethnic group in the United States — some eight million people, out of a population of 76 million. New York City had one of the world’s largest German-speaking populations, trailing only Berlin and Vienna, with about a quarter of its 3.4 million people conversing auf Deutsch. Entire communities, spreading from northern Wisconsin to rural Texas, consisted almost exclusively of German immigrants and their children.
As they spread through the country, they founded church denominations, singing societies, even whole industries — pre-Prohibition brewing was dominated by Germans, whose names live on in brands like Pabst, Busch and Miller. Their numbers shaped the media — there were 488 German-language daily and weekly newspapers around 1900 keeping the language and culture alive — and politics: Midwestern German-Americans were a backbone of the early Republican Party.
The enormous number of German-Americans was also a factor in keeping the United States out of World War I for so long — activists lobbied against intervening on the Allies’ side, while politicians worried about losing a sizable voting bloc.
Partly for that reason, when the United States did enter the war, German-Americans came under intense, and often violent, scrutiny, especially after the revelation of an ill-conceived German plan for Mexico to invade the United States.
There had long been doubts about the loyalty of German-Americans, especially in the myriad pockets of the Midwest where they were particularly dominant. Many had hoped to stave off assimilation by clinging to their language and dual loyalties — but that commitment to their culture suddenly became a vulnerability.
In what is a largely forgotten chapter of American history, during the roughly 18 months of American involvement in the war, people with German roots were falsely accused of being spies or saboteurs; hundreds were interned or convicted of sedition on trumped-up charges, or for offenses as trivial as making critical comments about the war. More than 30 were killed by vigilantes and anti-German mobs; hundreds of others were beaten or tarred and feathered.
Even the German music of Beethoven and Brahms, which had been assumed to be immune to the hysteria, came under attack. “It is the music of conquest, the music of the storm, of disorder and devastation,” wrote The Los Angeles Times in June 1918. “It is a combination of the howl of the cave man and the roaring of the north winds.” Sheet music, along with books by German authors, was burned in public spectacles.
Not surprisingly, those who could hid their Germanic roots; some switched their names; many others canceled their subscriptions to German newspapers, which virtually disappeared. Whatever vestige of German America remained after the 1910s was wiped out by similar pressures during World War II, not to mention the shame that came with German identity after it.
My grandfather Joseph Kirschbaum lived through this disruption. Born in New York to German immigrant parents in 1891, he didn’t start learning English until he went to school, and continued to speak German at home, with friends and in the shops and restaurants he would frequent with his parents. And yet, later in life, he claimed he couldn’t remember any of it.
In some parts of the United States, there might be appeals by politicians to win over the Hispanic-American vote, the Italian-American vote, the Jewish-American vote, the African-American vote or the Irish-American vote. But you will be hard-pressed to hear anyone — not even the speaker of the House, John A. Boehner, who has never tried to make any hay out of his German roots — canvassing for the support of the German-American vote.
Still, while German-American culture might be extinct, German-Americans have continued to make a mark on the country, from Neil Armstrong, the astronaut, to Robert B. Zoellick, a former president of the World Bank. Steinway pianos were first made by a German immigrant named Heinrich Steinweg (who became Henry Steinway). Chrysler was established by Walter P. Chrysler, whose family was of German descent, and Boeing was founded by William E. Boeing, the son of a German immigrant.
Yet as the centennial of World War I passes and the 25th anniversary of German unification nears, there are some tender shoots of a renascent German-American identity. A German-American congressional caucus was created in 2010 and now has 93 members. The popularity of craft beer has led to a resurgence in German-style Biergartens, while sports figures like the soccer coach Jürgen Klinsmann and the N.B.A. all-star Dirk Nowitzki celebrate their German identity.
It may be that an identity lost can never be regained. But why not try? It would be good for everyone, reminding millions of Americans that they too are the products of an immigrant culture, which not long ago was forced into silence by fear and intolerance.
Erik Kirschbaum is the author of “Burning Beethoven: The Eradication of German Culture in the United States During World War I.”
A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 23, 2015, on page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: Auf Wiedersehen, Amerika!
Land & People
- Germany is the most populous European country (apart from Russia), with a population of 82 million.
- Germany's land area was over 50% larger during the Second Reich (1871-1918) and included most of present-day Poland and parts of Lithuania.
- German people are the second biggest consumers of beer in the world (after the Czechs), with an average of 107 litres per person per year in 2010 (or 0.30 l per day).
- The German language was once the lingua franca of central, eastern and northern Europe, and remains the language with the most native speakers in Europe.
- 15 million people in Germany are of non-German descent (first and second generation), i.e. 18.5% of the population. About half of them are foreign residents, not German citizens.
- About a quarter of all American citizens claim at least partial German ancestry.
- Germany has nearly 700 zoological gardens, wildlife parks, aquariums, bird parks, animal reserves, or safari parks, including 414 registered zoos (more than the USA) ! Berlin's Zoologischer Garten is the largest zoo in the world, both in terms of number of species (1,500) and animal population (14,000).
- In 2006, the world's youngest billionnaire is the German Prince Albert II von Thurn und Taxis, with net worth is estimated at around $1.9 billion (USD).
- As of 2012, German athletes have won a total of 1662 Olympic medals (summer and winter combined from 1896 to 2012), i.e. more than any other country in the world except the USA.
- The Fairy Grottoes (Feengrotten) in Saalfeld, Thuringia, are the world's most colourful caves, according to the Guinness Book of Records.
- There are some 2.5 million half-timbered houses in Allemagne, by far the highest number of any country worldwide.
- Classical music has been widely dominated by German-speaking composers. A few famous ones born on the present territory of Germany include Bach, Händel, Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Wagner and R. Strauss.
- Some of the world's greatest philosophers were German : Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger...
- The Germans can be credited for the discovery of insulin, the invention of the clarinet, the pocket watch, the automated calculator, the light bulb, television (partly), paraffin, petrol/gasoline & Diesel engines, the automobile (as well as the engine, differential gear and other important devices), the motorcycle, the jet engine, the LCD screen and the Walkman.
- There are 1,300 beer breweries in Germany, making some 5,000 kinds of beer. German people are the world's second biggest beer drinkers after the Czechs.
- Germany was the first country in the world to adopt Daylight saving time (DST, a.k.a. summer time) in 1916, in the midst of WWI.
- The Walhalla temple (Hall of Fame and Honor of the German nation) in Regensburg was built by Ludwig I of Bavaria in the early 19th century to commemorate great figures and events in ethnic German history, beginning with the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (9 CE).
- The Bayreuth Festspielhaus (Bayreuth Festival Theatre) was specifically conceived and built to host performances of operas by Richard Wagner. It opened in 1876 for the premiere of the four-opera cycle of Der Ring des Nibelungen.
- As of 1998, there were 5,752 museums in Germany (about as many as Italy and the United Kingdom combined).
- Germany is one of the last Western European countries not to have banned smoking in workplaces, and restaurants (see map). One of the political reason for this is that the Nazi officially frowned on smoking, and post-war German legislators have been afraid of imitating Nazi regulations.
- No less than forty-two Nobel Prize laureates studied or taught at the Georg-August University of Göttingen. Nobel Prize winners notwithstanding, famous people who taught there included Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), the Brothers Grimm. Alumni count among themselves Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) and the American J. P. Morgan (1837-1913).
- Germans have been the pioneers of the ecological movement and green politics. The world's first Green Party, Die Grünen, was founded in 1979-1980. Germany is one of the rare countries (along with Belgium) where the Greens have been part of a government coalition (from 1998 to 2005, so far).
- The term "ecology" was first coined by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel in 1866.
- Drachenfels (Siebengebirge), in North Rhine-Westphalia, became the world's first nature reserve in 1836.
- In 2005 Germany produced approximately 35% of the world's wind energy. There are over 20,000 wind turbines off the coast of northern Germany, the largest of which reach 200 metres in height.
- Germans are among the most avid recyclers. According to a BBC survey, Germany had the third highest recycling rate (48% of waste recycled), only just surpassed by its Swiss and Austrian neighbours.
History
- The oldest sun observatory currently known in Europe is the so-called Goseck circle in Saxony-Anhalt. It was built some 7,000 years ago.
- The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation was founded by Charlemagne in Aachen in 800 C.E. It lasted over a thousand years, until 1806, when Napoleon dissolved it (mostly because he saw himself as the heir of Charlemagne, the new Emperor of the Occident).
- The Weihenstephaner Brewery in Freising, Bavaria, has been operating since its foundation in 1040, which makes it the world's oldest brewery.
- Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) is the first composer whose biography is known. Her works are considered the foundation to what later became known as opera (over 400 years later).
- Germany played a central role in the Reformation of Christianity. Johannes Gutenberg (1400-1468) printed the world's very first Bible in Mainz in 1456. The development the printing press allowed ordinary people to possess a copy of the holy book, previously reserved to the clergy and nobility. It didn't take long before another German, Martin Luther (1483-1546), compared the actual content of the Bible to the teachings and practices of the Catholic Church, and found major discrepancies. In 1517, Luther famously posted his 95 Thesis on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg (Saxony-Anhalt), in which he emphasized the Bible as the sole source of religious authority and the church as a priesthood of all believers. The Protestant Reformation would cause the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) throughout the Holy Roman Empire, and resulted among others in the independence of Switzerland and of the United Provinces of the Netherlands.
- The University of Marburg (Philipps-Universität Marburg), in Hesse, was founded in 1527 as the world's first Protestant university.
- The world's oldest savings bank was established in Oldenburg (Lower Saxony) in 1786.
- Germany has had quite a few capitals in its turbulent history, notably (in chronological order) : Aachen (from 794), Regensburg (seat of the Reichstag from 1663 to 1806), Frankfurt-am-Main (site of the election and coronation of German emperors between 1152 and 1792, seat of the Bundestag of the German Confederation from 1815 to 1871), Nuremberg (seat of the Imperial Diet between 1356 and 1543, and official residence of numerous Kings of Germany), Berlin (from 1871 to 1919, from 1933 to 1945, and from 1990 to present), Weimar (between 1919 and 1933), and Bonn (from 1949 to 1990 - West Germany only).
- Ulm Cathedral is the tallest church in the world, with 161.53 metres (530 feet) in height.
- Cologne Cathedral was the highest building of the world from 1880 to 1889 (or until 1884 if one counts the Washington Monument, which is an obelisk, not a proper building).
- The Wurzburg Residence possess the world's largest fresco ceiling (677 m² or 7287 square feet). It is the work of Venetian painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770).
- The German Autobahn is the oldest motorway network in the world (first section completed in 1932), as well as one of the densest (12,000 km for a country of 357,021 km²). It is also the only one in Europe to have no general speed limit.
- The world's two biggest cuckoo clocks are both located in Schonach im Schwarzwald, Baden-Württemberg. One of the cuckoos measures nearly five meters and weighs 150 kg.
- Over 300 bunkers and hundreds of kilometres of underground tunnels built during the Nazi-era still remain under the modern city of Berlin - although mostly unaccessible due to crumbling and floods from water tables.
- Since 2003, Germany is the world's largest exporter of goods with $1.016 trillion exported in 2005. 10.1% of world exports come from Germany.
- Germany the world's second producer of cars (after Japan) and motor vehicle in general (after the USA).
- The German company BASF (Badische Anilin- und Soda-Fabrik) is the second largest chemical company in the world, employing some 87,000 people in 160 subsidiaries and joint ventures in 41 countries.
- Germany was ranked by the World Competitiveness Yearbook as No. 1 in patent and copyright protection.
- After suffering from one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe (12% in 2006), Germany now has one of the lowest (5.4% in 2012).
- As of 2006, Germany had the highest corporate tax rate in Europe, close to 40%.
- The biggest train station in Europe opened in Berlin in 2006.
- The European Central Bank is located in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany.
- Frankfurt International Airport claims the world record in the most international destinations served. The Lufthansa, based in Frankfurt, is the world's largest airline in terms of international passengers carried, and Europe's largest in terms of passenger-kilometers flown, freight tonne-kilometers flown and fleet size.
- DELAG, (Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft, translating as "German Airship Transport Corporation") was the world's first airline. It was founded on 16 November 1909 in Frankfurt.
- The largest department store in continental Europe is the KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens) in Berlin, with over 60,000 square metres.
The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed ContributorWhatever Happened to German America?By ERIK KIRSCHBAUMSEPT. 23, 2015
Photo
Credit Otto Steininger
Berlin — WHAT is America’s largest national ethnic group? If you said English, Italian or Mexican, you’re wrong. Today some 46 million Americans can claim German ancestry. The difference is, very few of them do.
Indeed, aside from Oktoberfest, German culture has largely disappeared from the American landscape. What happened?
At the turn of the last century, Germans were the predominant ethnic group in the United States — some eight million people, out of a population of 76 million. New York City had one of the world’s largest German-speaking populations, trailing only Berlin and Vienna, with about a quarter of its 3.4 million people conversing auf Deutsch. Entire communities, spreading from northern Wisconsin to rural Texas, consisted almost exclusively of German immigrants and their children.
As they spread through the country, they founded church denominations, singing societies, even whole industries — pre-Prohibition brewing was dominated by Germans, whose names live on in brands like Pabst, Busch and Miller. Their numbers shaped the media — there were 488 German-language daily and weekly newspapers around 1900 keeping the language and culture alive — and politics: Midwestern German-Americans were a backbone of the early Republican Party.
The enormous number of German-Americans was also a factor in keeping the United States out of World War I for so long — activists lobbied against intervening on the Allies’ side, while politicians worried about losing a sizable voting bloc.
Partly for that reason, when the United States did enter the war, German-Americans came under intense, and often violent, scrutiny, especially after the revelation of an ill-conceived German plan for Mexico to invade the United States.
There had long been doubts about the loyalty of German-Americans, especially in the myriad pockets of the Midwest where they were particularly dominant. Many had hoped to stave off assimilation by clinging to their language and dual loyalties — but that commitment to their culture suddenly became a vulnerability.
In what is a largely forgotten chapter of American history, during the roughly 18 months of American involvement in the war, people with German roots were falsely accused of being spies or saboteurs; hundreds were interned or convicted of sedition on trumped-up charges, or for offenses as trivial as making critical comments about the war. More than 30 were killed by vigilantes and anti-German mobs; hundreds of others were beaten or tarred and feathered.
Even the German music of Beethoven and Brahms, which had been assumed to be immune to the hysteria, came under attack. “It is the music of conquest, the music of the storm, of disorder and devastation,” wrote The Los Angeles Times in June 1918. “It is a combination of the howl of the cave man and the roaring of the north winds.” Sheet music, along with books by German authors, was burned in public spectacles.
Not surprisingly, those who could hid their Germanic roots; some switched their names; many others canceled their subscriptions to German newspapers, which virtually disappeared. Whatever vestige of German America remained after the 1910s was wiped out by similar pressures during World War II, not to mention the shame that came with German identity after it.
My grandfather Joseph Kirschbaum lived through this disruption. Born in New York to German immigrant parents in 1891, he didn’t start learning English until he went to school, and continued to speak German at home, with friends and in the shops and restaurants he would frequent with his parents. And yet, later in life, he claimed he couldn’t remember any of it.
In some parts of the United States, there might be appeals by politicians to win over the Hispanic-American vote, the Italian-American vote, the Jewish-American vote, the African-American vote or the Irish-American vote. But you will be hard-pressed to hear anyone — not even the speaker of the House, John A. Boehner, who has never tried to make any hay out of his German roots — canvassing for the support of the German-American vote.
Still, while German-American culture might be extinct, German-Americans have continued to make a mark on the country, from Neil Armstrong, the astronaut, to Robert B. Zoellick, a former president of the World Bank. Steinway pianos were first made by a German immigrant named Heinrich Steinweg (who became Henry Steinway). Chrysler was established by Walter P. Chrysler, whose family was of German descent, and Boeing was founded by William E. Boeing, the son of a German immigrant.
Yet as the centennial of World War I passes and the 25th anniversary of German unification nears, there are some tender shoots of a renascent German-American identity. A German-American congressional caucus was created in 2010 and now has 93 members. The popularity of craft beer has led to a resurgence in German-style Biergartens, while sports figures like the soccer coach Jürgen Klinsmann and the N.B.A. all-star Dirk Nowitzki celebrate their German identity.
It may be that an identity lost can never be regained. But why not try? It would be good for everyone, reminding millions of Americans that they too are the products of an immigrant culture, which not long ago was forced into silence by fear and intolerance.
Erik Kirschbaum is the author of “Burning Beethoven: The Eradication of German Culture in the United States During World War I.”
A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 23, 2015, on page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: Auf Wiedersehen, Amerika!