Especially in the Midwest, where there were huge settlements of northern Europeans, such as Danes, Swedes and Norwegians. Are there still sizeable pockets? I imagine the Danes would have been easier to assimilate, because English retained a lot of Danish Viking influence.
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It isn’t.
Not common at all, AFAIK.
German is definitely still spoken in some religious communities like Mennonites and Amish.
Other than that, I’m not aware of any widespread day-to-day speakers of Scandinavian languages, especially several generations later.
Remnants of the accent and customs are very common, some connection to Scandi heritage is very common in these regions, but there aren’t a ton of actual speakers compared to our other most prevalent languages. Idk about sizeable, but yes, there are pockets in the Midwest where Swedish, Norwegian, Danish etc are spoken at much higher rates than the rest of the country.
I believe you find small pockets in Minnesota and the Dakotas, but it’s not prominent.
Not at all The main immigration wave from the Nordics to the Midwest was in the mid to late 1800s. I remember my Great-grandmother who told me that her Grandfather spoke Swedish but not her mother.
Not much point in keeping a language only a tiny portion of the population uses.
Danish vikings? Danish people would likely be the people that were not vikings. Except for the very earliest vikings, they didn’t return home — they settled where they raided and conquered.
I have Scandinavian DNA, but only found out it was Viking from a DNA study. They landed in Scotland and settled – so I thought I was Scottish on that side of the family.
People emigrating from Scandinavia to US were descended from folks that weren’t Vikings – not the ones that were because they were off in Ireland, Scotland, Iceland, and France.
But after a few generations most people don’t speak the language. We had a lot of Swedes and Finn in Central Mass — so I grew up with folks who grandmothers spoke it – but that was decades ago. Most here don’t speak it anymore. They still have Swedish and Finnish social clubs and gatherings but they don’t speak it anymore.
I cannot speak to those in the upper Midwest, but Norwegian communities in the Seattle area are pretty much gone excluding a museum and a couple of restaurants. I know several families with significant Danish roots in Utah but the only things that have left are their blonde hair and the spelling of their last names.
It is rare for cultural identity and language to last more than a couple generations in the US when your kids go to school with fully assimilated groups. Unless there is a consistent influx of course.
I think the Amish might have some sort of hybrid
Very rare if at all. Even in the upper Midwest where there are a lot of Scandinavian immigrants it is not something I have ever heard of these days.
Almost none at all. German is still spoken by some religious communities in the US, but almost all North European languages die out within three generations.
Scandanavian immigrants didn’t necessarily pass their native tongue down to their children as much as others because it 1) isn’t culturally tied with their identity (as with a lot of Asian cultures), 2) isn’t academically advantageous (as with French, German, and Greek), and 3) doesn’t have as unified a portion of immigrants who came in unable to speak English.
Now, there were exceptions, for example. My mormor was the daughter of Norwegian immigrants, and she was always trying, and failing, to teach my mom and older sibling Norwegian. You’re more likely to find pockets of people who speak the scandanavian languages in places where there are a lot of organizations and festivals to celebrate their heritage (look for places with a lot of Sons of Norway lodges) but most of those are descendents who have gone out of their way to learn, rather than a chain of people who have maintained the language from their immigrant ancestors.
Not at all, and as a matter of fact people in Nordic countries today speak better English than many Americans
i guess since old norse had a huge influence on shaping the english language and english is spoken in america then you could argue that the language of scandinavian descendants is spoken pretty often?
I lived for a couple of decades in a small Wisconsin village. And for the first five or so years, I would hear Norwegian spoken by some of the elderly out and about. By the time I left, though, it had pretty much stopped as they died.
If you’re interested, the Decorah (Iowa) Posten published Norwegian newspapers until the 1970s. Decorah is home to the Vesterheim, which is an awesome museum of Norwegian immigrant history. Home to Luther College, Sail Norse!
Scandinavian American here great grandparents came here. We do Christmas traditions and within our family we have certain words and phrases we use amongst ourselves.
Like with a lot of the German-American populations, most of the Nordic Americans underwent a large and thorough process of assimilation in the early and mid 1900s, so very few people speak a Nordic language. Plus you throw in inter-ethnic mixing over that period and the assimilation process goes even quicker. There’s pockets of influence and the languages as well as a number of the cultural aspects that stuck around more, but most of the Nordic descendants are your average midwesterner now. As an interesting note, a sizable portion of Danes in the United States moved to the US because they converted to Mormonism and settled in Utah.
Not much. Mostly by the third generation even the accent is starting to fade. Unless they make a concerted effort to retain the language of the home country it just disappears.
Not really common, I have a friend who is descended from Norwegians and he’s learning Norwegian so he can learn about his own heritage and his family came here in the 1800s as did a lot of people
Assimilation was viewed as key for most late 19th/early 20th century immigrants.
Like most Americans I am very mixed but with majority Danish blood from North Dakota. Great grand parents (19th century) spoke it and English. Grand parents spoke both but 90% English after adulthood. They never passed the language to their children (my parent).
This will seem to be political but my family wanted to be American. They didn’t like where they came from. They wanted to start anew. There was very little nostalgia aside from a few things (mostly food) as it related to the old world.
I know some people of Scandi descent who are learning their ancestor’s language for funsies and possible travel, but most of that immigration happened quite a long time ago. You’ll hear the influence in certain regional accents, but actual pockets of native speakers, I’m not sure there are any.
No one speaks them. We are just white Americans.
There are large communities of Vikings living in Minnesota on the lakes. It’s very dangerous there. They only speak Old Norse, and since nobody else on Earth speaks it anymore (literally) they get very frustrated. If you’re going to visit them in their remote enclaves, bring somebody along who speaks Icelandic, you may be able to establish relations that way.
We can trace some vocabulary, customs, or culinary traditions back to Scandinavian countries. However, Americans who speak Scandinavian or other European languages do so because of recent ties to the country of origin, not because of ties many generations past. I am American and speak Dutch. My mother is Dutch.
The largest pockets like that are German (that I know of). It’s always awesome to stumble across one.
I think the Danes did assimilate and Germans made their own little fiefdoms
My grandmother was Swedish 100 percent by ancestry. All of her traditions were American pop culture. She was stylish and urban, had a kickass career in healthcare. Her parents were rural and had to flee the Dustbowl, sell the farm for pennies.
I’m in Minnesota. I’m 46. At our family reunions we still have some Finnish and Swedish languages spoken and a lot of songs sung from my great uncles, aunts, cousins. I have some great videos!
They are so well educated that it’s hard to get them to speak anything but English to you even if you are visiting in Europe.
I had to work out in the Midwest for a few years, and so many people had Scandinavian names, and used various Scandinavian words when speaking. Their food is very Scandinavian/German as well… I’m from New England, and our dialect and food mostly comes from the British tradition, so it was interesting seeing all the various types of sausages, hunting, liquors, and different things we don’t have in my region.
There were a few people I met with who spoke Swedish, Norwegian, or Danish… but many said they spoke an older dialect that is different from what is spoken today in those countries. Many of them grew up with grandparents from those countries, and learned the language growing up.
My grandfather spoke some Norwegian, among other Norwegian Americans. His grandfather was a Norwegian immigrant to the US, who traveled through the Midwest, but ended up in central Texas, in what remains an unincorporated community called Norse. He taught his children and his grandchildren a very few phrases and songs in Norwegian, including Ja vi esker dette landet! Per Spelmann and Ride Ride Ranke.
Not an answer, exactly, but some relevant family history: my great-grandparents immigrated from Norway to Indiana in the early 1900s. Although they spoke Norwegian to each other sometimes, they never really taught it to their kids. In fact, my grandma said her parents tended to only speak Norwegian when they didn’t want their kids to know what they were saying. She did pick up some Norwegian – enough to teach me a song in Norwegian that I still remember – but she lost most of it by the time she was an adult.
I’ve known exaxctly one American who can speak Danish and he immigrated from Denmark.
Lindsborg in central Kansas is still a hotspot of swedish culture. Lot of descendants of swedes and you can still see signboards in swedish which I believe directed towards tourists.
With a few exceptions that have been mentioned in small and self-isolating communities, most descendants of immigrants lose the language of the home country by the second generation.
Half of my family descended from Norway. Basically, as with most other immigrant groups, the language was largely lost within 2 generations.
In the 90s there was a local news program that was still broadcast in Finnish for the mining immigrants to Upper Michigan but it isn’t common to have anyone fleunt around in my experience.
Random words, phrases, recipes, touristy restaurants, and knick knacks are common but the language not so much.
My name is Leif, (pronounced Lay-F), my great grandparents (Kaya and Erik) came from Bergen Norway in the early 1900s. Outside of names, no Norwegian is spoken at home. Purely English.
Not at all. There are some cultural societies that get together to celebrate traditions from the old country, especially in places like Minnesota and Chicago that had large Scandinavian settlements. But it is extremely rare for anyone who isn’t the child (not grandchild, child) of a Scandinavian immigrant to speak one of those languages.
My own great-grandparents emigrated from Sweden, but they chose to speak only English with their American-born children, because it was thought better at the time (~1920s) to assimilate fully. So even their own kids didn’t speak it and certainly not their grandkids or great-grandkids (my generation). This was pretty common, I think.
Even now, a lot of my friends growing up were children of immigrant parents (from multiple different countries) and most of them could understand their parents’ native languages but weren’t proficient speakers. We understand now that being bilingual is a benefit rather than a hindrance, but is hard to maintain fluency in a minority language if you don’t have the opportunity to use it on a regular basis. At least Spanish and Polish speakers are likely to have a local community of fellow speakers around. There aren’t large pockets of recent Scandinavian immigrants like that here anymore. I studied Swedish for a little while and I couldn’t find anyone local to practice with.
Not too common, although I know dinner Evo took a year of Norwegian at Luther College. German is a more persistent language in the Midwest. But most Americans refuse to learn any foreign language, so it!s all relative.
Third generation here. Nordic descent. My dad was the last to speak Finnish. My grandma lost her ability to speak English as she got older.
I’m sure some Scandinavian words made it in to the language but no, they all pretty much speak English nowadays.
The Scandinavians got subsumed or forgotten.
Green County Wisconsin is locally famous for its Swiss-ness. Nearly of all so-called Swiss people are at least a quarter Norwegian, yet there’s a sort of collective agreement to ignore that part.
In Minnesota, there are some relics of Scandinavia with place names, maybe accents. Minnesota is the only place where grade school kids might play “duck duck gray duck” instead of “duck duck goose,” because of Swedish influence. At the moment, Minnesota is mostly German, with some Scandinavians, then Czechs, Poles, and British. Yet the NFL team founded in the 1960s is the Vikings…
Almost never honestly
The anti-German sentiment during the world wars did a number on a bunch of non-English speakers that wasn’t limited to German. In 1918, Iowa had a thing on the books that mandated public speaking (including church service), telephone conversations, and public education to be in English. That caught up all of the Scandinavian folks too. It didn’t last long after the war, but that kind of thing happened.
Most of the side of the family from Norway I have all lost it after the first generation. Some I know from Minnesota picked up some at home and other places but the kids that are 3rd gen I don’t think know anything beyond some cuss words and common exclamations. Maybe the daily bread prayer and some religion stuff too
Not common. My mother’s side is a mix of Dane and German and it pretty much died out with my great grandparent’s generation or even the generation before that. I know my great grandma, who was born in 1899 in the US to immigrant parents was bilingual with English and Low German. The Dane ancestry was from my great grandpa’s side and I am pretty sure he was English speaking only. My grandparent’s generation were English only.
Really not common. I’d say the more common ones coming from descendants are
I feel like I’m forgetting a really important one
My older cousins wife is a Norwegian immigrant as is her entire family.
I have never heard them speak anything other than English.
I lived in New Netherland (NJ) and have literally never heard anyone speaking Dutch. There were a lot of place names that were either Dutch or rooted in a dutch word, and I knew a few people with Dutch last names.
Language? Zero.
Not common. Most of those people immigrated to the US in the 1800s. It’s not just that they’ve lost that part of their culture over the years, but they’ve blended and intermarried. So you find people who are equal parts Irish, Swedish, Dutch, German, Polish and Danish. That’s a lot of cultural plates to spin, lol.
Immigrant home country languages usually disappear by the second or third generation due to assimilation.
In 20 years as a doctor, I’ve never needed a translator for any Scandinavian language (IL/CA)
It was common in Utah until about 50-60 years ago. Now? Not at all common.
My friend’s kid go to Swedish school on the weekend in the southeast to learn the language
There are some communities in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where Finnish was spoken by a few people. My friend’s girlfriend worked at a retirement home and some of the residents would forget English as they aged, so the staff had learn a few dozen phrases in Finnish so that they could communicate with the residents.
Now that I live in Minnesota I know one person who speaks Swedish (his first language, he’s in his 80’s) and a few people who claim to speak Norwegian but if I ask if they read Bokmål or Nynorsk they have no clue what I’m talking about. Oddly, the only Danish I have met was a guy from Venezuela (raised by Danish parents). I lived in Denmark briefly so I wish there were more people who knew Danish here.
Maybe a phrase or two “Uff da!” Or “Tusen takk” but not fluency.
For better or worse, Chicago is extremely segregated. There is a neighborhood somewhere for virtually any culture where you can get by.
You might want to look up Lindsborg, Kansas. I saw some videos about it (maybe on YouTube?) and they still keep a lot of Swedish customs and still have native speakers. There’s a huge emphasis on their shared Swedish heritage, apparently.
I live in Minnesota, and am descended from Norwegians, Danes, Swedes, and Finns. I knew some of my great-grandparents as a child, and not even any of them still spoke a scandinavian language (some of my finnish ancestors were from the swedish speaking parts tho).
Most of the state lives in cities, and basically only does the really strong Fargo-esque accent as a bit, when angry from hearing it as a child, or as a shibboleth.
There are some more rural areas where older more dramatic accents still prevail, but I think they are dying out a bit with the interconnectedness of a post-internet society.
It’s just Spanish from all the illegal immigrants now, unfortunately.
One of my favorite TV shows as a kid featured a celebrity chef who spoke Mock Swedish.
I have not encountered this. I am aware of communities in US where primary language is Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese and others. I cannot recall encountering or even hearing of a Scandinavian language community.
While it’s true US has historically had large numbers of Scandinavian immigrants, it’s been many generations since there were boatloads of them.
And more recent immigrants arrive fluent in English. Most of the Scandinavian tourists I meet more than know English, they’re fluent.
Across the board families tend to lose fluency in their old language by the 3rd generation here. A few exceptions with very strong cultural enclaves or a critical mass of immigration in a waves exist but even they tend to over time.
Those settlements were a long time ago.
Family names, place names, sometimes even a regional accent, sure it shows. But the languages aren’t common.
Unless a person immigrated themself, it’s not common at all.
My great grandparents were first generation Danish immigrants, and my grandma spoke only Danish until she started school, but that was in the 1920s. My dad didn’t speak Danish, and neither my sister or I do either.
On the other side of my family, some of my mom’s ancestors were from Norway, but they came to the US in the 1800s, and past the first generation no one really learned or spoke Norwegian.
My mother-in-law’s dad’s family immigrated from Sweden in the 1800s, but again after the first generation they all just spoke English. My mother-in-law has learned a few words and phrases because she visited some (distant) cousins in Sweden, but that’s the closest anyone comes to having learned the language of their Scandinavian ancestors.
Something you can probably tell from reading the above is that a lot of Americans have incredibly diverse cultural heritages.
Some families might identify more with one ancestral culture than the others, but that can be pretty arbitrary. For example, I’m basically a Northern European mutt, descended from a mix of Danish, Norwegian, Irish, German, English, French, and Scottish ancestors, and that’s not an uncommon mix. However, my family has been culturally American for five or six generations with the exception of my paternal great grandparents, so there’s no real reason to learn the language of one set of immigrant ancestors over another.
Instead, like most Americans, I learned Spanish in high school because it’s the most commonly spoken second language in the US. I also took four years of Japanese in college because I was kind of a weeb at the time.
I think there’s still a degree of cultural influence in the Midwest, especially in religious communities. But the languages aren’t really there at this point.
I don’t know of any, in ny personal experience. In my family, my mother’s parents immigrated to Minnesota from Norway following WWII and found a community of other recent immigrants (I grew up thinking Norwegian accents were an MN specific dialect of English lol) so my mom who was born in the US spoke Norwegian as a first language, and actually didn’t start learning English until she was like seven. But then once she started school she caught up pretty fast, and now English is her primary language. I’m actually not sure she’d qualify as bilingual.
Obviously that’s just one person’s experience, but I think it’s pretty representative. Scandinavians just didn’t have any religious or historical reasons for separate schools and so they assimilated pretty fast, to the point that if gen 3 wants to learn the language we have to get on Duolingo or something
Kind of died out with our grandparents’ generation
In my family, it died out in the first generation. My great-grandfather immigrated from Sweden in the late 1890s, and none of his children grew up speaking Swedish. All my family really has left of our Swedish heritage is a fondness for dark rye bread and black licorice, and a killer split pea soup recipe.
I think it was common, at least in some communities, to try very hard to assimilate. It’s still not an uncommon mindset, I think. My father’s second wife is an immigrant, and neither of my half-siblings grew up learning her native language. Again, what they have as their cultural heritage is mostly related to food.
I’ve been in Minnesota for 42 years and I don’t know anyone that speaks anything other than English, German was common still a couple of generations ago.
This isn’t the thing and hasnt’ been in my recollection since the 1980s, probably a lot ealier. After WWII with the mass migration to the suburbs, instead of a neighborhood speaking Polish and another Swedish and another Italian, they lived in houses next to each other in the same neighborhood. The Pole’s daughter married the Swede’s son,
Growing up in the 80s, the families that still had distinct ancestry y still seemed to try to stay connected to their culture even if they were all speaking English day to day by then- teach their kids some words of the native language, eat lefse, do the thing where the girl wears a crown of candles and serves cakes, but my impression is even this is pretty much extinct now that they newest familes have been in America 100 years.
I’m a quarter Scandinavian (mostly Danish and a little Swedish), and the only thing that I know was passed down from them was the practice of making æbleskivers.
As others mentioned, many Utahns have Scandinavian heritage, and the only people I know who speak Scandinavian languages lived there at some point.
I live in northern Illinois, and the town next to ours is mostly of Swedish descent. There’s a Viking ship in the public park. The old downtown pub is called the Stockholm.
We’ve lived here for over 20 years… I have not heard Swedish (nor any other Scandi language) spoken. Not even once. (Except when I was actually in Scandinavia, which was lovely.)
My great-grandmother came from Denmark. She never taught any of her descendants Danish. It depresses me whenever I think about it.
My grandma could, but she was the last of the family. She moved away from an enclave and married a non Scandinavian so my dad doesn’t speak it, not do I. My great grandfather was a Lutheran minister who preached in Norwegian.