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The
Muhlenberg legend is an
urban legendAn urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true...
in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. According to the legend,
Frederick MuhlenbergFrederick Augustus Conrad Muhlenberg was an American minister and politician who was the first Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. A delegate and a member of the U.S...
, the first ever Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, kept
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
from becoming an official language of the United States. At the heart of this legend is a vote in the
United States House of RepresentativesThe United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
in 1794, in which a group of German immigrants asked for the translation of some laws into German. This petition was rejected by a 42 to 41 vote and Muhlenberg was later quoted as having said "the faster the Germans become Americans, the better it will be." The United States has no statutory official language; English has been used as on a
de facto basis, owing to its status as the country's predominant language. At times various states have passed their own official language laws.
The same legend also exists with
DutchDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
instead of German.
See also
- Frederick Muhlenberg
Frederick Augustus Conrad Muhlenberg was an American minister and politician who was the first Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. A delegate and a member of the U.S...
- German in the United States
Around 1.38 million Americans speak German. It is the second most spoken language in two states: North Dakota and South Dakota.In the United States, German is third in popularity after Spanish and French in terms of the number of colleges and universities offering instruction in the language.-...
- Languages of the United States
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