Quote:
Originally Posted by East7thStreet
I think the German language was kept on the downlow after WW2 in a lot of the US....I had no idea a lot of my family in south Texas spoke German and didn't believe it until I asked my grandmother.... after which she broke out in fluent German....she was in her 80's at the time and it was the first time I heard it.
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Now that you bring it up I wonder to what degree non-responses or under-reporting (or in some cases over reporting, for instance, saying you speak a language when you barely know a few words) knowledge of a language skews any of the results.
I'd imagine that survey data is less personal and people have less incentive to hide/mask what languages they do or don't know than say, in person (where someone might say that they know a language to show off, or not know it because they want to feel "assimilated" and think speaking that language is not something they're particularly proud of).