@ Sam

You had forgotten an important point: After WW I a lot of the Americans were against any German. So people often changed their names from "Schmied" to "Smith" and so on. One of the most popular American food, the Hot Dog, was called before WW I "Frankfurter".

more information:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Sprache_in_den_Vereinigten_Staaten

German help: Let translate google this in English.

The 49 milion americans said that German is their main ancestry. There are overall 60 million German Americans in the US.

In the following states the biggest part of people said that they have German ancestries:

Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania Dutch), South Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Here is the English article (it´s not so good, but it´s better to understand):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American

German is on place 3 of the most popular language in US schools.

Hallo 15 dec 2008, 09:45 - Rapporteer misbruik