Due to the high percentage of Americans of German origin, a widespread belief has emerged claiming that the US Congress, at the time of the nation’s founding and during the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, voted on the country’s official language, choosing between the two most widely spoken languages at the time, English and German.
According to this belief, English won by a margin of just one vote. Had the outcome been different, German would have become the official language of the United States and, as a result, the dominant language in much of the world today, given the immense global influence of American advancements that have generated hundreds of thousands of new vocabulary terms through innovations in fields such as medicine, aerospace, and computing.
The truth is that the U.S. Congress never voted on, nor passed, a law declaring English the official language of the United States. Instead, English became the dominant language as a de facto reality, largely because most of America’s founding fathers were of British origin. Over the years, members of Congress have introduced numerous bills seeking to designate English as the official language, but none were enacted as federal law or gained significant traction. In practice, English has been established at the federal level through usage rather than through a constitutional amendment or successful national legislation. Stories of a decisive congressional vote on the nation’s language remain historical myths. It is worth noting that President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March 2025 designating English as the official language of the United States for federal purposes. However, this was an executive action, not the result of a congressional vote or a constitutional change.
Aside from the federal level, many states have adopted laws or constitutional amendments making English their official language, often through state legislatures or popular referendums. This raises an important question - What explains the strong German presence in America? Germany established a strong presence in the United States through massive waves of immigration during the 19th century, driven by economic hardship, political instability, and land shortages, surpassing later British immigration in number.
These waves of German migration began in the 1820s and continued until World War I, with nearly six million Germans emigrating to the United States. Immigration peaked in the 1850s and again in the 1880s, largely due to the failure of major agricultural crops and the collapse of the 1848 revolutions. These events displaced political refugees, led to the fragmentation of farmland caused by overpopulation, and intensified social and religious pressures resulting from Prussian unification, particularly affecting Catholic and socialist Germans. German immigrants settled heavily throughout the United States, forming what became known as the German Belt in the Midwest, which included states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Missouri.
They established early communities like Germantown in 1683, and had controlled areas like Cincinnati and Milwaukee by 1890. However, why were there not more British immigrants, especially given that they had nearly dominated America during the early colonial period, making up about 60 percent of the population in 1790? British immigration to the United States slowed after independence in 1776, largely due to Britain’s economic recovery and the easing of pressures such as famines, wars, and political upheaval.
As a result, the number of German immigrants eventually exceeded that of later English immigrants, largely because German migration continued steadily while British migration declined. By 2000, the number of Americans of German descent had reached approximately 42.8 million, or about 15 percent of the U.S. population, surpassing both Irish Americans at 10.8 percent and English Americans at around 9 percent.
This growth was driven by higher birth rates and strong integration into American society, while still maintaining elements of German cultural identity. By 1894, there were around 800 newspapers published in German in the United States, most of which are no longer in circulation today. Cultural similarities, particularly the Protestant work ethic and shared Germanic linguistic roots, helped Germans integrate rapidly into English-speaking society without requiring them to completely abandon their German heritage.
