52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
Week 10 – March 4 – 10, 2024
Language
My husband’s family, both on his maternal and paternal sides, were immigrants from Italy
and Lithuania. Growing up in a small Pennsylvania town with large immigrant populations his ancestors were no exception. As a small child, he lived near his
grandparents, aunts, and uncles as was
Old map of Tuscany
the case in many families. In fact, both sides of his family lived within a mile of each other. This was the common familial structure of the late nineteenth century to to mid-twentieth century.
His family on his paternal also owned and operated the town’s largest grocery and meat market. Miners, farmers, mill workers, and their wives who were immigrants were steady customers. Various languages were spoken, and broken English was often overheard in the
Old map of Lithuania
grocery store. The grocery store and butcher shop were on the first floor of their large neighborhood building and on the upper floors lived his Italian immigrant grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. As a child and throughout his college years
J. Morgantini grocery delivery truck
he spent most of his time at the store playing outside near the creek and passing time with his extended Italian family. As children do, he sometimes misbehaved and had to be reprimanded by his older relatives in the language of the “old country.”
During the early to mid-20th century immigrants usually spoke the language of their birth country to one another but not with the family’s children who only spoke English. The language of the “old country” became the secret language that the adults used to talk among themselves barring the children from understanding their conversations. As a consequence, my husband, even though he has Italian and Lithuanian roots, learned extraordinarily little to none of the elders’ languages. The words he figured out on his own were curse words! He knows all of them! Morgantini ancestors
Lithuanian ancestor wedding picture
As time passed the language of the old country was forgotten as the generations progressed. Bilingualism became outdated and English was the first and only language of his family’s descendants.
Today, as a genealogist I sometimes ask
him to translate a word or two from records that are now digitized. Unfortunately, he knows truly little of the Italian language and none of the Lithuanian language.
I had a friend whose mother taught her to speak her first language and she became fluent in Russian. What a skill! I was always envious of her.
My ancestors were mainly from England and Germany. I never learned a word of German or “Pennsylvania Dutch” as it was known in my family, or anything at all about the Cornish vernacular. After the first few generations, those languages disappeared and were lost to my family.
Fast forward to my career in education and, among other certificates that I earned was “English as a Second Language.” In today’s world being bilingual is a wonderful skill to possess as it may open more opportunities for employment and understanding of our fellow man. I have always encouraged students to use their family’s original language as well as English.
コメント