While most heritage languages in the United States die out by the third generation, Texas German is unusual in that most German Texans continued to speak German in their homes and communities for several generations after settling in the state, the State of Texas recognized German as having equal status to Spanish from 1846 up until World War I, when Texas education rules were established mandating English-only instruction, requiring children to learn English in school regardless of what was spoken outside it. Due to the assimilation of these communities and public hostility towards the German language during both World War I and World War II, Texas German speakers drifted towards English and few passed the language to their descendants. By 1950, the number of new speakers of the language was virtually zero. The dialects are near extinction, as they are now spoken almost exclusively by a few elderly German Texans. Currently, Dr. Hans Boas at the University of Texas is recording and studying the dialect, building on research originally performed by Dr. Glenn Gilbert of Southern Illinois University Carbondale in the 1960s. Boas' book on the language, The Life and Death of Texas German, describes the German dialects which may have been the source of the language spoken in Texas. A feature-length documentary project named "All Güt Things" is currently being developed about the language and will be completed by April 2017.
Current distribution and population
As of the U.S. 2000 Census, some 1,035 people report speaking German at home in Fredericksburg, the town with the largest community of Texas German speakers, representing 12.48% of the total population, 840 in New Braunfels, 150 in Schulenburg, 85 in Stonewall, 70 in Boerne, 65 in Harper, 45 in Comfort and 19 in Weimar, all of which except for Schulenburg and Weimar, lie in the traditional Texas German heartland of the Hill Country. Gillespie County, with the communities of Fredericksburg, Harper, Stonewall, and Luckenbach, has a German-speaking population of 2,270, 11.51% of the county's total. In all, 82,100 German-speakers reside in the state of Texas, including European German speakers.
Comparisons with German and English
Texas German is adapted to U.S. measurement and legal terminologies. Standard American German words typically were invented, introduced from other German dialects of the region, or English loanwords were introduced for words not present in 19th-century German. Dialect leveling is also found throughout many of the American German dialects including Texas German. In some cases, these new words also exist in modern Standard German, but with a different meaning. For instance, the wordLuftschiff means airship in Standard German. The table below illustrates some examples of differences:
