Speaking the Language

What happens to a family’s native language when they move to Canada? Do they keep it up? Let it die out? And how do they navigate the sometimes murky waters of their native language vs. the community’s language?

This chapter answers all of those questions and more as the participants in the oral history project discuss their experiences with speaking both German and English in Waterloo Region. You’ll read about some participants’ encounters with Germany’s Nazi past, old-school practices like setting immigrant children back a year or two, and the history of the German language school. (Today, it operates under the Waterloo Region District School Board as the Concordia German Language School.)

German is still Waterloo Region’s second most commonly spoken native language. Find out what’s happening to it.