As an inveterate watcher of culture changes, I'm particularly fascinated by migration, which hurls entirely different peoples up near each other, who would otherwise certainly never have met.

That's certainly the case in my neighborhood, full of immigrants from Philippines, Honduras, Mexico, Italy, Cambodia, Laos, and more.

The children from these homes pick up the school bus in my front yard, giving me a little early-morning soap opera to enjoy (squabbles, re-enactments of action movies and hip-hop moves, sibling rivalries, etc.) One thing the children all have in common is a solid grasp of the English language.

Which sets them apart from their parents. Most parents in my block have enough English for their blue-collar jobs (truck-drivers, handymen, hotel housekeepers and more), but the kids are enrolled in school, a more intense English than many workplaces.

Anyway, here's a story from the research news at Wisconsin: English language appropriation by immigrants seems to have taken much longer in 1900 than today. By a factor of generations.

Researchers noted, for example, that German so dominated Milwaukee at that time, that Irish immigrants were likely to acquire German, while mono-lingual Germans experienced no economic handicap.

Lutheran churches in the area began experimenting with English-language sermons in the late 1920s, well after WW1.

All this is entirely interesting, but here's a question: why are today's immigrants so much quicker to learn English?

We can only guess, because the article here only talks about the past, not today.

I'd love folks' opinions: is assimilation accelerating? If so, why? What's going on?

[pictured: From the New York Public Library on flickr, a German Stowaway awaiting deportation in 1911]