We are re-sending this historical "long view" of migrations by British Museum curator Rupert L. Chapman III, Ph.D. because deportation arrests will start the moment Trump is sworn in.
I love the etiology of the word "barbarian"! My father was a professor of Sociology for decades, first at the University of Michigan and then at the University of North Carolina. (His name was Gerhard Lenski.) I remember him telling me, many decades ago, that the "fall of the Roman Empire" was primarily caused by the mass migration of people who spoke many different languages -- less so the fact that they also brought with them a myriad of different religions and cultures. He felt that "the center could not hold" (to quote Chinua Achebe, well actually William Butler Yeats, to be accurate) as a result. He said that the most important thing, in his opinion, was that English be THE language of the United States, and no other language should be allowed in schools or other public places. Interestingly, when his mother was a child (born in 1887), her mother had immigrated from Germany. Her husband was from a German family which had immigrated generations before, but still spoke German. Only German was spoken in the home. When my Grandma started school, she had no idea what was being said. The teacher went to their house and told my great-Grandfather (great-Grandmother, of course, couldn't have understood her) that the children were to speak ONLY English at home; otherwise they could never become fluent in the language. [A parallel is with one of my great-Grandmothers on the other side of the family. She, too, was a German immigrant, married to a man whose family had come to the United States from Germany 100 years earlier. Her children were therefore fluent in English. However, when WW I began, she was warned to STOP speaking German in public because Germany was our enemy. According to one of her daughters, she never spoke German again.]
I love the etiology of the word "barbarian"! My father was a professor of Sociology for decades, first at the University of Michigan and then at the University of North Carolina. (His name was Gerhard Lenski.) I remember him telling me, many decades ago, that the "fall of the Roman Empire" was primarily caused by the mass migration of people who spoke many different languages -- less so the fact that they also brought with them a myriad of different religions and cultures. He felt that "the center could not hold" (to quote Chinua Achebe, well actually William Butler Yeats, to be accurate) as a result. He said that the most important thing, in his opinion, was that English be THE language of the United States, and no other language should be allowed in schools or other public places. Interestingly, when his mother was a child (born in 1887), her mother had immigrated from Germany. Her husband was from a German family which had immigrated generations before, but still spoke German. Only German was spoken in the home. When my Grandma started school, she had no idea what was being said. The teacher went to their house and told my great-Grandfather (great-Grandmother, of course, couldn't have understood her) that the children were to speak ONLY English at home; otherwise they could never become fluent in the language. [A parallel is with one of my great-Grandmothers on the other side of the family. She, too, was a German immigrant, married to a man whose family had come to the United States from Germany 100 years earlier. Her children were therefore fluent in English. However, when WW I began, she was warned to STOP speaking German in public because Germany was our enemy. According to one of her daughters, she never spoke German again.]