This week's prompt is Another Language. Immediately I thought of my great-grandparents who both came here from Sweden. Two very different stories, though.
My great-grandmother, Ingrid Olauson, came to the United States on a freight boat without any friends or family accompanying her. She did not speak any English at all when she left Sweden. Ingrid arrived at Ellis Island in March of 1894. Somehow, she got on a train and went to Chicago where her cousin and the cousin's husband were living, and she stayed with them. She found work as a housekeeper and cook there. She said that her employer could not pronounce "Ingrid", so the employer changed her name to "Ida" (which is what she went by for the rest of her life). She slowly started learning English as she worked and lived here. She had a Swedish accent throughout her life, however. I can't even imagine what it must have been like to come to a foreign country to live and not know any of the language.
Then there was my great-grandfather, Karl Oscar Seg. He told the family that he had been born in Liverpool to Swedish parents and was sent to the United States when he was about nine years old and that he spoke no Swedish. This was the story the family believed for almost 100 years, until I finally learned his true story. Karl (whose name was changed to Charles) came to the United States in 1892 when he was nineteen years old. He had been born and raised in Sweden and lived there all his life until he immigrated. So clearly, he spoke Swedish, although no one ever knew that. When he came over, he went to live with an aunt and uncle in Indiana and worked in the brickyards where most of the workers were Irish and he learned English with an Irish accent!
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