Wednesday, October 26, 2005

US Demography


Well, I always thought that more than 90% of the population in the US was of British origin, since the British themselves had migrated to the 'new world' for a variety of reasons, and then they themselves had a civil war to create an independent country. But it's not quite right. It's much less than that. Well, recently I came to know that in North Dakota, where I am doing my masters, only about 8% people are of British origin, and about 30% are of Norwegian, abt 15% are German, and lots of Irish and other Scandinavian origin.

One more intresting fact I heard, of which I was an ABSOLUTE skeptic when I heard it for the first time, but later got it confirmed, is that when the United States constitution was being framed, while voting for the national language, German was the favourate, but due to some reasons, english was voted to be the national language and german lost by just two votes! Such is the wide demographic distribution of the US. Well can you imagine if that had happened, beacause of the economic domination of the US in todays world, we could have probably been taught german in our schools and not english, and this blog also perhaps would have been written in german!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey this is a cool blog.. being in ND myself didnt know so much bout the origin of the ppl here..esp bout the german origin of so many ppl here in the US! good blog dude..keep up the good work..

Aditya Pethe said...

Hi there. Now that does make an interesting read. Imagine the US populace sayin "Guten Tag! " , "Wie geht es Ihnen?" . Too good!!!

Where and in what are u doing ur MS in ddue?BTW ,great blog u have here dude.Have linked u.Keep up the good work!!

sampathbemgal said...

the blog which u have written is quite informative and keep it up..

Dani Tännler said...

Hi Pratik - Great post....I didn't now that too. Thats very surprising for me, you know, I speak german here in Switzerland. But one thing I have to say: I like the english language better....
I'm waiting for your next post...

Anonymous said...

hey every1...im this fabulous writers bro!!!! (ya ok...im proud of it) no kiddin but man its awesome this whole piece is.....keep the words flowin nice 1

skeptic optimist said...

Hey actually the 13 original US colonies were British,... The population that time was mostly Irish and scottish with most people Protestants ...and little bit Scandinavian. The French held Canada and Southern USA (Louisiana), and the Spanish controlled the west n Mexico. So primary population should have been these Anglo - French-Hispanic Plus the small native American-Indian and the "black slaves" brought in from Africa. If I am not mistaken, the Gold Rush in 1948 led to new settlers from Europe - mostly Dutch, German - Austrian, Scottish and Italian which continued till WW1. This time Chinese laborers also came to USA. Then Jews from Europe and later mostly the Hispanics from Mexico and Carribean came in. Other asylum seekers also landed in The Land of the Free. To make matters worse, South East Asian laborers and small Russian Groups fleeing the Wars came in. Recently Indian (desi) settlers come in as Software professionals. Somehow the only group absent in large numbers (unlike Britain) is the "Pakistani -Bangladeshi" community.

Perestroika said...

tht was exactly what i was saying, inspite of the fact tht the british ruled most of america, the people of british origin is not as much as one would think.
yes and the french did control parts of canada, and the spanish actually held most of the region to the west of the rocky mountains ,almost the entire western coast upto washington state!