In 1787 the Constitutional Convention conceived of the United States of America. There was, however, much work to be done to bring about a successful birth. Ben Franklin and the Pennsylvanians wanted their state to be the first to ratify the document. To that end they published 3,000 copies of the document and distributed them throughout the state. Two thousand of them were in English and one thousand were in German.
Apparently, even in the womb, the nation avoided paralytic monolingualism..
Interesting! A quick check with Wikipedia reveals that German is the largest ethnic group in the US, but Spanish is the second most spoken language (German is 5th).
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