Say here, I met a few kids in my childhood that were born to a French and Polish family that in grade 2 could speak 3 languages French, Polish and English. They just shifted gears effortlessly as they went from school to different grandparents homes in town.
The parents spoke English outside the home but when inside spoke the Mother Tongue of their family.
Sometime in America it became a case of low class to speak anything but English starting around the time of the great immigration in the late 1800's.
As the parents of children struggled to learn English they stopped speaking their own language at home and the kids seldom learned it. Many kids were put to work back then in the mills and sweat shops at a very early age and forced to learn English as were their parents.
American and Canadian Indians got the worse of this. The family's had their own tribal language and all spoke English as well.
Back in the late 1920's up to the 1960's the Canadian kids that lost parents went into schools and institution's run by the Catholic Church. One survivor I know very well had with 6 brothers and sisters been placed in an instuition that cared for them.
What a mess for the kids, they were punished if they dared use the tribal language, even down to two year old using a non English word . I am not speaking of time outs I am speaking beatings and food with held.
A couple years ago a big court case was brought against not just the Church but the Government of Canada by the survivors and as most were now in late years survivors, they still got a good size settlement to pass on to their kids for the horror of their childhood.
Still pisses me off that one side of my family French Canadian refused to teach me their Language or Culture as they feared some kind of backlash to me as an adult.
Irish and Italians need not apply, Dogs and Sailors keep off the grass====
