Hyphenated American
[3] Other contemporaries, like Bishop John Joseph Frederick Otto Zardetti, argued eloquently that there is no contradiction between American patriotism and loyalty to one's ancestral culture, religion, and heritage language.
[5] Contemporary studies and debates refer to Hyphenated-American identities to discuss issues such as multiculturalism and immigration in the U.S. political climate; however, the term "hyphen" is rarely used per the recommendation of modern style guides.
During World War I, the issue arose of the primary political loyalty of ethnic groups who retained close ties to their relatives in Europe, especially German Americans.
"[9][10][11] In the 1920s, the Wall Street Journal condemned "hyphenates" who were said to be among the supporters of the Progressive Party's Robert M. La Follette Jr..[12] A vocal source of criticism of Roosevelt and Wilson's "anti-hyphen" ideology and particularly to their demands for "100 percent Americanism" came, quite understandably, from America's enormous number of White ethnic immigrants and their descendants.
[4] Zardetti's argument is further supported and strengthened by the fact that Francis Scott Key's lyrics to the U.S. national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, have seen multiple literary translations into immigrant languages that are able to be successfully sung to the same melody.
In 1861, very likely to help encourage German-American military service in the Union Army and the Navy during the American Civil War, the lyrics were translated into the German language in the United States and widely circulated in pamphlet form.
[21][22] Furthermore, in a letter published on July 16, 1916, in the Minneapolis Journal, Edward Goldbeck, a member of Minnesota's traditionally very large German-American community, sarcastically announced that his people would, "abandon the hyphen", as soon as English-Americans did so.
[26] On the other hand, The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage allows compounds with name fragments (bound morphemes), such as Italian-American and Japanese-American, but not "Jewish American" or "French Canadian".
[28] The linguistic construction functionally indicates ancestry, but also may connote a sense that these individuals straddle two worlds—one experience is specific to their unique ethnic identity, while the other is the broader multicultural amalgam that is Americana.
