Did America's founding fathers really consider German to be the official language?

Answer 1

No, it never happened.

There is a story about a bill to make German the official language failing by just one vote. But it is an urban legend, based on a very mangled understanding an episode in 1795, when a proposal was considered (but NEVER voted on) to provide for laws to be printed in German as well (in response to a petition from German Americans).

For more details on that story, and how it came to be misunderstood check here:
http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/german.htm
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But even more basically -- the very idea that they might have considered a proposal to make German the official language is unthinkable.

Consider the following:

The 13 colonies were all BRITISH colonies, under British government (so that government affairs, the courts, etc., would have conducted business in ENGLISH) and in EACH of them the dominant group was British. In New England the colonists were overwhelmingly English or Welsh. Yes, there were significant pockets of Germans, some Dutch, French, etc. but NONE of these groups offered serious competition to English.

Here's a chart of the overall breakdown:
English 48.7 %
African 20.0 %
Scot-Irish 7.8 %
German 6.9 %
Scottish 6.6 %
Dutch 2.7 %
French 1.4 %
Swedish0.6 %
Other 5.3 %

Add the British groups together and you get 63.1%. Further, if you discount the Africans from the total (who would certainly have been in no position to impose their languages) you are left with 16.9% non-British. In other words, about 75% of the white population was British, and most of that from England. Even if were not all under British rule, there would have been NO contest!

You can see that German was the largest non-English speaking European group, but even they were a fraction of the size of the English-speaking population by a factor of better than 10 to 1 (following the count of the preceding paragraph)

For the population breakdown see:
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/us6.cfm

Answer 2

Absolutely not. This legend has been kicking around for a long time, usually presented this way: "the U.S. Congress debated a bill to make German the official language of the United States and it was defeated by one vote." This myth is used to support the idea that every vote counts.
Such a vote never took place. The closest thing to it was a petition by German-speaking settlers in Virginia to have laws published in both English and German. In 1795 a House of Representatives committee recommended that this be done, but it was never brought a vote.

Answer 3

That's a big negatory. In fact, the German colonies, the "Dutch" (Netherland) colonies, the French colonies and eventually the Spanish colonies ALL chose English because English is so much more versatile than any other language.

Answer 4

Yes, it was one language that was considered. At the time there was a significant number of German speaking people in the country, and with anti-British feelings running high, it was have seemed appealling to speak a different language. But in the end they decided that English would be the better choice.

Answer 5

No