My aunt and uncle life in the USA for over 40 years.
Under pressor they still slip German words.
I think it depends at what age your character goes to the States. Everything after 20 your charakter would still go to it´s "native" language (because the language pattern in your brain are hardwired that way and no matter how good you speak a language you will slip back)
On the opposite side, I have a friend who was born in (West) Germany, somewhere in Hessen iirc, and he migrated to the US when he was 14. (With his parents and younger brother.) This was around 1990. He said about 10 years ago that he'd lost almost all his German because he hasn't used it.
My great-grandfather came to the US in 1908, when he was 8, but he died 4 months before I was born, so I can't ever know if he maintained his German. (Odds are good; his family moved to a German community in PA.) I do know that his sons never learned German, nor did my mom or her brothers. I did, but I learned it in school.
ETA: One of my aunts (mom's brother's wife) is from a Cuban family, and she can speak Spanish, but she didn't raise her children bilingual. She doesn't read Spanish. One of her sons took Spanish in high school.
Thank you. I appreciate the answer. A little background on the MC's mother: she would have been born in the mid-1950s and moved to the US when she was in her late 20s. She works as a teacher and initially learned English to teach in Germany; although I'm not firm on this detail, when she gets to the US, I think she may want to be a German teacher in an American school if possible. I'm not sure if that influences how/in what language she would exclaim if under pressure, though, since it seems answers vary quite a bit.
It will definitely depend somewhat on the mother's age when she emigrated; if she was a child or early teen, she's likely to become very Americanised. If she was well into adulthood, she'll probably continue to think in her native language, and to swear in it at times.
This probably varies a lot from person to person but I switch very quickly between thinking in different languages. Reading a book in a foreign language, marathoning a TV show, or learning about a certain topic, and then thinking about it can be sufficient. (And I'm not even bilingual nor have I spent more than a couple of weeks at at time out of my country.)
My dad spoke no English until he was 12. He swears in English - because that's the language in which he knows most swearwords. (His childhood swears would be the equivalent of "poopyhead"!) His grammar and word choice*, however, is reverting to Italian as he gets older. He also has an English accent in Italian, though he's still fluent. My aunts find this hilarious (they kept their more authentic accents as they spent far more time with my grandmother as adults).
Perceived fluency depends a little on vocabulary - my dad appears non-fluent in Business Italian, since most of the language involved never came up at primary school... If your character left as an adult they should be fine, but bear in mind that languages do go through periods of reform and change, and she might miss out on vocabulary that those remaining in Germany would use. (The only example that springs to mind would be her not understanding "Handy" for a mobile phone, but I'm sure there are others.)
* He now "opens and closes" things that in English we "turn on and
( ... )
On language change, I read a very entertaining interview with Mariella Frostrup in which she commented that she didn't write fiction in Swedish, because although she was still perfectly capable of writing complex Swedish, her knowledge of the idiomatic language of her story was out of date, so her 90s cool teenagers would sound like 60s cool teenagers.
My dad spoke Afrikaans until the age of 16 and he is now in his 60s - while he can still understand it and can translate single words easily, he definitely can't speak or write it fluently. He did have English as a second language though, and moved to an English-speaking country, so he probably stuck with English more than someone who completely switched languages.
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Under pressor they still slip German words.
I think it depends at what age your character goes to the States. Everything after 20 your charakter would still go to it´s "native" language (because the language pattern in your brain are hardwired that way and no matter how good you speak a language you will slip back)
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My great-grandfather came to the US in 1908, when he was 8, but he died 4 months before I was born, so I can't ever know if he maintained his German. (Odds are good; his family moved to a German community in PA.) I do know that his sons never learned German, nor did my mom or her brothers. I did, but I learned it in school.
ETA: One of my aunts (mom's brother's wife) is from a Cuban family, and she can speak Spanish, but she didn't raise her children bilingual. She doesn't read Spanish. One of her sons took Spanish in high school.
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This probably varies a lot from person to person but I switch very quickly between thinking in different languages. Reading a book in a foreign language, marathoning a TV show, or learning about a certain topic, and then thinking about it can be sufficient. (And I'm not even bilingual nor have I spent more than a couple of weeks at at time out of my country.)
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Perceived fluency depends a little on vocabulary - my dad appears non-fluent in Business Italian, since most of the language involved never came up at primary school... If your character left as an adult they should be fine, but bear in mind that languages do go through periods of reform and change, and she might miss out on vocabulary that those remaining in Germany would use. (The only example that springs to mind would be her not understanding "Handy" for a mobile phone, but I'm sure there are others.)
* He now "opens and closes" things that in English we "turn on and ( ... )
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