German fading from colonial America?

Question

When the British had set up colonies in America almost all of them spoke German, but why did German fade away and English become dominant. And also how did German get so widespread in the colonies if they were British?

Answer 1

That's an overstatement. German was spoken by the settlers around Philadelphia because they came from Germany and Switzerland, largely as religious refugees. There were also smaller German settlements in New Jersey and South Carolina, and of course some Germans pretty much everywhere.

There were also many Dutch settlers in New York, Swedish settlers in New Jersey and Delaware, and so forth. (The modern New York accent owes some of its sounds to Dutch.)

But overall English was always the dominant language. There was some talk about making German an official language of Pennsylvania, but it went nowhere.