[QUOTE]No other immigrant group in the US shed their language like the Famine Irish. Most retained vestiges of their language in the home until the third American generation arrived on the scene. The Famine Irish weren't even speaking Irish in the second generation[/QUOTE]

I know this is correct. The same shedding of the language was going on in parallel in Ireland. In 1840, according to linguistic historians, if you drew a line down the centre of Ireland, everyone to the west would have been monolingual in Irish, everyone to the east bilingual in Irish and English.

After the Famine Irish died out within a couple of generations in most of the country - probably mainly due to the fact that families were broken up by the deaths of parents, as well as by the determination of the British government to wipe it out.

[QUOTE], so strong was the association of "shanty Irish" with speaking Irish among the Famine immigrants.[/QUOTE]

Now, this is where the scholarly observation is tainted by assumptions that are not necessarily accurate. To not that Irish died out is correct, but to assume that this was the reason is not good practice.