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German Americans are citizens of the United States of ethnic German ancestry and currently form the largest ancestry group in the United States.[1] The first significant numbers arrived in the 1680s in New York and Pennsylvania. Some eight million German immigrants entered the United States since then. Immigration continued in substantial numbers during the 18th century; the largest number of arrivals came 1840–1900. Germans form the largest group of immigrants coming to the U.S., outnumbering even the Irish and English.[2] Some arrived seeking religious or political freedom, others for economic opportunities greater than those in Europe, and others simply for the chance to start afresh in the New World. California and Pennsylvania have the largest populations of German origin, with over six million German-Americans residing in the two states alone.[1] Nearly 50 million people in the United States identify German as their ancestry, the US Census Bureau reported in July 2005. In Pennsylvania, English and German were co-official languages until the around the time of the First World War.