It may surprise you to learn that only 51% of New Yorkers speak English at street level but they maintain their mother tongues at home and in their local communities. (1) What however, really stands out, is the sheer number of languages spoken in the city. Apart from English, the major players are, unsurprisingly, Spanish (a quarter of the population), followed by Chinese. (2) However, it’s not called the Big Apple for nothing: hundreds of cultural languages share the rest of the pie. (3) Further down the list, a more complex picture of the cultural landscape emerges, mirroring today’s mobile globalized population. Finally, at the bottom, just a few hundred speakers of native North American languages represent the original inhabitants of the continent.
It may surprise you to learn that only 51% of New Yorkers speak English at street level but they maintain their mother tongues at home and in their local communities. (1) What however, really stands out, is the sheer number of languages spoken in the city. Apart from English, the major players are, unsurprisingly, Spanish (a quarter of the population), followed by Chinese. (2) However, it’s not called the Big Apple for nothing: hundreds of cultural languages share the rest of the pie. (3) Further down the list, a more complex picture of the cultural landscape emerges, mirroring today’s mobile globalized population. Finally, at the bottom, just a few hundred speakers of native North American languages represent the original inhabitants of the continent.
- the lack of a language monopoly is not as unusual as we may first think.
- Combined, the big three make up 80% of the total.
- Often they use one within the family and one or more for the society outside.
- First-language Arabic speakers there comprise a mere 17% of the population.
- This may come as a surprise, considering the city’s status as the publishing capital of the English-speaking world.