Talk of the Town
BY SAM WILLIAMS

[This is a pre-edited draft of a business story that appeared under the headline "Talk of the Town" in the New York Post, June 20, 2004.]


After 340 years, Peter Stuyvesant may finally be getting revenge on his English language successors.

According to the latest U.S. Census data, English, the official language in New York City since 1664, has joined Spanish, Chinese, and Russian as a minority tongue in more than one third of city zip codes and at least two boroughs: the Bronx and Queens.

Spanish, meanwhile, has become the majority language in 11 percent of New York City neighborhoods and the predominant language in at least 14 percent.

Such numbers, illustrated in map form thanks to the Modern Language Association's new interactive website, offer a snapshot look at a city perpetually lost in translation.

How that snapshot changes between now and the next U.S. Census is anybody's guess. For the moment, amateur and professional linguists can delight in plenty of statistical eye candy. Launched last week, MLA.org lets users build maps tracking everything from Italian speakers in Tottenville (669 out of 10,799 total residents) to Gujarathi speakers in Glen Oaks (635 out of 13,986)

"Our goal is to let people see what languages are spoke where," says Modern Language Association executive director Rosemary Feal.

"Since 9/11 the question of what langauges Americans know or don't know has become a major topic of concern," Feal adds. "One thing these maps show us is that we have vast linguistic resources upon which to draw."

While not as powerful as the commerical mapping programs used by colleges, the site does give amateur scholars a chance to break language concentrations down to the ZIP code level. It also breaks language groups down into under-18 and over-18 age groups.

For David Goldberg, a Yiddish language scholar and MLA's director of foreign language programs, this latter capability often leads to the most intriguing observations. In Manhattan, for example, less than three percent of Manhattan Yiddish speakers are under 18 years of age vs. 35 percent in Brooklyn. Venture up to Rockland County, and the rate of under-18 speakers rises to 47 percent.

Such data, surmises Goldberg, suggest a passing torch. Where one generation of Jewish immigrant have assimilated to the point their children no longer speak the language, a younger generation, replenished by immigrants, continues to use the mama loshen.

"Up in Rockland County, you can see a vibrant, relatively young Hassidic community moving in," says Goldberg.

A similar pattern appears to be emerging within the city's Chinese-speaking population. Traditionally centered around Manhattan's Lower East Side, the community has formed two distinct offshoots in Brooklyn and Flushing over the last two decades. Again, age data offer a hint at new immigration patterns: In Manhattan, 13 percent of Chinese speakers are under eighteen. In Brooklyn and Queens the numbers rise to 18 and 15 percent respectively.

In terms of the city's two main language groups -- English and Spanish -- both seem to be drifting in opposite directions. The Bronx weighs in with the city's largest Spanish-speaking population (534,660), while Staten Island boasts the largest percentage of English speakers -- 74 percent. Both boroughs have their surprises, however. The Bronx also happens to be home to the city's largest Tagalog community (3,981), while Staten Island's 10304 zip code hosts the largest concentration of African language speakers, 4.3 percent, anywhere in the city.

To get the real image of New York's increasing linguistic diversity, one need only visit Queens. In addition to topping out in terms of native Chinese (126,904), Korean (57,747), and Urdu speakers (17,837), the city's second largest borough boasts the most Armenian (3,531), Thai (2,794), and Navajo speakers (11).

Perhaps the most significant evidence of linguistic diversity, however, is the fact that English, while still predominant, registers as a majority langauge in less than half -- 28 out of 60 -- Queens zip codes.

"It's an amazing laboratory of languages," says Feal of Queens. "You can literally go block to block and see the variation, from your Peruvian ceviche restaurant to the Ecuadorian roast chicken restaurant. These communities are living, literally, side by side."

For the scholars who study within this laboratory, however, the attempt to document so many languages can be daunting.

Sharon Ash, a linguist at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of "The Atlas of North American English," recalls a frustrating search for Queens-born English speakers in an effort to survey and analyze local variations in pronunication and dialect.

"I looked at the census data, and I think a third of the residents of Queens were foreign born," says Ash. "I was stunned. "

Now that the same census data is available to non-scholars via the MLA website, Feal hopes the site will encourage others to explore their own linguistic curiosity.

"The United States has been called the cemetary of languages," she says. "Obviously as language professors we want to encourage people to learn English, but we also want people to keep their heritage. Learning or retaining the language your immigrant ancestors spoke is a great way to do that. "