Mingling Voices
Daniel Kim speaks flawless English, yet the language of choice at home is Korean. Even if the sentence starts out in English, it'll end in Korean, he said. Kim, 28, of Douglaston, is like nearly one of every two New Yorkers, according to Census Bureau data being released today which provides a glimpse of how New Yorkers live. According to the figures, 46.7 percent of New Yorkers over the age of 5 speak a language other than English at home; 52.2 percent of those speak English "very well." About half - or 53 percent - of those who used a foreign language at home spoke Spanish. "There aren't that many cities in the world where you can find such a large number of bilingual people," said Kim, who immigrated to the United States with his family in 1987 and had his first English lesson in seventh grade. Nationwide, only 18 percent of people 5 and older spoke a foreign language at home, with 60 percent of them speaking Spanish, according to the Census Bureau data. Los Angeles, the second most populous U.S. city after New York, had more bilingual speakers than the five boroughs, but its linguistic mix was more dominated by Spanish. About 59 percent of Angelenos spoke a foreign language at home, with 72 percent of them speaking Spanish. In New York, by contrast, 27 percent of foreign-language speakers used an Indo-European language other than Spanish at home, and 15 percent spoke an Asian or Pacific Islander tongue. Specific languages were not noted. On Long Island, the numbers show a similar trend. Nearly 19 percent of households reported speaking a language other than English, with the numbers nearly split evenly between Nassau and Suffolk counties. Evidence of linguistic change has been clear in the city over the last decade. In Queens, for instance, business owners have hung up Korean and Chinese-language signs in downtown Flushing, Spanish signs in Jackson Heights and Corona, Russian signs in Forest Hills and Bengali signs in Astoria. "Getting so many foreign language speakers from so many different places is a testimony to how diverse things have gotten in New York City," said Joseph Salvo, director of the City Planning Department's Population Division. "That's a really spectacular statement." The data make it clear that the city will need to provide more English-language classes and to ensure better access to services for non-English speakers, said Margie McHugh, the executive director of The New York Immigration Coalition. "The language diversity in the city has greatly increased, but attempts to break down language barriers are few and far between," McHugh said. Some city agencies are moving in that direction. The Board of Education, for instance, recently asked the chancellor to offer information in more languages. Linguistic diversity in New York City seems to be growing. According to the 1990 Census, about 41 percent of New Yorkers spoke a language other than English at home. Census officials and city demographers, however, cautioned against comparing the supplemental survey released today with the 1990 decennial count in areas smaller than states. The two surveys differ in methodology, they said, and today's figures do not include group quarters, such as jails and college dormitories. The data being released today does not come from Census 2000, but from a sample of 700,000 households nationwide that were also surveyed last year. Census officials hope that such an annual survey eventually will replace the long form census questionnaire, which is distributed to select households during the census done every 10 years. An annual survey could document socioeconomic changes without a 10-year wait. Data taken from Census 2000 long forms will not be released until next year. So the data released today, which asks the same questions as the long form, provides a glimpse of the changes in localities that will be documented next year. Not surprisingly, given the linguistic diversity, today's census figures show a large foreign-born population calling New York home. Citywide, 35.5 percent of New Yorkers reported being foreign-born, according to the data. In Queens, that rose to 45.7 percent. The data also seem to show that immigrants settling in Queens are middle-class or well educated. The borough's poverty rate is at 10.5 percent, well below the 18.4 percent citywide, according to the census data. "People who arrive and don't speak English are not illiterate and stupid," said Roger Sanjek, a Queens College anthropology professor who has studied the immigrant communities in Queens. "There is a very substantial component of immigrants who are well educated." Staff writer Thomas Maier contributed to this story |