Which English-speaking city is most culturally diverse?

Damian in Edinburgh   Fri Nov 30, 2007 8:18 pm GMT
I'm willing to bet that the streets of London ring to a wider range of assorted Languages than does your city in California, USA. I agree that there's far more of a likelihood that you'll hear far more Spanish being spoken over there than on London's streets. I'm also willing to bet you my last quid coin that London receives a much larger number of tourists from all over the globe in the course of a year than does your neck of the woods, and from a higher number of different countries. Are you not enduring/suffering/enjoying (select the most appropriate word here) a huge influx of Latinos over there, with Mexico just down the road, so to speak?

It depends a lot on whether we just take into account the long term residents of a city area / metro district on this particular issue or include the huge number of tourists whose presence is naturally temporary, but who nevertheless add to the linguistic diversity of a city. We would include Americans here if we were to decide that American English constitutes a "foreign Language!" in London, or indeed the rest of this blessed plot! :-)

America was, of course, borne out of immigration from practically every part of the globe, but as has been agreed, assimilation only took a generation or too by all accounts, and all immigrants into your country are required to quickly meld in with the American nationhood anyway, and I doubt very much indeed that many second or third generation Americans have little more than an inkling about the Languages of their great/grandparents, if that.

Each time I go to London I sometimes get the feeling that "we are being over-run with foreigners" in our UK capital city, and that's coming from someone well used to foreigners in my own home city, our own Scottish capital city, where more and more foreigners seem to be putting down roots, and this also includes Americans who are, of course, foreigners in every sense of the word, in spite of our so called "common Language".

Whatever - hae a guid weekend. What's that in Latino Spanish? :-)
same   Fri Nov 30, 2007 8:20 pm GMT
too=two
Travis   Fri Nov 30, 2007 10:16 pm GMT
>>America was, of course, borne out of immigration from practically every part of the globe, but as has been agreed, assimilation only took a generation or too by all accounts, and all immigrants into your country are required to quickly meld in with the American nationhood anyway, and I doubt very much indeed that many second or third generation Americans have little more than an inkling about the Languages of their great/grandparents, if that.<<

But at the same time, it should be remembered that no uniform culture was assimilated to, even if there are very many cultural aspects which are common to English-speaking North America as a whole. For example, here people did not assimilate to some general national culture but rather to a local European American culture distinct from such. This is largely why it is not contradictory that there are non-negligible aspects of the cultures of immigrant groups (particularly German immigrants) retained here, and yet ethnicity is largely irrelevant at the personal level amongst younger European Americans here today.

>>Each time I go to London I sometimes get the feeling that "we are being over-run with foreigners" in our UK capital city, and that's coming from someone well used to foreigners in my own home city, our own Scottish capital city, where more and more foreigners seem to be putting down roots, and this also includes Americans who are, of course, foreigners in every sense of the word, in spite of our so called "common Language".<<

The part about Americans being foreigners in the UK is something that is overlooked far too often. Some on both sides of the Atlantic seem to think that Americans are effectively transplanted Britons or are assimilated to being practically transplanted Britons, when in reality they are more just a collection of different social groups of different origins, and in the case of European Americans a mishmash of different immigrant groups, who happen to speak English as an accident of history.
NIK   Sat Dec 01, 2007 4:18 am GMT
To Damian in Edinburgh
>>Are you not enduring/suffering/enjoying (select the most appropriate word here) a huge influx of Latinos over there, with Mexico just down the road, so to speak? <<
I don't think there was need for your being so biting and poignant when Raghav issued his own opinion with no ill intention involved. I appreciate your linguistic wit, but dislike your manners.
NIK   Sat Dec 01, 2007 6:13 am GMT
Travis's answer to the racial/ethnic issue has convinced me that Travis could have been an excellent sociologist. You certainly have a penetrating mind. I think your counter-arguments against Raghav are also compelling.
Uriel   Sat Dec 01, 2007 5:33 pm GMT
<<I am also a bit surprised to know from the top thread of this page by Travis that there can be so little interaction and mixing among the different ethnic groups in the US (I personally don't think it a good thing).>>

Well, that also depends on where you live, too. The US has different cultural regions where people really do behave differently. Here in southern NM, where the population is about 50% hispanic, it's a lot harder to "keep to yourself" ethnically, at least, if you want to leave the house occasionally. On the other hand, you will see only a tiny handful of blacks or Asians.....so it's nothing like, say, California, where you'll meet and hang out with people of every background imaginable.
Raghav   Sat Dec 01, 2007 5:49 pm GMT
>> I agree that there's far more of a likelihood that you'll hear far more Spanish being spoken over there than on London's streets. I'm also willing to bet you my last quid coin that London receives a much larger number of tourists from all over the globe in the course of a year than does your neck of the woods, and from a higher number of different countries. Are you not enduring/suffering/enjoying (select the most appropriate word here) a huge influx of Latinos over there, with Mexico just down the road, so to speak? <<

Actually, I'm more likely to hear Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Tagalog—though I hear a fair bit of Spanish as well. (The notices on the buses are in Chinese and Vietnamese in addition to Spanish and English here.) Many ethnic groups, I think, are better represented in San Jose than in London. Over 25% of people are Asian, in the American sense (that is, East Asians and South Asians), while only around 15% of Londoners are.

The data show that 51% of residents of San Jose speak a language other than English at home. (http://www.knightfdn.org/national/immigrants/pdf/immigration-stats_2005_sanjose.pdf) The most popular non-English languages are Spanish (22.5%), Vietnamese (8.4%), Chinese (5.4%), and Tagalog (3.9%). The UK doesn't collect official statistics on languages spoken, but there are a few unofficial measures, including a survey of London schoolchildren (http://www.cilt.org.uk/faqs/langspoken.htm). Obviously this is a crude measure of the language's popularity among the population as a whole, but it shows that around 72% of pupils speak English as their main language, and the next most popular languages are considerably less popular than their counterparts in San Jose. The data also show that, for instance, most Asian Indians speak English as their main language in addition to virtually all Black Caribbeans, and combining that with the ethnic group data above suggests that London is linguistically diverse, but not nearly as much as many major North American cities.

Bear in mind that San Jose isn't nearly as diverse as New York or Toronto, where you can see Sinhalese on the street signs.

Anecdotal evidence can only get us so far, and you already know my subjective impressions based on having lived in both England and the US. London seemed fairly segregated, with the Cantonese in Barnet, the Poles in Hammersmith, etc. Scotland certainly seemed very monocultural compared to London or Leicester, though.

Travis: How old is the Latino population of Milwaukee, out of interest? It's true that the European American population today assimilates much faster, but their numbers are also considerably lower than pre-WWI. German-language newspapers and exclusively German schools were much more popular back then than Spanish-language equivalents today.
Damian in Edinburgh   Sun Dec 02, 2007 11:22 am GMT
***Biting and poignant? I appreciate your linguistic wit, but dislike your manners***

Oh goody! I must be succeeding in my chosen profession then! That's how we operate, and hope that our readers are not to over sensitive! :-)

Are you American by any chance, NIK? I haven't got the time right now to check back through threads. I have a lunch date at a pub in town. Sunday lunchtime at the pub - a good old Scottish/British tradition where we can be as happy and as convivial as we like and perhaps biting and poignant at the same time, but we all take it in the right non-PC spirit - one of the many cultural differences between our two countries from what I've managed to gather......cheers!
Travis   Sun Dec 02, 2007 12:35 pm GMT
>>Travis: How old is the Latino population of Milwaukee, out of interest? It's true that the European American population today assimilates much faster, but their numbers are also considerably lower than pre-WWI. German-language newspapers and exclusively German schools were much more popular back then than Spanish-language equivalents today.<<

You have a point here that the Latino population of Milwaukee is rather young overall, yes, which would naturally make it less likely that they are as assimilated as older immigrant groups. However, consider the case of other more recent immigrant groups, particularly East Asians, versus Latinos. Aside from the poorest East Asians, particularly the Hmong, most East Asian immigrants (who are largely Chinese but also include some Koreans, Vietnamese, and like) have socially assimilated to quite a greater degree than Latinos have.

Yes, first generation native descendents of immigrants may know some of their parents' languages, and these immigrants are more common in some parts of the Milwaukee area than others, but they are not marginalized and ghettoized in the way that Latinos here are. They do retain some of their own cultural characteristics (even many younger East Asians who are even just first generation native are still very assimilated outside the home), seem less likely to intermarry than European Americans, and seem to generally be unconnected with the traditional culture present here (which incidentally is extremely European in character). However, on a day to day basis they still interact far more with, live in the same areas as, and go to the same schools as the European American population here than the Latino population here. While they retain their own identities to a greater degree than European Americans (even though this may just be an artifact of them being more recent immigrants), they are largely not marginalized (except for the rather poor Hmong), unlike Latinos here, who are very marginalized and separated from the rest of society here.
Raghav   Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:21 pm GMT
>> Aside from the poorest East Asians, particularly the Hmong, most East Asian immigrants (who are largely Chinese but also include some Koreans, Vietnamese, and like) have socially assimilated to quite a greater degree than Latinos have. <<

Surely this has something to do with selection effects. It's telling that you mention the Hmong, who unlike Chinese Americans, were mostly refugees from the Laotian Civil War, and thus not self-selected.
Guest   Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:47 pm GMT
Do you think that cultural diversity is good? Why?
NIK   Mon Dec 03, 2007 1:49 am GMT
Damian in Edinburgh:
>>Are you not enduring/suffering/enjoying (select the most appropriate word here) a huge influx of Latinos over there, with Mexico just down the road, so to speak? ............ hope that our readers are not to over sensitive<<
It is not a matter of sensitivity. You simply sound like a racist.
NIK   Mon Dec 03, 2007 1:54 am GMT
>>Do you think that cultural diversity is good? Why? <<
Do you think bio-diversity is good? Same with cultural diversity.
Travis   Mon Dec 03, 2007 8:37 am GMT
>>>> Aside from the poorest East Asians, particularly the Hmong, most East Asian immigrants (who are largely Chinese but also include some Koreans, Vietnamese, and like) have socially assimilated to quite a greater degree than Latinos have. <<

Surely this has something to do with selection effects. It's telling that you mention the Hmong, who unlike Chinese Americans, were mostly refugees from the Laotian Civil War, and thus not self-selected.<<

That could definitely be a factor, even though it is almost certainly not the only one. For starters, it must be remembered that the Hmong were poor *before* they left Southeast Asia, and were practically tribal when they lived there. Contrast this with some Vietnamese here, who also came here due to the outcome of the Indochina Wars, but who are not marginalized here; they were not very self-selected either, but they were certainly better off and more urbanized before they left Vietnam (especially since many of those who left were actually rather well-to-do by Vietnamese standards before they fled Vietnam, such as the family of a friend of mine from high school, who was practically upper class before they left Vietnam).
Damian in Edinburgh   Mon Dec 03, 2007 9:14 am GMT
***It is not a matter of sensitivity. You simply sound like a racist***

Wrong! You are playing the PC card here - how easy it is to misread statements and to accuse someone of racism when in fact nothing of the sort exists, and even the most innocent of remarks or comments are misconstrued for convenience or to suit a particular agenda.

I am proud to live in a multi cultural society and one which is extremely tolerant of others, no matter what, probably more so than is good for us ultimately, and very much more so than a good many other countries, and that certainly includes the United States of America, which in spite of its claim to be all inclusive, is anything but in many ways, not only in matters of race.