For the past decade, one of the most linguistically(语言学地) diverse places in the world, square mile after square mile, has been my home: Queens, New York. The soundtrack outside my door is extraordinary: On any given block, passing voices speak varieties of Polish, Ukrainian, Egyptian Arabic, Mexican Spanish, Puerto Rican Spanish, Dominican Spanish. and all the forms of New York City English they give rise to.
As a person who studies languages, I can usually distinguish them from one another. but under stand only a part of what people are saying.
Users of Seke, a language from five villages in Nepal with 700 speakers, live a subway ride away In certain stores, Albanians, Bosnians, Serbs, and Montenegrins all reunite, using the languages of the former Yugoslavia as if the country still existed. No group has a majority, or even 15 percent of the neighborhood, and most are at just 5 or 10 percent. English acts, for the most part, as a vital linguafranca(通用语). This last point is crucial, because a city can be a haven(避难所) for diversity but also an end point.
My neighborhood has its signature sound, but there are several dozen others that are just as diverse each in a different way. These are the places where the Endangered Language Alliance, the nonprofit I co-direct, has recorded New Yorkers speaking more than 100 languages that the survey and other data sets say don't officially exist, and more than 700 in total.
That linguistic portrait makes clear that early-2lst-century New York City is a last haven for endangered languages-ones that are being hounded out of existence elsewhere. And this deep linguistic diversity is among the least explored but possibly most important factors in New York's history and makeup. New York's soul can be found in the existence of these many, many languages, explaining New York's particular capacity for tolerance and its ability to " make room" for others.
