Best US cities for language lovers? (Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages) Language Learning Forum

Best US cities for language lovers?
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Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages

27 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3 4

Halie
Diglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 5905 days ago
80 posts - 106 votes

Speaks: English*, French

Message 25 of 27

25 May 2012 at 8:34am | IP Logged

There are parts of San Diego very close to the border where all the signs are in Spanish
and where it would be very easy to immerse yourself in the language without actually
living in Mexico. My mom used to work as a loans officer in Chula Vista and worked with
her clients mostly in Spanish. In fact, you can actually see Mexico from parts of the
city since Tijuana is on a hill. (Cue the "I can see Mexico from my house!" jokes.)

There is also a difference though, between cities that have pockets of foreign language-
speakers that are fairly insular. I'm not really sure that's the right way of putting it,
but I think it would be very hard to learn, for example, Vietnamese in Southern
California despite the large populations that speak it.
3 persons have voted this message useful

kanewai
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/kanewai
Joined 4684 days ago
1386 posts - 3054 votes

Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese
Studies: Italian, Spanish

Message 26 of 27

25 May 2012 at 9:32am | IP Logged

Halie wrote:

There is also a difference though, between cities that have pockets of
foreign language-speakers that are fairly insular. I'm not really sure that's the right
way of putting it, but I think it would be very hard to learn, for example, Vietnamese
in Southern California despite the large populations that speak it.

This might be true of a lot of the places we've listed. I'm writing this from my
neighborhood McDonald's (for the wireless, not the food!). It's 9pm, it's packed, and
no one is speaking English. I can pick out Samoan, Tagalog, I think Korean, and a
Micronesian dialect I can't place.

It's cool for a language lover - it's like music, yeah? But for a language
learner? The adults are all gossiping, the teens are all sharing songs on their
phones, everyone's doing their thing, but I don't see how a language student would bust
in unless he was already part of their world.

I think the best places might actually be the major college towns - Ann Arbor, Berkley,
et al. - where you have an international community and a population with a lot of
intellectual curiosity.
5 persons have voted this message useful

ElBrujo
Newbie
United States
Joined 4503 days ago
29 posts - 52 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

Message 27 of 27

28 May 2012 at 5:34pm | IP Logged

tritone wrote:

NYC is the most linguistically diverse city in the world.

There was an article about this a while back that was posted here. Every language one
could imagine from the furthest reaches of the globe is spoken in NYC.

This may be the article that you were referring to:

Listening to
(and Saving) the World's Languages

And to add to what Tritone said, there are languages that are spoken in NYC that aren't
spoken anywhere else in the world because they're on their way out.

Check out the article above for further information.

So yeah, NYC is an obvious choice.

1 person has voted this message useful

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