Languages spoken in your city.

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Re: Languages spoken in your city.

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-03-03, 4:12

Vlürch, also, immigrants aren't necessarily representative of the countries they come from, and certain demographic groups are highly overrepresented among immigrants. For example, Malayalees are only about 3% of the population of India but more like 10% of the population of the United Arab Emirates.
linguoboy wrote:Most of the times I can remember doing this, it was on the El (our main public transit system). There is a certain amount of semi-privacy there if, for instance, you're the only people in that section of the car (as was the case with the Malayalees and Mayans).

Maybe some day, I'll meet one of the people responsible for Kerala Express on the El and they'll tell me something about Delaware while pronouncing it [ɖɛˈlaːre]. :P Nah, just kidding. They're more likely to go on and on about the local Malayalee association(s?) and try make me subscribe again.
First of all, I apparently have a good sense of direction. My father likes to tell a story about when I was five years old and attending a one-week summer camp with my brother. One day, the woman who'd been taking us there couldn't drive us and my dad--who has a lousy sense of direction--had to instead. He sat me in the passenger seat and I navigated based solely on landmarks. "Turn here, Daddy! Now turn here!"

My grandfather immigrated with my dad and uncle to get his PhD at Boston University, then went back to India while his children stayed behind. My dad was in high school when he immigrated, but apparently, the way my grandfather drove alarmed him so much that he insisted on driving him around instead. (In India, of course, neither of them would have ever driven because it's so much easier to hire a driver instead, provided they had a car to begin with).

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Re: Languages spoken in your city.

Postby Vlürch » 2018-03-06, 12:57

Naava wrote:You need a new phone. Or a map.

Well, for now, it's not important enough since even if I could afford it (I'm not sure if I could), I wouldn't have any use for it beyond what I can already use my old phone for. I'm also kinda paranoid about being tracked and whatnot, so nah. Of course I'll have to get one eventually, but I'll put that off for as long as I can.

It'd be hilarious to walk around with a map, though, because then people would think I'm a tourist. If I had to ask for directions, whoever I asked would probably get surprised by how I speak Finnish perfectly (or at least more or less perfectly... since I tend to pronounce /s/ as dental in spite of my best attempts to make it alveolar, they might think I'm Swedish or Russian...) and become unable to help me thanks to how awkward it would be. :P
Naava wrote:I'm more scared of seeing a bear cub than seeing an adult bear. The latter might go away or be more interested in my bag or something, but the former means the mother is somewhere near and I'm very likely standing between her and her sweet little baby.

At first I'd be like "aww :D " if I saw one, but yeah, what you describe is what would happen next. Then I'd literally shit myself and die.
Naava wrote:Besides, nobody can know for sure that what they saw in the 1800s was always a wolf and never a dog. People still mix them up and report "wolves" in their yards, only to have the owner of this "wolf" to thank them for finding their dog.

There are people who really can't tell apart wolves and dogs? :o Like, if they're Huskies or German Shepherds or something and it's dark and they only see a glimpse, I get it, but if it's any other kind of dog and/or it's not night, how could anyone mistake them...?
linguoboy wrote:One of the major differences between the US and most if not all European countries in this respect is that this is a settler society. The vast majority (at least 90%) of people living here are primarily descended from immigrants who arrived within the last 500 years, most of them in the last 150. It's part of our identity that we're a "nation of immigrants" (to the point that our own nativists always have to qualify their anti-immigrant rhetoric by pointing out how the newer arrivals are supposedly different from the ones who came before, which often includes their own recent ancestors). We still have integration problems galore, but at least we generally start from different assumptions

Mmh, makes sense. For some reason I always assume that the majority of white Americans don't consider themselves immigrants at all, probably for the most part because of two factors... one being Trump and his supporters who apparently don't consider themselves descended from immigrants (and even consider Native Americans immigrants for some reason, like wtf?), and the other being an ex-friend of mine who became an overblown SJW and tried to get me to admit that I'm to blame for slavery as much as the Americans who actually had slaves back in the day, even though Finns never had slaves (and arguably were slaves to Russians and Swedes (and collective responsibility being bullshit to begin with)), and they apparently didn't consider themselves descended from immigrants (singular they; that person identifies as non-binary).

I don't know why I generalise based on one or two people so often, even though I try hard not to... maybe I just don't have enough experience of different kinds of people, especially Americans, and when I do it's unfortunately people who have fucked up views regarding whatever issue at hand... :roll: The funny thing is that because Finland is so Americanised, I'm still struggling with the reality that America is actually nothing like Finland when it comes to social issues.
linguoboy wrote:(such as the fact that you can never tell who is an "immigrant" and who is a "native" based solely on physical appearance).

Many of my relatives on my mum's side sometimes get shit for being mistaken for immigrants thanks to some of them having epicanthic folds and most having a yellowish/somewhat brownish skin tone and dark brown hair. My mum and her sister have been mistaken for a lesbian couple at least once when they hugged each other, even though they look extremely alike with the exception of colours and my mum being shorter and fatter. So it's not always possible in Finland either, at least, to tell who's an immigrant based on appearance, but generally speaking the assumption is that anyone who isn't a blond-haired and blue-eyed potato goblin is an immigrant, even though most Finns are actually not blue-eyed blondes but rather grey-eyed and brown-haired...

One of the reasons I couldn't support the blind deportation of immigrants even if I wanted to is that half of my own family, who aren't even immigrants, would probably get deported as immigrants if there was a law that allowed the deportation of people based on appearance. Not that I'd support something like that even if my family was all as white as snow because then I'd never have the chance to overhear interesting languages spoken. Besides, nine times out of ten I find immigrants more attractive than Finns, so if there were no immigrants, I'd be surrounded by people as ugly as myself. :mrgreen:

...not that all Finns are ugly or anything, but the average Finn is a sickly pale grey-eyed goblin with hair that looks like dried-up grass. We're not even pale in the polished porcelainesque way "real Europeans" like the Irish can be, we're pale in a way that looks like someone left us out to get soaked in the autumn rain like an old newspaper. :lol:

...and I'm not saying that's all immigrants are good for. It's just that it's the most noticeable factor.
linguoboy wrote:First of all, I apparently have a good sense of direction. My father likes to tell a story about when I was five years old and attending a one-week summer camp with my brother. One day, the woman who'd been taking us there couldn't drive us and my dad--who has a lousy sense of direction--had to instead. He sat me in the passenger seat and I navigated based solely on landmarks. "Turn here, Daddy! Now turn here!"

Heh, that's cool. My dad and brother are the only ones in my family who have any kind of sense of direction; the rest of us could get lost literally anywhere.
linguoboy wrote:Second, look at a map of Chicago. It's got one of the most perfect street grids in a country that's full of them. It's strictly oriented to the four cardinal directions--we even call the major divisions of the city "the North Side", "the South Side", and "the West Side". Where the "East Side" would be is Lake Michigan; after living here for a while, most people develop and instinctive feel for where the Lake is relative to where they're standing and can use that to orient themselves. And of course there's always the sun (when it's shining; the only times I've ever gotten lost while walking in Chicago were at night).

Why can't cities be built like that here? It'd make everything much easier.

Another point related to this, one thing I always wonder about is why there are no proper skyscrapers at all in Finland; this is literally the most perfect country to build them in: no earthquakes, no tsunamis, no volcanoes, no extreme storms, more or less flat terrain, etc. We could literally have 500-storey buildings. We could have buildings largely suspended in the air supported only by one tower at each corner, allowing forests to grow underneath. We could have all kinds of cool shit, but instead forests are mowed down and the highest buildings have like ten floors. What the fuck is up with that?
vijayjohn wrote:Vlürch, also, immigrants aren't necessarily representative of the countries they come from, and certain demographic groups are highly overrepresented among immigrants. For example, Malayalees are only about 3% of the population of India but more like 10% of the population of the United Arab Emirates.

Malayalees are only 3% of India's population!? I thought at least 20% or something. :o

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Re: Languages spoken in your city.

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-03-07, 1:30

20% is even higher than the percentage of Indians who speak English. :P

EDIT: Also, Kerala is smaller in land area than Switzerland, so kind of hard to see it making up 20% of the population of a country with a land area the size of Europe minus Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.

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Re: Languages spoken in your city.

Postby linguoboy » 2018-03-07, 17:34

Vlürch wrote:
linguoboy wrote:Second, look at a map of Chicago. It's got one of the most perfect street grids in a country that's full of them. It's strictly oriented to the four cardinal directions--we even call the major divisions of the city "the North Side", "the South Side", and "the West Side". Where the "East Side" would be is Lake Michigan; after living here for a while, most people develop and instinctive feel for where the Lake is relative to where they're standing and can use that to orient themselves. And of course there's always the sun (when it's shining; the only times I've ever gotten lost while walking in Chicago were at night).

Why can't cities be built like that here? It'd make everything much easier.

Several reasons. One is that y'all started building them much earlier. If you look at some of the oldest cities in the USA (e.g. Boston, first settled in 1630), you'll find a street arrangement much more similar to what you're used to.

Another is topography. Chicago was built on a swamp where the prairie met the lake. Its highest point is less than 30 m above the water level. St Louis was covered with Indian mounds when it was founded. Instead of building around them, developers just ripped them open and carted them away. Another reason Boston streets are more twisty is that the original settlement was on a hilly little island. When the Back Bay was filled in, everything was gridded out according to Enlightenment principles.
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Re: Languages spoken in your city.

Postby Vlürch » 2018-03-07, 17:47

vijayjohn wrote:20% is even higher than the percentage of Indians who speak English. :P

Huh, for some reason I always thought Malayalees were the majority everywhere in southern India except Tamil Nadu, not only Kerala... :oops:
linguoboy wrote:St Louis was covered with Indian mounds when it was founded. Instead of building around them, developers just ripped them open and carted them away.

Why didn't they build like a couple of kilometres away where there weren't any mounds? It couldn't be just racist-motivated destruction of cultural heritage, could it? Or were there mounds everywhere and it was impossible to avoid destroying them?

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Re: Languages spoken in your city.

Postby linguoboy » 2018-03-07, 17:54

Vlürch wrote:
linguoboy wrote:St Louis was covered with Indian mounds when it was founded. Instead of building around them, developers just ripped them open and carted them away.

Why didn't they build like a couple of kilometres away where there weren't any mounds?

Because the developers didn't own that property.

Vlürch wrote:It couldn't be just racist-motivated destruction of cultural heritage, could it? Or were there mounds everywhere and it was impossible to avoid destroying them?

They could've preserved them, they just didn't see any value in doing so. Same as their approach to most natural resources: trees exist to be cut down, wetlands exist to drained, prairies exist to be plowed up. Everything must be done to make the land "productive" according to a very narrow industrial-age understanding of what that means.
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Re: Languages spoken in your city.

Postby Aurinĭa » 2018-03-08, 0:41

linguoboy wrote:Fascinating. Using landmarks (e.g. turn left at the Quik-E Mart, take the second right after the bridge) doesn't help compensate for this?

Completely forgot to reply to this!

Landmarks can help. On condition that there are enough of them, and that they're distinct enough. "Turn left at the petrol station" doesn't help a lot if there are two petrol stations close to each other, each next to a street you could turn left into. Another problem is that such landmarks often aren't shown on maps, so they don't help if you're trying to navigate by map, or if you've looked up the route beforehand on e.g. google maps (as I do if I have to go somewhere new and I'm not sure of the best route). Plus, it's another layer to remember, and remembering a route is hard enough already. My sense of direction and ability to navigate aren't the best, okay? :P

linguoboy wrote:
Vlürch wrote:Why can't cities be built like that here? It'd make everything much easier.

Several reasons. One is that y'all started building them much earlier. If you look at some of the oldest cities in the USA (e.g. Boston, first settled in 1630), you'll find a street arrangement much more similar to what you're used to.

Another is topography. Chicago was built on a swamp where the prairie met the lake. Its highest point is less than 30 m above the water level. St Louis was covered with Indian mounds when it was founded. Instead of building around them, developers just ripped them open and carted them away. Another reason Boston streets are more twisty is that the original settlement was on a hilly little island. When the Back Bay was filled in, everything was gridded out according to Enlightenment principles.

Imposing a grid on a city-to-be-built without any regard for terrain or topography leads to things like this.

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Re: Languages spoken in your city.

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-03-08, 1:03

Vlürch wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:20% is even higher than the percentage of Indians who speak English. :P

Huh, for some reason I always thought Malayalees were the majority everywhere in southern India except Tamil Nadu, not only Kerala... :oops:

:shock: That would be the day. :D

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Re: Languages spoken in your city.

Postby TheStrayCat » 2018-03-08, 3:39

Aurinĭa wrote:Imposing a grid on a city-to-be-built without any regard for terrain or topography leads to things like this.


No problem with that!

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Re: Languages spoken in your city.

Postby Massimiliano B » 2018-03-18, 15:42

In Lucca (Tuscany, Italy):

Italian
Romanian
Albanian
Moroccan Arabic
Sinhala
Tagalog
Chinese (I don't know which language)
Spanish
Portuguese
Ukrainian
Russian
Urdu
Hindi
Bengali
Polish
Edo
Yoruba
Esan
Igbo
Wolof
Mandinka
Fulani
Neapolitan
English
German
French
Georgian
Other (African, Asian, and East-European languages)
Last edited by Massimiliano B on 2018-03-18, 16:14, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Languages spoken in your city.

Postby atalarikt » 2018-03-18, 16:01

Compared to everybody else, my city (Malang, East Java, Indonesia), doesn't have too many languages spoken here other than Javanese (the Eastern dialect, obviously) and Indonesian, but there are also some Madurese and Balinese speakers. I'm still pretty sure there are speakers of other languages of Indonesia scattered around my city, though.
وَمِنْ آيَاتِهِ خَلْقُ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ وَاخْتِلَافُ أَلْسِنَتِكُمْ وَأَلْوَانِكُمْ ۚ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَآيَاتٍ لِلْعَالِمِينَ۝
"And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your languages and your colors. Indeed in that are signs for those of knowledge." (Ar-Rum: 22)

Jika saya salah, mohon diperbaiki. If I make some mistake(s), please correct me.
Forever indebted to Robert A. Blust for his contributions to Austronesian linguistics

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Re: Languages spoken in your city.

Postby Widukind » 2018-09-09, 18:41

English, German, and French are the most common languages around here. The other identifiable ones that I can list are Mandarin, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Interior Salish (the local native language group), Thai, Vietnamese, Dutch, Spanish, Punjabi, Hindi, Arabic, and some forms of gibberish.

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Re: Languages spoken in your city.

Postby Lur » 2018-09-10, 11:39

Widukind wrote:Interior Salish

Oooh!
Geurea dena lapurtzen uzteagatik, geure izaerari uko egiteagatik.

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Re: Languages spoken in your city.

Postby Widukind » 2018-09-10, 18:39

Lur wrote:
Widukind wrote:Interior Salish

Oooh!

It’s interesting. There are a lot of different tongues native to British Columbia. There has been plenty of effort by the native bands and the government to preserve the languages. They’ve done a decent job, as can be seen by the bilingual signage for all sorts of things in various places.

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Re: Languages spoken in your city.

Postby languagepotato » 2018-09-16, 10:59

in Amsterdam, i have heard at least the following languages (probably some others i can't remember, as well):

Dutch
English
Arabic varieties (mainly Moroccan Darija, but quite a lot from other countries that speak other varieties)
Turkish
Sranan
Papiamento
Bahasa Indonesia
Hindustani (mainly Urdu speakers, but also some Hindi speakers)
Punjabi
Spanish
French
German
Swedish
Norwegian
Danish
Somali
Amharic
Hebrew
Russian
Romanian
Italian
Polish
Japanese
many Berber varieties (ranging from Kabyle to Senhaja)
Serbo-Croatian (all major varieties)
Slovene
Czech
Ukrainian
Bulgarian
Portuguese
Greek
Persian (mainly Dari but Farsi is quite common as well)
Maltese
Tigrinya
Catalan
Thai
Vietnamese
Mandarin
Cantonese
Lao
Hakka
Armenian
Swahili
Icelandic
Uzbek
Twi
Georgian
Latvian
Lithuanian
Finnish
Afrikaans
Albanian
native: (ar-MA) (nl)
very comfortable: (en-US)
somewhat comfortable: (de) (es) (af)
forgetting: (fr) (ar-arb)
touristy level: (ro) (sv)(ber)(pl)
someday hopefully: (ja) (sq) (cs) (tr) and many others


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