Description:
This book will be of special interest to the general reader concerned with the issue of language in the United States, as well as the language specialist and sociolinguist. It has been written to inform those wishing to learn more about the role that languages other than English have had, and continue to have, in the life of the most important United States city, New York. At the same time this volume makes an important contribution to the scholarly literature on urban multilingualism and the sociology of language. The book contains chapters on languages of ethnolinguistic groups who arrived early in New York and which have been somewhat silenced (Irish, German, Yiddish), the languages of groups who made early contributions and continue to be heard in the city (Italian, Greek, Spanish, Hebrew), and languages which are acquiring an important voice in the city today (Chinese, Indian languages, English creoles, Haitian Creole).
Review Quotes:
"This excellent collection of studies is even bigger than itself. It raises a number of questions yet unexplained and provides a model for examining similar issues elsewhere in the nation. [...] It is to be hoped that the Multilingual apple may serve as a model for similar, comparative studies."
Theodore S. Beardsley, Jr. in: WORD, Dezember 1999