Language City

Carrie and Megan talk with Dr Ross Perlin,  co-director of the Manhattan-based non-profit Endangered Language Alliance, about his new book, Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York.

• Language Map of NYC
• ASL at the NHL

Chapters

• 8:07 Interview with Ross

Transcript

Carrie Gillon: Hi and welcome to The Vocal Fries Podcast, the podcast about linguistic discrimination.

Megan Figueroa: I'm Megan Figueroa.

Carrie: And I'm Carrie Gillon.

Megan: And I just got to see you in person, Carrie.

Carrie: I know, yes.

Megan: Yes.

Carrie: You got to see Vancouver in all its sunny glory.

Megan: I know. It was sunny the entire time I was there, which I hear is lucky.

Carrie: Especially June.

Megan: Yes, absolutely. If people don't know, we don't record this podcast together. We record it in different countries. 

Carrie: Yes.

Megan: So, we haven't seen each other in person in a while.

Carrie: It's true. Yes, this is the first time since early 2022. So, yes, it was fun.

Megan: It was fun.

Carrie: What was your favorite bit about Vancouver?

Megan: I think weather. It was amazing.

Carrie: Yes. That's true.

Megan: I got really lucky.

Carrie: In comparison, especially to Arizona at that moment in time, too.

Megan: Yes, it was like 109 or something back home when I was there. The weather was 68 degrees to 75 degrees the entire time I was there.

Carrie: Yes.

Megan: It was perfect.

Carrie: It was really nice.

Megan: And I liked being around water.

Carrie: Mm-hmm. That's the thing I miss the most in Phoenix. It's like, you know, there's that river.

Megan: Yes.

Carrie: The 'town lake' and some canals. But yes, I definitely missed the water when I was there.

Megan: I can see why. I definitely see why now.

Carrie: One of our patrons always sends us interesting things and this is very timely.

Megan: Okay.

Carrie: I have not been paying much attention to the Stanley Cup, which for those who don't know, that's the hockey thing.

Megan: It's a hockey thing. And you haven't been paying attention because the Canucks are out, right?

Carrie: I just haven't really been paying that much attention. I paid a little bit more attention when the Canucks were in it. But I didn't watch any games. It's just hard to avoid when you're in a hockey city and everyone is talking about it around you.

Megan: Right.

Carrie: I knew the Canucks were doing really well this season, and then they lost to Edmonton, the Oilers. So then, the Oilers have been in the finals with the Florida Panthers.

Megan: Okay.

Carrie: And so, I was not paying attention. I did not realize that the Florida Panthers won three games in a row. If I had been paying attention, I wouldn't be like, "Oh, well, Oilers are out of it then."

Megan: Right.

Carrie: But no, no. They're still in it, it's now 3-3.

Megan: What?

Carrie: So, they are going to the final game.

Megan: They both won three in a row.

Carrie: Yes. Which I don't think happens very often.

Megan: No.

Carrie: I think it's maybe happened once before. I think they were saying on CBC yesterday. I can't remember. It doesn't really matter. But anyway, I was like, cool. All right. Kind of fun.

Megan: Yes.

Carrie: But that's not really the reason why I want to talk about it.

Megan: Okay.

Carrie: The real reason is that the Stanley Cup final, I assume, all seven games have been broadcast or will be broadcast in American Sign Language for the first time.

Megan: Really?

Carrie: Yes.

Megan: Okay. So, like simulcast? It's like on the screen with everything or...?

Carrie: It must be, right? I don't know how else they would do it. But the NHL and P-X-P have created 'NHL in ASL', which is available on ESPN+ and Sportsnet+. So, both in Canada and the United States.

Megan: That is really neat.

Carrie: And it's the first fully immersive viewing experience for the deaf community by Professional Sports League. That's what this article says. So, that's pretty cool.

Megan: That is really cool. That is not what I thought you were going to say.

Carrie: What did you think I was going to talk about?

Megan: I don't know. I was like, okay, it has to do with language. Is it going to have to be something with the names of the play or something? But that being simulcast in ASL is fantastic. That's very neat.

Carrie: Yes, that's kind of cool.

Megan: Yes.

Carrie: So, the NHL has been like, or at least some... well, I guess, it's mostly maybe CBC, I can't remember. But there's definitely been some broadcasting in other languages besides English and French, Punjabi and Cree.

Megan: Oh.

Carrie: Could be others as well, I'm not sure. Those are the two I'm aware of and now, ASL. So, yes, expanding the repertoire. I think it's great.

Megan: It's fantastic. And there's not many, like thinking about baseball, basketball, they can't say the same. I don't think they can say the same about the simulcast and certainly, non-ASL, but I don't know in other languages. Maybe Spanish.

Carrie: Oh, yes, Spanish. For baseball, for sure. It's got to be, right?

Megan: Yes.

Carrie: Probably the other ones, probably all the other sports too. But I don't know. And then, I don't know of any other.

Megan: Not football. Well, no.

Carrie: Maybe? I literally don't know.

Megan: Maybe? But again, it would be Spanish. It would like only be Spanish if they even...

Carrie: Right, probably. Yes. My guess is if there's any other language, it would be Spanish.

Megan: Right.

Carrie: And it might not even be Spanish. I just assume that it must be. But I honestly don't know.

Megan: Yes, we don't know.

Carrie: Because I'm not really that much on the sports side of things. It's not that I avoid it completely, but it's just not my passion. 

Megan: I know the Phoenix Suns have a jersey that says the Los Suns sometimes for Mexican Heritage Night and stuff like that. It might be simulcast in radio in Spanish, I'm thinking.

Carrie: It could be. I really honestly don't know.

Megan: Yes.

Carrie: Because I've never thought about it that much. Partially, again, because I don't watch those sports. I definitely do not watch basketball. I don't watch basketball. I find it incredibly boring.

Megan: Oh, dude.

Carrie: I apologize to all the basketball fans out there. I'm like, the last five minutes, that's enough for me.

Megan: Yes, that's true. You must feel the same way about baseball.

Carrie: Oh my god, baseball is maybe even more boring.

Megan: Yes. I was going to say.

Carrie: It's such a long game.

Megan: If you think basketball is boring, you got to think baseball is boring.

Carrie: Oh my god, it takes forever. I've been to a few in-person games. I went to see the Blue Jays in Toronto one year, it's many years ago now. And I saw two Diamondbacks games. Both of them, I was halfway through like, "Oh my god."

Megan: Yes.

Carrie: "I'm ready to go." The games are just too long. I did go to a local game here. So, the minor league, we have a minor league game, the Canadians in Vancouver. That was better because it was only seven innings.

Megan: Okay. Yes.

Carrie: And also, approximately halfway point, they had these sushi pieces running around the field.

Megan: Oh, a little race.

Carrie: Like these human [inaudible] sushi pieces. And so, I was like, "Okay, that's so cute." It was just way more like local and fun and like, I don't know.

Megan: Yes, that's cute.

Carrie: So, if I'm going to watch baseball, it's going to be seven innings. It's going to be minor league.

Megan: Yes, that's funny.

Carrie: There are usually nine. It was only short because they had a double header, but anyway.

Megan: Well, very, very, very cool. I'm glad [crosstalk] that was such a timely thing. 

Carrie: Right? So, if you're listening to this, you might be about to watch the final game or you might have already seen the final game or you might not care about hockey at all.

Megan: At all but-

Carrie: But anyway, I just think it's kind of cool and I do feel hockey is on the forefront of this stuff or at least some of the broadcasters that broadcast the sports. So, that's fun.

Megan: Yes, it's definitely fun. It's really neat.

Carrie: And today, we talk all about languages and maps and New York City.

Megan: Yes, it's very, very neat.

Carrie: It was fun.

Megan: It was fun.

Carrie: Yes.

Megan: And there's a book that you can check out.

Carrie: And an online map, an interactive map.

Megan: That Carrie loves.

Carrie: Super fun.

Megan: Yes.

Carrie: Yes, I definitely love. I love maps, especially, interactive maps.

Megan: Absolutely.

Carrie: So, yes. Have fun.

Megan: Yes, hope you enjoy.

[music]

Megan: So today, we are so excited to have Ross Perlin, who is a linguist, writer and translator and native New Yorker. He has written for the New York Times, the Guardian, Harper’s, and n+1. He is the co-director of the Manhattan-based non-profit, Endangered Language Alliance, which has been covered by The New York Times, The New Yorker, BBC, NPR and many others. He is the author of Intern Nation: How to Learn Nothing and Earn Little in the Brave New Economy, and he is also the author of Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York, which is what he's here to talk about with us today. So, thank you so much for being here, Ross.

Carrie: Yes, thank you for coming.

Ross Perlin: Thank you guys for having me.

Megan: Yes. So, thank you so much for writing this beautiful book.

Ross: Thank you.

Megan: So, will you tell us a little bit about the Endangered Language Alliance?

Ross: Sure. So, we're a non-profit based in New York. We've been around since 2010. It was founded originally by actually my current co-director, Daniel Kaufman, and another linguist, Juliette Blevins and [inaudible]. But really came about as the result of New Yorkers from all walks of life realizing that the city had become unprecedentedly diverse linguistically, especially, as have so many other cities. But that there was actually something that linguists, language activists, ordinary New Yorkers could do by sort of working in partnership to try to document that diversity and support it and try to see it thrive. 

So, at the time, I was finishing up my PhD field work in China, but then I came back home to New York, which is where I'm from, and it had been going for just a couple of years. And in some ways, a shoestring, non-profit that has always kind of improvises from year to year, but it's grown into something of kind of an extended family of a large number of people who care about urban linguistic diversity. So, we do a whole variety of things. Some of it is classic language documentation, it has a more even academic focus about working with speakers to document their languages, because indeed, there are speakers of many languages that have been sort of little recorded and little described who have come in recent years to New York. But then, some of the work is much more towards language revitalization and maintenance. It could be publishing children's books, hosting classes in language and health, public policy, working with city agencies. So, there's a whole variety of things that have just developed over the years.

Megan: How is the Endangered Language Alliance different from traditional linguistic field work?

Ross: It's different starting with the fact that we're in a city, right? We're working in a diaspora context, primarily with diaspora and [inaudible]. So, for my PhD work, going to Southwest China, I was doing more of that traditional work where somebody goes from far away to a distant mountainous region in this case. I was there for several years, but then ultimately, I had to come home. I think there's something different here in this sort of open-ended way that we're able to work as neighbors for the long haul with communities that are themselves have been uprooted for various reasons. 

So, part of it is that diasporic nature of it. Of course, there are certain downsides, as well. There's good reason why people try to go to the home region of a language if possible and see it in its fundamental or older setting, natural world, the built environment, those are things that transform through migration. So, we try to actually work, and I talked about this in Language City. We try to work in both places and go often back to a home region with members of the community who may be in New York and document in multiple sites. But there are also certain advantages, I think, to working in cities. Besides the long-term partnership aspect, you have all the resources of a big city. You have artists, universities, students, policymakers, all kinds of things that are concentrated in the resources of a city.

Megan: Yes. So, speaking of a city, let's talk about the book. Why did you want to write this book and why now?

Ross: The book grew out of just what's now more than a decade of work at the Endangered Language Alliance. In some ways, I had thought that, "Oh, this is amazing." This is the lifetimes of work here when we got started in early 2010s and if this would just keep going and growing and ever more diversifying. Of course, threats to languages obviously are global and language endangerment was motivating a lot of what we were doing. 

But I think it was really only after 2016, anti-immigrant politics, then COVID, then the threats to cities like New York and to multilingual communities became more and more evident to me on the question of whether this could be peak linguistic diversity, that actually from here, for various reasons, all of these different threats, that this moment might not last forever. And that not only should we be doing the work, but we should also be creating a document of the work and trying to crystallize it in some sense while possible. 

So, I think there are all sorts of urgencies now. Immigration is obviously part of it since it has become one of the salient political issues of our time. The election, we're in the 100th anniversary of America closing its doors to much of the world, and we could see that happen again. In terms of language endangerment, likewise, there are, of course, amazing efforts in terms of language revitalization and maintenance, but language endangerment is also a deepening process. 

And a couple of decades into linguists being very involved with this in an organized way through language documentation and other things. I felt that the role of cities had not been emphasized enough, and that if languages are going to have a future, cities have to be part of that equation. They shouldn't just be seen as places of loss and of contact, however fascinating, or sites for certain kinds of sociolinguistic research, but also places where primarily, oral minority indigenous languages can also have a future. 

Megan: That's a great point to ask this question. So, how would you describe the linguistic life of New York City?

Ross: There's no question that language loss and shift have been a pervasive feature of the city's linguistic history, like so many cities. I try to give in the book, the book is structured around this idea that contemporary New York may be as we've documented at least, the most linguistically diverse city, not just in the world, but in the history of the world. And describing the past, present, and future of that city. How did that come to be? 

And in the case of New York, the story begins with Lenape, the indigenous language of this archipelago where the city is now. And then, we're in the 400th anniversary actually of this colonial founding of the city by the Dutch West India Company, which established a sort of, not a colony in quite the same sense as these other 12 colonies that were English speaking, if not English only, but actually, a sort of multilingual entrepot where Dutch came to serve as a lingua franca, but a whole range of other languages were spoken from the get-go. Native American languages and languages, as well as a variety of European languages. 

So, the template was set and then the history of the city has been for these four centuries, just a continuous history of being this premier immigration gateway. And of course, there, it has waxed and waned. I think in recent decades, more and more cities have diversified along perhaps similar lines, but New York has been at it for all these centuries. 

The deep linguistic life of the city, I think, language as a lens onto these processes of immigration and diaspora kind of goes beyond the nation state labels, which in many cases, right? These nations they didn't exist at the time when people were migrating and understanding how that the city is patterned along ethno-linguistic lines and that these arrangements have these forces have really shaped the city in fundamental ways, that the actual languages that people spoke and the groups that they're from as an insight into the very specific connections between places on the other side of the world and New York. 

So, this all sort of gone into the makeup of the city in ways that I don't think... the histories of cities that are usually written don't really capture this because these are primarily, oral languages, and the histories end up following the largest languages with the written sources. But I think it's fundamental story of the city, linguistic diversity and to the story of all cities perhaps. But at the same time, it is a story. There has been continual sort of loss and shift and contact. However fascinating, there are extraordinary cases of survival and persistence, but at the same time, there's been an under appreciation and inability to build a linguistic infrastructure to appreciate, develop and support all of this linguistic diversity that's coming here. And that's what I hope that the Endangered Language Alliance and this book are part of a new attempt to build that. 

Megan: Yes. And you refer to New York as a Babel in reverse. Can you tell us a little bit about what you mean? 

Ross: The myth of Babel, as all linguists know, is one that just for those who kind of come from, I guess, the Abrahamic faiths, in some way culturally. We can't get away from Babel as this idea that linguistic diversity was a curse. And of course, in the story of Babel, as we hear it, the languages are confounded, and diversification is imposed by God as a curse. And actually, yes, the reversal here is that the Babel is being created because everybody is coming here, the blessing of linguistic diversity, but actually, it's a monoculture that is being created. That is the curse in some ways. So it is, many will say, of course, [inaudible] and other such[?] cities are these Babels, but it is a reversal of the original idea. 

Megan: Speaking of some of these languages, what is Harlemese and how did it affect the English of New York City?

Ross: Yes. Contact languages and mixed languages and particular varieties that have grown up in New York are among the most fascinating parts of the story, I think, because of the way that you not only have people coming from all over, very particular places, but far flung all over. But then also living within a few blocks of one another and being completely kind of in contact with one another. 

So, this idea of Harlemese, and this isn't my term, but was coined by the great writers of the Harlem Renaissance, of course, everybody has an awareness of the Harlem Renaissance as this great artistic and literary movement, but the linguistic side of it was that you had the creation of this new black diaspora capital, where you had the great migration of African Americans coming from the south, you had Caribbean migration, and you had the initial stages of migration directly from Africa as well at that time. 

So, what's happening in Harlem in the 1920s during that Renaissance period was the formation of this yes, sort of a mixed language, some would call it a slang or an argot, but it deeply kind of informed American popular culture and American English. It reflected this African diaspora capital that was coming into being, as well as the particular dynamics of Harlem life. Like the world of jazz clubs and the world of the bent parties and gave us a lot of terms that are still in circulation today.

Megan: Is Harlemese still spoken?

Ross: I think the term is no longer used as such, and actually, I think just became so pervasive in some ways that we barely notice it. But arguably, it's been succeeded by different iterations, just as, I mean, of course, jazz is still with us. Some of the musical analogs, but actually, now, it's the language that came along with and it's tied to hip hop, for instance. And geographically, there's movement around the city. Harlem was the center at that point. Later, it becomes, in some ways, at least the capitals of black life, demographically speaking in New York, become Brooklyn, Bronx and elsewhere. I don't know if we'd say that Harlemese itself is still spoken, but I think what we could say is that the dynamic processes of language contact in this black diaspora capital are continuing to ramify and change and spread.

Megan: And could you give us some examples of Harlemese that snuck into English?

Ross: Some great kind of dictionaries that were created by these Harlem Renaissance figures. Some said that 'hot' as in a sexual term, like "He's hot. She's hot." Actually, it was kind of coming out of that language. That certain kind of jive talk and phrases associated with jazz and music also came out of it. I gave some examples in the book but it's really worth looking at Cab Calloway, who himself is a famous jazz band leader. He did I think it's called the 'Hepsters Dictionary', and even the term like 'hip' then 'hipster' is one that probably ultimately comes out of that milieu also.

Megan: Wow.

Carrie: I love that, especially considering how hipster is used now.

Megan: Yes.

Ross: Totally different, right? Some of these etymologies are really hard to pin down or trace to one person. But definitely, the word 'hip' is popularized and spreads out of this environment.

Megan: So, what are some of the forces that are threatening linguistic diversity in New York City and are these the same forces that want to limit immigration?

Ross: I think there are a number of things going on. The forces that threaten linguistic diversity worldwide, of course, are also operative here, like the pressures of media, technology, and education systems. In some cases, very well-meaning and it's actually not always just pressure directly from English. It often is pressure from [crosstalk] Spanish or Russian or Nepali or other large languages which are spoken by huge communities here that people are maybe embedded within. 

I would say that in New York, certainly, at the moment with the so-called 'Migrant Crisis', which has now brought close to 200,000 people here just in the last couple of years and has intersected with our shelter system and a housing crisis shaking this. But by and large, there is a deep kind of, I would say, 'pro-immigrant' kind of politics and consensus that has long been part of New York life. I think this is true to a number of other large cities that have been fuelled by immigration because close to 40% of all New Yorkers were born in another country and most of the rest had an immigrant parent or grandparents.

So, I would say that still the basic, the baseline feeling is very much seize[?] the value of immigration and sympathizes and understands that this is the fundamental part of the city. But those forces, I think, that are threatening immigration, they are in places that are experiencing some of this diversification now for the first time or only in recent years, perhaps, so much forgotten that this is at the base of mobility, is at the basis of the nation and the world.

I think there are different things going on, but certainly, the pressures have mounted and the language sometimes becomes a flashpoint just because- especially for a monolingual English speaker, let's say, somebody like Donald Trump who's been talking just in the last couple of months about truly foreign languages, languages coming into our country, where the sound of another language almost seems to just rattle him and bring out all of his fears and insecurities. And he seems to be trying to sort of play that up. So, it's really about other anxieties, obviously. It's not about language, it's not about, "Oh, yes. They have a subjunctive, and you don't."

Megan: Right. Yes.

Ross: Or "We do, but it's not as overtly marked or used." But yes, it's a delicate and difficult moment.

Megan: Yes. So, speaking of Trump, how would his re-election, heaven forfend, affect speakers of endangered language is in New York, do you think?

Ross: Heaven forfend. Yes. We saw and we're involved working with a lot of different communities, doing a lot of different things during [inaudible] 2016 to 2020. It was a deeply challenging period where many people, whether with documents or not, were living in a great deal of fear and the sense that like- I mean, linguistic communities here as elsewhere have depended on their transnational or trans local contacts with their home communities on the ability to have family reunification, to have new arrivals from those communities, replenishing and supporting the language. And once all those things are under threat, it can choke off and break down some of those communities. 

Certainly, some people in some communities [inaudible] actually are able to double down and rally and so on, but the challenges are already so immense that we're used to the idea, "Oh, the world is continually getting more and more diverse, and we'll see more and more people from all over the world coming and enriching our neighborhoods, our cultural life, our culinary life, all of this." I think that it really could drastically go in the other direction, to go backwards, if we had another Trump term. 

Among all the executive orders during that first term proposed immigration [inaudible] reforms. Some of them had a linguistic side where if you don't speak English, you were going to be prevented from being able to migrate or you were going to be in a difficult situation. That has never been a feature of immigration to this country, which has always depended on other factors, but language, and this is coming out of the English-only movement, which is now kind of been going for a few decades. And it's also in some ways, I would say, kind of a new force in American life. Because historically, we have been such a multilingual place, but that English-only movement may finally then get a place in the White House and who knows what that could lead to.

Megan: I don't want to either. It's horrifying.

Carrie: It was bad enough the first time around. 

Megan: Did you notice it affect your work at the Endangered Language Alliance during his first administration?

Ross: Yes. It definitely helped to shift our focus, which I think was a good thing. And of course, there's always work to do on the grammar of a language, and we want to work on this dictionary and get into more technical sides of language. In some cases, the speakers themselves are [inaudible] the focus did have to shift and then even more so during COVID, to things that were affecting people immediately and we were starting to record 'Know Your Rights'...

Megan: Oh, sure.

Ross: ...PSAs in different languages and addressing all the different concerns and uncertainties about deportation, travel, unemployment, and all these things that we suddenly accessed information, interpretation, all those things came much more to the fore.

Megan: Oh, yes. Absolutely.

Carrie: So, speaking of things like that, how are linguists and speakers fighting back?

Ross: A variety of ways. I think we are seeing in some ways like an unprecedented push to try to have better access to interpretation and translation, deepening language policy where even 10, 20 years ago, there was a lot less in terms of cities and states saying that they'll at least support the largest non-English languages in their areas. So, we've seen the formation, we've been part of the formation of an indigenous interpreter's co-op here, especially focused on indigenous Latin American languages, but a lot of that is interpretation for immigration courts and having to do with life-or-death types of issues. 

And then those PSAs and health stuff during the height of the pandemic, multilingual immigrant communities in New York were at the epicenter of the epicenter because there were many who were essential workers living in overcrowded housing, they didn't have access to information in their languages about the fast-changing health situation. So, all of those things have led to more of a push and awareness. Like, we have to do this, we have to have more of that linguistic infrastructure in place just as we have other types of infrastructure. This is crucial for everything. But yes, it's still early days and few resources to really do the work, so it's still a big uphill battle, but I think there is a lot more focus on trying to make messages and trying to engage. 

We see city agencies like Department of Health and Department of Education, the Mayor's Office of Urban Affairs, and occasionally, in other places outside New York as well. Like realizing that they need to engage in not just the few largest languages but find strategies to reach communities kind of where they are even in primarily oral languages, indigenous languages we're seeing. There's much more than there was even a decade ago even if it's still small compared to need.

Megan: What would you to see the Endangered Language Alliance do next?

Ross: There are so many projects on the docket. I tried to talk a little bit about it in Language City and just trying to run a nonprofit in the world, not really tied to any university. I mean, I teach linguistics at Columbia and my co-director also teaches at Quinn College but would love to have a real staff where we could hire linguistics graduates and all that stuff to really be able to have more consistent ongoing programs.

But I think the dream is to be a major partner in the building of that linguistic infrastructure for the city and other cities. So, we've done all this work mapping the languages of New York, which fed into the book and check out our digital version of that language map at languagemap.nyc, which shows over 700 language varieties that are spoken all over the metropolitan area, recordings from many of them and stories. So, even just maintaining that, we did that linguistic census because the Census Bureau doesn't [crosstalk] do a good job at language, right?

Carrie: Yes. They don't.

Ross: They just cover the largest languages. So, even the data is missing. We have tried to fill that gap, but we know there's a lot of interest in doing it in other cities. We try to support some of these nascent efforts in other places, and our ability to do that is limited. The ability of linguists and others in those places to do that mapping is limited. But now that we have the map as a tool to teach with, to advocate with, it's still a matter of taking it to the next level and saying, "Okay, well, we have some sense of the communities here, but are we meeting their linguistic needs?" Whether it's for around things bilingual education or interpretation or interest in language maintenance and revitalization. We could really be if we had enough scale to support and language activists with their linguistic choices and project. Right now, it's catch-as-catch-can, but there's so much interest and demand and desire on the part of speakers and activists.

Carrie: I was going to ask you about the mapmaking because I saw that in your bio. How did you get interested in mapmaking as a linguist?

Ross: The first thing that happened was just that we realized that none of the communities that we were working with were represented in the census. So, we worked backward. We know some of these communities have thousands of people here in New York and they don't show up in any clearer way in any official data, which was curious. Certainly, there's a renaissance of mapping right now where so many people are interested in creating cool maps and doing spatial visualization of complex phenomena. 

And certainly, language mapping poses all kinds of interesting challenges, which we've written about. It's not easy to determine how do you represent something as fluid and dynamic as language. But I think that it's a way of understanding linguistic geography of the city that can appeal to a wide audience and bring a lot of people in and visible, as it were, a lot of communities which are not visible or not audible to outsiders or to policy makers.

So, I think it's a really important tool and we've had a great reception for this work for showing what the linguistic diversity of the city looks like and that it's not just completely ineffable, but you can picture it, have an image of it, and then also that's something that one can work with. It was useful during the peak of COVID. And for other challenges, this is actually like a tool for city agencies and other nonprofits and language activists to use to say like, "Okay, this at least gives us a sense of where people are." 

And then also that it's not random that there is a story to why communities settle in one place versus another, and how, what kinds of language contact phenomenon can be read off the map and then investigated. It's just so many intricacies about the patterning and structuring of linguistic diversity in the density of an urban area. Particular challenges that are quite different from the idea of like, "Okay, let's make a language map of the world where we have this polygon and that polygon and these pieces of territory." Here, it's like in a single building, on a single block that you're seeing so many languages in contact and next to each other.

Carrie: Speaking of that, each dot represents a language in a particular location. How do you choose this location is significant?

Ross: It's a challenge. There are significant sites. There are so many decisions, representation that go into this kind of mapping, and it's not perfect by any means, it's always changing, we try to stay current. It really grew out of, we spent thousands of conversations with community leaders, language activists, speakers, about what are the significant sites for your language. And then a certain set of constraints that we felt were important just from the get-go including the fact that the map is meant for the lesser-known languages. So, we wouldn't be putting every significant English-speaking site or Spanish-speaking or Bengali-speaking sites. We limited those to one per borough, basically, or some very basic constraints.

But then with the smaller languages that are not on the census, we've also built the census data into the map. There's a tab for that and look at that. It's useful for the top few dozen languages, but for the other nearly 700, it was a matter of having those discussions and saying, "Well, is it this religious institution or this hometown association?" I'm fascinated by and talk quite a bit in the book about these hometown associations, of which there are thousands in the city, and which I think are the bedrock of the immigrant city today. It represents particular places, often linguistically keyed to languages that people are from, where people have migrated from. A particular valley in Nepal where a particular language is spoken, who have an association in a particular place in Queens. So, those are very clear cases, there is a clear gathering point.

In some cases, it might be a religious institution, it could be a restaurant, a community center, it could be a residential enclave of a building. We also had to respect privacy and [inaudible] of the locations a little bit. Mostly, places that do have some kind of... where there isn't public information, this is an association that has this address. It's not necessarily a place we're telling people like, "Go knock on the door." So that's the privacy side of it.

But I think it does getting into these significant sites. And we have, it's not just one per language, it's a number, but it does get at something about the way that people see their... and obviously, it reflects the limits of what we could do. We're not the Census Bureau, we can't have a huge response where we're mapping actually all the residential [inaudible], we want to. So, I think it does get at something very interesting and useful.

Carrie: Yes, no, absolutely. I absolutely love this map. I'm so excited to be playing around with it.

Ross: Oh, all right. Cool.

Carrie: I really do love maps, especially interactive ones, but...

Ross: Oh, yes.

Megan: So, I wanted to make sure to ask about the people behind these languages. You write that the story of a city's least known languages is also the story of its forgotten people told in their own words in translation where needed. Thank you for sharing the stories of speakers of endangered languages with us through your book. What have you learned from these speakers?

Ross: Well, thank you. The book is structured where there's this linguistic history of the city, but then the core of it it's really the portrait of these set of different speakers of different languages in very different situations from all over the world, including Lenape, the original language of this place. But then also, a variety of different situations. And so, what I wanted to do is try to show the city as they see it, their portion of their world, not just the city, but where they're coming from; the details of their migration stories, of their language work, and to include big chunks of their languages. The audio book also has some of them reading certain passages as well that are in the languages. I try to have, the translation is not a secondary aspect [inaudible] into it, right? English is in italics, not many other languages, which are woven through it.

Megan: Yes. I loved that choice.

Ross: Oh, thank- It's trying to embody the ideas that it's talking about. There's a lot of wisdom in these speakers who are people that I've known for years. And how did I choose them is always a question. Well, it grew out of particular relationships over time. We've worked with a lot of different people in different ways, but these were both a group of people that came from all over and represented different situations, but also people that I just know and trust and deeply care about and that we've worked with. 

Each one of them I hope has something different to teach us about, whether it's Ibrahima, the activist for [inaudible], this West African writing system who worries about getting this writing system into unicode and how it's going to come out on different software platforms and social media is kind of this eternal beta tester of language. When he's teaching about writing and technology versus Earwin, who is a Nawat-speaking chef. He's from Puebla in Mexico but has been cooking with the language and almost recovering the etymologies of behind Mexican cuisine, where almost all of the key words are actually Nawat origin words. So, yes, I think that each person featured in the book has things to teach us about language and life.

Carrie: That's awesome. Someone that I work with, she had just finished her master's and she created this resource for speakers of her language, Squamish. It involves some cooking, recipes, stories, a little bit of linguistics. I think it's just really cool. So, I love the other connection with food and language.

Ross: Oh, yes. Food is the way in. [crosstalk] It's universal. So much there.

Carrie: There's so much there. But yes, is there anything else you want to let our listeners know about either the book or endangered languages or whatever work you do?

Ross: No, I would just say I hope people enjoy Language City. I hope they check out the Endangered Language Alliance. I hope they hear where they're living in a different way. I hope you just are able to open your ears to the linguistic diversity that's actually right around us. It's not just on the other side of the world. It's actually right here in towns and cities, all around us where we're living. So, that's what I hope Language City kind of opens up to.

Megan: I love that.

Carrie: Me too.

Megan: Thank you so much for being with us today. It's been a great conversation.

Ross: Thank you, guys. Thanks for doing this and good luck with everything.

Megan: Yes, thank you.

Carrie: Thanks.

Megan: We always leave our listeners with one final message, [crosstalk] 'Don't be an asshole.'

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Carrie: The Vocal Fries Podcast is produced by me, Carrie Gillon. Theme music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @vocalfriespod. You can email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com and our website is vocalfriespod.com.

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