Language
Brooklyn has a high degree of linguistic diversity. In the 2000 United States Census 46.7% of the population reported speaking a language other than English at home (either exclusively or in addition to English). The most prevalent other language identified was Spanish, spoken at home by 18.00% of the population. Additionally, 5.95% of the population reported speaking Russian, 4.19% Haitian Creole, 3.92% Chinese, 3.10% Yiddish, 2.10% Italian, 1.42% Polish, 1.13% Hebrew, and 1.09% Arabic. Other languages spoken at home by at least 5000 people include Cantonese, Urdu, Bengali, Greek, Korean, Tagalog, and Albanian.
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of Brooklyn
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Any language is necessarily a finite system applied with different degrees of creativity to an infinite variety of situations, and most of the words and phrases we use are “prefabricated” in the sense that we don’t coin new ones every time we speak.”
—David Lodge (b. 1935)
“Upon my tongues continual slanders ride,
The which in every language I pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Language makes it possible for a child to incorporate his parents’ verbal prohibitions, to make them part of himself....We don’t speak of a conscience yet in the child who is just acquiring language, but we can see very clearly how language plays an indispensable role in the formation of conscience. In fact, the moral achievement of man, the whole complex of factors that go into the organization of conscience is very largely based upon language.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)