Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Hello, I know very little about New York City, however I study French at the graduate level, so when I saw this map of languages spoken in New York City by Business Insider (NYC Non-English Language Maps - Business Insider) which includes a map of languages other than Spanish, and a map of languages other than English and Spanish, I was very intrigued by the French and French Creole results.
On the map of second languages, Spanish dominates, except in one part of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Can you explain to me what has resulted in this phenomena? I have seen French and French Creole spoken elsewhere in the United States (Maine, Louisiana, to name a few), but I was unaware of French spoken to these numbers in NYC.
On the map which takes out Spanish, whole swathes of Manhattan's midtown and upper east and west side become French, along with more French Creole showing up. Can you explain this? How has French become such a strong language in NYC?
Hello, I know very little about New York City, however I study French at the graduate level, so when I saw this map of languages spoken in New York City by Business Insider (NYC Non-English Language Maps - Business Insider) which includes a map of languages other than Spanish, and a map of languages other than English and Spanish, I was very intrigued by the French and French Creole results.
On the map of second languages, Spanish dominates, except in one part of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Can you explain to me what has resulted in this phenomena? I have seen French and French Creole spoken elsewhere in the United States (Maine, Louisiana, to name a few), but I was unaware of French spoken to these numbers in NYC.
On the map which takes out Spanish, whole swathes of Manhattan's midtown and upper east and west side become French, along with more French Creole showing up. Can you explain this? How has French become such a strong language in NYC?
Merci!
The french creole you saw were Haitian/Caribbean neighborhoods. Haitians speak fluent french creole. St Lucian's speak a creole that is combined with both french, English and African dialect.
The french locations in manhattan are probably Europeans.
As one who also has studied French language and culture since high school cannot ever remember seeing/hearing so many "European" French in New York City. Mainly in Manhattan but also certain parts of Brooklyn.
It has always been that French students would do their gap year and or perhaps a few years after college graduation in New York City, but nothing like one has seen lately. It seems everywhere one goes today there they are! *LOL*
We have several French families on our UES street, and am constantly running into others in shops, supermarkets, and so forth. Do not know if they are fleeing M. Hollande's France or simply a desire to experience a different way of life. ! French New York City ! (New York, NY) - Meetup
Do know a number of wealthy French families are leaving France due to the "ahem" tax situation and purchasing properties/establishing homes in New York, Miami, and certain other area so the USA.
People who know french don't automatically know french creole. It's similar to Americans who have a hard time understanding Jamaican English aka patois.
The french creole you saw were Haitian/Caribbean neighborhoods. Haitians speak fluent french creole. St Lucian's speak a creole that is combined with both french, English and African dialect.
If you visit a Caribbean neighborhood in Brooklyn, even if you don't recognize every word of the creole, your spoken academic French will be understood by creole-speakers.
French, taught in the French-Caribbean island public schools, must be proficient for a student there to earn a high school diploma.
The French you encountered in Maine and Louisiana has an entirely different pathway: French Canadians moved south from Quebec into Northern New England (Maine, NH, Vermont) for factory and fish industry jobs 100 or so years ago. As for Louisiana - it's something about Alsatians/Alsace... Point is: the NYC story is entirely different.
Last edited by BrightRabbit; 08-10-2014 at 01:13 PM..
If you visit a Caribbean neighborhood in Brooklyn, even if you don't recognize every word of the creole, your spoken academic French will be understood by creole-speakers.
French, taught in the French-Caribbean island public schools, must be proficient for a student there to earn a high school diploma.
The French you encountered in Maine and Louisiana has an entirely different pathway: French Canadians moved from Quebec into Northern New England (Maine, NH, Vermont) for factory jobs 100 or so years ago. As for Louisiana - it's something about Alsatians/Alsace... Point is: the NYC story is entirely different.
Yes creole speakers understand the language pretty well. Not sure if the actual french do.
The French Creole neighborhoods are easy enough to explain with the information you all have given me here. But what about the French in Manhattan? Is it as BugsyPal says, wealthy French citizens moving to the USA in the last few years? Perhaps it is something to do with Hollande, is it true this trend has just recently taken off?
The French Creole neighborhoods are easy enough to explain with the information you all have given me here. But what about the French in Manhattan? Is it as BugsyPal says, wealthy French citizens moving to the USA in the last few years? Perhaps it is something to do with Hollande, is it true this trend has just recently taken off?
Not recent. May also be some rich American kids who attended bilingual school or had a French tutor from a very young age claiming French as a coequal language with English. French has definitely in the past been the preferred childhood language of the elite, though less so today.
To me the most surprising result is Japanese in Washington Heights/Inwood. I've never noticed any Japanese presence there at all, and the Asian population is very low according the Census. I would expect there to be very few non-Spanish, non-English speakers in general in that area, so the results would be a little bit random, but still.
Last edited by BrownstoneNY; 08-10-2014 at 07:36 PM..
I am a Francophone. The cajun French spoken in LA can be subdivided into 3 different dialects.
Most of the French in northern Brooklyn and Manhattan are from the Parisian region. Nothing to do with Hollande. They have been coming to NYC in droves for the past 8 years or so. Parisians feel very comfortable with the NYC lifestyle. The French government has been making it easier by giving money to the NYC public school system to fund French bilingual schools. There are about 8 of them, including a couple of charter schools. The French government will pay for training for native French speakers to attend school and get a New York teaching license with a bilingual extension in French so that they can legally teach in the public school system. Chelsea parents fought very hard to get the new Sixth Ave. school to have a bilingual French program, but the BOE turned them down, for now. Another result from the wave of les francais in the city is the replacement of the cupcake fad with the macaron fad. Of course, the American macaron is 10 times the size of the French ones. During the mid-80s, there was a great French bakery on 55th and Sixth, but they closed long ago. Now, there are French bakeries all over Manhattan. There are several French ex-pat community organizations with their own websites and newsletters in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
In Brooklyn the MTA even posts signs written in Creole (which is spelled differently from standard French, though if you read it phonetically, it's often very similar)--you hear it on the street all the time in/around Flatbush.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
