The Multilingual Apple: Languages in New York City (Contributions to the Sociology of Language) [Paperback]

Ofelia Garcia (Editor), Joshua A. Fishman (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2002 | ISBN-10: 311017281X | ISBN-13: 978-3110172812 | Edition: 2

This book should 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).

Editorial Reviews

Review

"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

Product Details

• Paperback: 373 pages
• Publisher: Mouton De Gruyter; 2 edition (February 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 311017281X
• ISBN-13: 978-3110172812
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #878,543 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 stars The Tart of the Multilingual Apple, August 17, 2009

By 

Karl C. Folkes "Creole Linguist" (Clarkstown, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Multilingual Apple: Languages in New York City (Contributions to the Sociology of Language) (Paperback)

Both Professors Fishman (a noted sociolinguist) and Garcia (an expert in Bilingualism)have published a timely book that addresses the important, though sometimes volatile, issue of languages and dialects. These two main authors include a number of contributing articles by a variety of educators in the assorted fields of bilingual education, English as a second language, Foreign Languages, Sociolinguistics, and Applied Linguistics. The book is interspersed with useful statistical data that, while useful, need to be updated to make the overall information more current for the present century.

While the major focus of the text is on the impressive variety of languages in New York City, its sweeping documentation of these languages, leaves a lot to be said about some of the lesser known languages, particularly those of the so-called "English Caribbean." These tend to be treated routinely by contributors who possess, at best, second-hand information about these languages; and therefore are not as scholarly forthright as they could be, had they had in-depth interviews from adequate informants of these languages(e.g., Jamaican/Jamaican Creole, Guyanese,Lesser Antillean Creole,Garifuna), which are not always entirely mutually exclusive among themselves, or even with other better known and 'well-attested' European Languages, such as English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. It would also have been helpful, had the book contained some samples of the written forms of these languages; although it must be recognized, that many of these languages still do not possess a uniform written code and, unfortunately, often rely on their "standard" English written counterpart to represent (misrepresent?) their articulated oral expressions (very much to the chagrin of achieving phonological, lexical, or even semantic adequacy).But perhaps this, in all fairness, is beyond the scope of this book and the authors' intent.

Altogether, then, the book serves as a good introduction to the subject of multilingualism, and to the wealth of its representation in "The Big Apple." I recommend it as a worthy contribution to the knowledge-base about the extant languages of the Great Metropolis.

Karl C. Folkes, Ph.D.

Retired Caribbean Educator

August, 2009