Globalization and Languages in New York City: A Case Study
“We seldom ask why we speak the language that we do, what we have in common with its other speakers, what its pedigree and career tell us about our ancestors, or what particular ways it has of framing our perceptions of the world. Perhaps we should.”[1]
The answer to this question is complicated for one language, as Henry Hitchings suggests in his book The Secret Life of Words. It would be even more difficult to answer for the many languages and the varieties of English spoken in New York City. To understand today’s New York City linguistically, it is important to go back to its colonial beginnings since then and now, New York City’s languages are at the heart of a rapidly globalizing world. In fact, the Dutch and the English colonies set the stage for today’s city, which many consider to be the multilingual capital of the world. Beginning with Dutch New Amsterdam, New York’s population was more diverse than that of other settlements in the New World. Diversity continued to grow under British rule and has reached new heights today. In its diversity and languages, the city reflected and continues to reflect most intensely, economic, social and political events in most of the world.
New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam was a trading post/settlement, governed by the Dutch West India Company, a branch of the very profitable global Dutch East India Company. At the height of Anglo-Dutch competition for dominance of world trade and international supremacy, the Dutch West India Company was formed especially to manage the establishment of New Netherland. With New Amsterdam at its capital, New Netherland was settled by the multilingual employees of an international business, a very different place from the English, Portuguese, Spanish and French colonies in the New World. The Netherlands had won their freedom from Spain and had begun to form their republic, a unique phenomenon in 17th century Europe. The Dutch were therefore keen on establishing a colony which would be in sharp contrast to the colonies of Spain, where native peoples were exploited and received cruel treatment.[2] The Dutch West India Company gave clear instructions to the first provisional governor of New Netherland, Willem Verhulst: “He shall also see that no one do the Indians any harm or violence, deceive, mock, or contemn them in any way, but that in addition to good treatment they be shown honesty, faithfulness, and sincerity in all contracts, dealings, and intercourse, without being deceived by shortage of measure, weight or number, and that throughout friendly relations with them be maintained.”[3]
It is this spirit of tolerance, relative tolerance by today’s standards, but very unusual for a time when most of Europe was ruled by powerful monarchs and torn by violent religious conflicts, that encouraged the first settlers to sign up with the Dutch West India Company. They were asked to swear allegiance to the company and the Netherlands and in exchange, after six years of work, the company promised them land. The settlers in the1624 group were unusual in another way; the majority of them were not Dutch. Of the 110 people, thirty families were French-speaking Walloons. [4] The others represented most of Europe as Dutch cities were receiving diverse populations seeking freedom from persecution. The colony reflected this diversity, particularly because relatively few Dutch nationals were interested in leaving their comfortable, newly prosperous homeland. In 1638, Father Jogues, the first Catholic priest to visit New Amsterdam, noted: “On the island of Manhate, and its environs, there may well be four or five hundred men of different sects and nations: The Director General told me that there were men of eighteen different languages.”[5]
In addition to the numerous European languages, there were in New Amsterdam, more than a dozen Eastern Algonquian languages as well as languages like Mohawk, belonging to the Iriquois groups. Munsee and Lenape were the major languages in the Manhattan area. To these would be added the numerous languages of African slaves who were brought to the colony shortly after it was established. Mundu and Kongo were predominant African languages in the Dutch colony.[6] Judging from their surnames, it is likely that many slaves were brought from Portuguese or other Atlantic colonies and may have been speakers of “creoles”, a combination of European and African languages. Portuguese and Spanish creoles were most prevalent as they reflected the declining world powers, Spain and Portugal. There was also a speaker of Arabic, Anthony Jensen van Salee, a free-born man from Morocco who was a Muslim and must have been of darker skin as the settlers called him the “black Turk.” [7]
To this mix, and against the protests and prejudices of Peter Stuyvesant, would be added a group of Jewish settlers fleeing persecution in Brazil. They spoke Portuguese but practiced their religion in Hebrew. Against Stuyvesant’s request, the directors of the Dutch West India Company maintained their policy: “The consciences of men ought to be free and unshackled, so long as they continue moderate, peaceable, inoffensive and not hostile to government. Such have been the maxims of … toleration by which … this city has been governed; and the result has been, that the oppressed and persecuted from every country have found among us an asylum from distress.”[8] Even English colonists who had sought religious freedom in the New World were flocking to New Amsterdam, fleeing, ironically, religious persecution in neighboring English colonies. [9] By the end of Dutch rule, English speakers would comprise up to 20% of the total population of New Amsterdam.
In short, the diversity of New Amsterdam’s inhabitants and their languages was most impressive. They were “ a Babel of peoples – Norwegians, Germans, Italians, Jews, Africans (slaves and free), Walloons, Bohemians, Munsees, Montauks, Mohawks, and many others—all living on the rim of empire, struggling to find a way of being together, searching for a balance between chaos and order, liberty and oppression. Pirates, prostitutes, smugglers and business sharks held sway in it. It was Manhattan, in other words, right from the start: a place unlike any other, either in the North American colonies or anywhere.” [10]
The British Colony
The surrender of New Netherland to the British was one outcome of England’s winning the competition for global economic and military supremacy. New Amsterdam became New York in 1664, when Peter Stuyvesant, much against his will, accepted the Articles of Capitulation. Not a single shot was fired; New Yorkers chose to go on with business as usual. The new rulers of the colony quickly made agreements with the powerful Dutch merchants. “ It has pleased the Lord that we must learn English, “ [11]concluded Jeremias Van Rensselaer and in the years that followed, the wealthy Dutch spoke English, observed English holidays, attended social clubs and intermarried with the English.[12]
The situation was different for those who were not part of the wealthy, influential class. Five or six thousand of New York’s Dutch population, 70% of the colony and 75-80% of the city, were unhappy with British rule which imposed new taxes and fees but made no provisions for any representation. Culture clashes were exacerbated by constant grievances against the behavior of English soldiers.[13] After the brief recapture of New York by the Dutch and its return to the British, the population of Dutch craftsmen, small traders and farmers began to resist assimilation. Unlike the upper classes, they did not intermarry and insisted on maintaining their Roman-Dutch legal tradition, refusing English Common Law. The British retaliated by not allowing Dutch in New York courts in 1674, but this resulted in a dramatic reduction of law suits among Dutch speakers.[14]
Continued discontent, class conflicts, changes in rule of England led to the Leisler rebellion, an attempt to return the colony to Dutch rule which was suppressed in 1691, ending in the torture and death of its leader, Jacob Leisler. The Judiciary Act of the same year was designed to anglicize New York’s legal system completely.[15] Anglicization continued in other areas. New York was more closely connected to the other English colonies through a regular post system, Long Island was renamed the Island of Nassau, the city celebrated the King’s birthday, and the Governor hosted a ball for wealthy New Yorkers of English descent.
Governor Fletcher continued the publicity campaign for English by inviting printer William Bradford to New York. Bradford’s press established connections between New Yorkers with British society and politics. Among the works printed in 1698, was Francis Daniel Pastorius’ A New Primer, or Methodical Directions to Attain the True Spelling, Reading and Writing of English. In 1710, the first American edition of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer appeared, and in 1725, Bradford launched the weekly Gazette, the first New York newspaper. Bradford printed official edicts, petitions, ordinances, all intended to support the government. [16] Those who were uninformed or unable to read were simply left out of the circles of power.
In further efforts to erase Dutch rule, the Dutch Stadhuis was replaced by City Hall, not far from another English symbol, Trinity Church. In fact, symbolically, City Hall was built of stones from the wall Stuyvesant had built to keep the English out.[17] Viscount Cornbury, the next Governor, began to put pressure on the Dutch Reform Church by appointing Anglicans to Dutch churches and by insisting on English-language schooling, to “make this Colony and English Colony, which I am afraid will not easily be done without it.”[18]
In Anglicizing New York, the British had used everything they had learned in fighting for the use of the English language back home. They knew they had to replace Dutch not only in government, but in the courts and legal system, the schools, the churches and through the use of the printing press, in all communications of importance. After all, they themselves had been ruled by the French and had used Latin for legal matters a few generations before becoming an English-speaking global power. What is of interest linguistically is that in this process, the English language had acquired thousands of words from French, Latin, German and many other languages of former conquerors of Britain, including, once upon a time, the Dutch. The language had acquired much diversity in its vocabulary as well as flexibility, making it adaptable to change.[19] Furthermore, in the context of 17th century globalization, “Dutch” and “English” are “clear, sometimes fierce, counterpoints. So it’s mildly interesting, mildly amusing even, to note that in the earliest written record of the word ‘Dutch,’ in 786, it is used to refer to English. […] the Dutch don’t use the word to refer to themselves (except of course when they are speaking English, which is somehow a very Dutch thing to do.)”[20]
At the end of the colonial period, Dutch influences including the use of the language in New York began to disappear. Native American languages declined significantly. Multilingualism, however, the legacy of the original Dutch settlement, did not go away. It was destined to increase and multiply as the British, like the Dutch, found it necessary to have an open door immigration policy in order to attract settlers to the colony. As the British gained control of the seas, their slave trade was diversified and speakers of new African languages were brought to the City. Diversity continued to grow as New York became part of the United States of America and it is at its peak in New York City today. Not only are so many more languages spoken in New York City today, but there are speakers of languages about to be extinct, of languages that have ceased to exist in their country of origin. Because of the genocide, some languages from Darfour, for example, are only spoken in New York.[21]
There is an effort to preserve languages as well as to revive or revitalize languages, including the native Lenape language. Locally, the Endangered Language Alliance of the City University of New York, has been doing work in this area.[22] UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, an agency of the United Nations, is charged with the preservation of the world’s languages at the international level and has an office in New York City.
We speak English in the United States and in New York City, but English is not the official language of the country and linguists argue that standard English “has never been and cannot be considered today, New York’s vernacular.”[23] New Yorkers today speak more than the 800 languages counted in the 2000 Census. They also speak “standard” English, and because 36% of New Yorkers are foreign born, the English spoken by the immigrants in New York is closer to the language Jean-Plaul Nerrière called “Globish.” “Globish” is the English used to communicate in international business by native speakers of different languages. According to Robert McCrum, who has written a book by this name, “Globish” encompasses the many forms of English spoken by one third or 4 billion people in different parts of the planet; it is used not only as a “ lingua franca[24] but also as a metaphor for global English culture.”[25]
We don’t often ask why we speak a language or languages in New York City; we just do. Is it because of the Englishman, Henry Hudson, who sailed for the Dutch who claimed the land for them? Is it because of the multilingual settlers and employees of an international Dutch company or the policies of the British and later American New Yorkers? Why has New York City continued and is continuing to be multilingual as well as English and Globish speaking? Could it be that since its New Amsterdam days, New York has become and remains the center of and a reflection of globalization? The complete answer to Henry Hitchings’ question for New York poses new questions and leads the way to new levels of global explorations in New York City. We invite the readers of this article to discover their own answers through the suggested units of instruction and activities.