From the Thames to the Hudson: Comparing London and New York’s Multilingual Policies

Before you reach the corner of Bishopsgate on a rainy Tuesday, you will hear at least four different languages as you leave Liverpool Street Station. Bengali, Turkish, a dialect of English spoken by a teenager on the phone that would confuse his own grandfather, and something that sounds somewhat like Polish but isn’t. The experience is nearly identical when you cross the Atlantic and stand outside the 74th Street-Roosevelt Avenue station in Queens, but with more Spanish, more Tagalog, and the distinct sound of someone arguing about parking in two languages at once.

The Globalization and World Cities Research Network has only ever given these two cities an Alpha ++ rating. Everything else is at a lower level. Despite their scale and swagger, London and New York have taken very different approaches to the issue of language. A silent policy of recognition has been established. A louder accommodation has been constructed by the other. It’s safe to say that neither has figured it out completely.

Teachers in London are still required by the National Curriculum to practice “standard English when the context and audience require it.”” a fair written instruction. Less so in reality. Regardless of what the CV says, anyone who has watched a job interview in the City knows that an accent from Tower Hamlets can land differently than one from Tunbridge Wells, and there is scant evidence that this approach actually improves educational or social outcomes. Sitting in a classroom in Hackney gives one the impression that the official line and the lived reality are speaking over one another.

Multicultural London English, or MLE, is what linguists refer to as what has developed over the past 20 years in places like Hackney. It’s not broken English, nor is it slang. It’s a truly new variety that emerged from friendship groups with parents from Lagos, Dhaka, Bogotá, and Bow during the same academic year. It now contains new pronouns. new syntax. In some situations, the term “man” now refers to me. That’s a big deal. In a language, pronouns hardly ever change, and when they do, it usually takes generations. In roughly 20 years, London has accomplished this.

The story of New York rhymes but doesn’t repeat. As new residents change the boroughs, the city’s Department of Education is legally obligated to offer translation and interpretation services in nine languages. In Brooklyn courts, you can ask for a Wolof or Uzbek interpreter without raising an eyebrow, and public announcements on the subway are routinely displayed in both Spanish and Chinese. The outcome is a city that, at least bureaucratically, meets people where they speak, though it’s possible that NYC’s strategy owes more to litigation than philosophy—civil rights lawsuits did much of the heavy lifting.

However, there seems to be a discrepancy between the two. The policies of London act as though the dialects spoken on its streets are nonexistent. Bronx Spanish and Queens Patois are in the same gray area as Hackney’s MLE because New York’s policies recognize the languages but seldom the dialects within them. The distinction between official and real language is made in different ways by both cities.

From a distance, it’s difficult to ignore the fact that the future of English is being written more in bodegas and chicken shops than in dictionaries. It remains to be seen if the institutions of London and New York can keep up with their own streets. They seem to be making an effort. Additionally, the streets seem to be moving more quickly as usual.