Category: default || By jt3y

It's more demographic fun from the Tube City Almanac, the Mon-Yough area's leading source of useless, but mildly interesting, data!

Earlier this week, we talked about religions in Pennsylvania. Now, thanks to the Modern Language Association, we're going to see what languages people are speaking. (Tube City hard hat tip to Penn State professor Michael Berube's "Web" "Log", where I learned of the MLA language maps in the context of a funny but pointed political essay.)

In Our Fair City, according to MLA's analysis of U.S. Census data, English speakers are by far the majority (there's no breakout for "Pittsburghese"), with 23,031 people reporting that their first language is English.

But 441 McKeesporters say their first language (the one they speak most often at home) is Spanish; 146, Italian; 110, German; 108, Serbo-Croatian; 93, Polish; 76, Greek; 74, "other Slavic languages"; 68, French; 55, Hungarian; 37, Russian; 31, French Creole; 27, Arabic; 23, African languages; 23, Japanese; 13, Korean; 9, Vietnamese; 6, Scandinavian; and 6, Portuguese (!).

International Village, indeed. Portuguese?

I have a feeling that Census data from 50, 75 and 100 years ago in McKeesport would show many of the same languages in use (I don't have that data handy, obviously), but with many more people speaking Greek, Polish, Italian, Hungarian and other Eastern and Central European languages.

We also would have had many more people speaking Scandinavian languages, particularly Swedish: Not for nothing does McKeesport have a street named for "The Swedish Nightingale," Jenny Lind.

All right, how about some suburbs? Say, West Mifflin?

According to MLA, 20,026 people report English is their primary language at home (again, the number of people saying "jagoff," "jumbo," and "yinz" isn't counted --- a shocking slight against the Mon-Yough area, and I intend to write my congressman).

People speaking "other Slavic languages" at home are the next largest number at 188, followed by Spanish speakers (93), French (90, and you didn't even know West Mifflin had a "French Quarter"), Italian (77), Serbo-Croatian (56), Polish (36), Korean (21), Russian (18), German (18), Urdu (!!) (17), Japanese (12), Greek (10), Vietnamese (7) and Hungarian (6, and it's nice to see there are still a few of my grandfathers' countrymen hanging around Titan Country).

Urdu, incidentally, is a language primarily spoken in Pakistan and parts of India. So why can't I get a decent curry in West Mifflin, hmm?

In North Versailles Township, according to MLA, you'll find 16 French-speaking residents who wince every time they hear someone say "ver-SALES."

You'll also find 65 people who speak Spanish at home, 55 speaking "other Slavic languages," 50 speaking Korean, 50 speaking Serbo-Croatian, 43 speaking Polish, 29 speaking Italian, 28 speaking Hindi, 14 speaking German, 11 speaking Hungarian, seven speaking Greek and five speaking Arabic. Oh, and 10,048 who only speak English.

And finally, let's look at South Versailles Township, also known as Coulter, where 151 persons report speaking English as their primary language at home, and only one person reports speaking another language --- Italian --- though since he's the only one in the 15028 ZIP code who can speak Italian, I have no idea who he's talking to. Maybe he makes a lot of phone calls to the 29 Italian speakers in North Versailles.

In any event, if you see that man, tell him "buon giorno" for me.