Language Map Data Center Goes Public
By TED ANTHONY

The Associated Press
06/16/04 01:39 EDT

NEW YORK (AP) – News flash: There is not a single Chinese speaker
residing in Box Butte County, Neb.. Which may not sound like a
particularly useful sliver of information – unless you’re a Box
Butte-bound speaker of Chinese looking for someone to converse with
out on northwestern Nebraska’s lonely prairie.

Now consider that ZIP Code 15101 – that’s Allison Park, Pa., near
Pittsburgh, for those of you keeping score at home – has 49 speakers of
Arabic and six of Armenian. Yiddish, meanwhile, is spoken by people
in every state – including two each in Montana and South Dakota,
suggesting that Billings and Rapid City aren’t the prime places to
pick up some killer smoked whitefish.

Why are we telling you all this? Because thanks to the Modern Language
Association, one of academia’s most venerable organizations, now
we can.

The MLA’s new interactive Language Map Data Center, which goes public
Wednesday, is a truly fascinating (“hen you yisi” in Chinese, “muy
interesante” in Spanish) glimpse into the tapestry of tongues spoken by
American citizens and residents. It’s a story told by 2000 U.S. Census
data, crunched and leveraged to linguistic and geographic ends.

“So often, when we think of languages and cultures that are not
Anglophone America, we think of the world out there – foreign,” says
Rosemary G. Feal, the MLA’s executive director. “We don’t necessarily
realize how, in our own American globalized society, we’ve got all
these linguistic resources woven into the fabric.”

For anyone interested in language and culture, the site – with its
interactive maps in bright purples and blues, easily navigable by
mouse – is as addictive as a catnip-filled mouse for a kitten. It’s
hardly just a parlor game, though. In an era when study of all foreign
languages is rising in America, the possibilities are myriad.

Academics tracking languages can hone in on particular
areas and find out how immigrants from abroad are integrating
linguistically. Marketers who want to target speakers of Thai,
Persian or Navajo can find the ZIP codes where mass mailings would
be the most lucrative. Social service agencies can calibrate their
work to the ethnic breakdowns in their own communities.

“We incorporate the world in the United States,” Feal says. “We
always have.”

And on a planet of terrorism and wars where intercultural communication
grows more crucial by the year – some in the U.S. government bemoaned
the lack of Pashtu translators, for example, during the first months
of the war in Afghanistan – knowing the language resources in one’s
own community or state can be a boon to national security as well.

“There’s not enough accurate information about how language works
and how language is present in our society,” says Donna Christian,
president of the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, D.C.
“There must be a thousand ways that civic leaders could use this
information.”

MLA developers initially conceived the language map idea as “a really
big poster” before the idea ran away with them and evolved into the
interactive operation. So far, they have mapped the top 30 languages
in the country.

They are working on an even more detailed second tier that will
be made available for crunching – suggesting that before too long,
we will presumably be able to determine how many speakers of Uighur
have taken up residence in Walla Walla, Wash.

America being what it is, someone will find that fact as pivotal as,
say, how many lefthanded shortstops named Tim are batting over .300
against righthanders during twi-night doubleheaders in Fenway Park
on Sundays in May.

“For people in this country, to appreciate the range of languages
spoken here is so important,” Christian says. “There’s such a strong
feeling that English is the only language around. To get an idea of
how many languages are spoken here, that can give us all a better
sense of understanding of each other.”

On the Net:

MLA Language Map Data Center:
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