Article March 21, 1903 Issue

A Polyglot City

The Boston Herald

PROFESSOR BUCK of the philology department of the University of Chicago has been looking into the linguistic conditions of that city, with results that are somewhat astonishing. Of all the cities of the world, he awards to Chicago the front rank for cosmopolitanism, there being no less than fourteen languages besides English, spoken there by colonies of at least ten thousand persons each. Newspapers appear regularly in ten languages, and church services may be heard in about twenty languages. Chicago is the second largest Bohemian city in the world, the third Swedish, the third Norwegian, the fourth Polish, the fifth German. In all, there are some forty foreign languages spoken by numbers ranging from half a dozen to half a million, and aggregating over one million. Professor Buck carried on his investigations by temporary residence in the various colonies in Chicago, which are really little cities within the metropolis, each speaking its own language, clinging to its hereditary customs. It is found, however, that the children can generally speak English, and that the grandchildren, as a rule, never learn the foreign language and speak only English.—The Boston Herald.

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