[Mind] Melting Pot Melts English
First Impression of NY: Melting Pot melting English
Within my first four days in New York, the percentage of use of English may be lower than 50%. Partially that is because I hanged out with my relatives and other Taiwanese LL.M students in most of time, but most of such uselessness of English should be attributed to nature of the city: New York, the biggest melting pot in the world. In New York (maybe limited to Manhattan and Queens where I have stayed), colors mix, accents vary, languages exchange and nationality blurs. Caucasoid people turn into
minority under certain circumstances. Black, Latin, Middle Eastern, and Asian guys evenly scatter in every corner of the city. No one would notice due to your racial difference, because difference is the only one thing people here are in common.
Fortunately or unfortunately, Chinese is prevailing in the race mixture. The original amount of Chinese immigrants in New York is large. Recent increase of Chinese students in the USA is a wide-known trend, let alone the surge of Chinese tourists cramming into all resorts. Taiwan accented and tongue-rolling Mandarin strikes my ears frequently strike my ears when I am walking in Time Square and Wall Street. When I go to the customs or the bank, clerks always asked me, “Do you speak English?” Does that
mean that if I replied no, they would start speaking Chinese to me?
The only disturbing thing is that we Taiwanese look no different from Hong Kong people or some new immigrants, some people may naturally speaks Cantonese to you first and you don’t know what they talk about and if you should speak English to them.
In short, as a Taiwanese student, I feel very comfortable in this city. Everything goes smoothly and easily here, including the stunning banking affairs according to Internet rumors. While I am still not fond of New York, I think I will finally get used to it.
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