The Best Multilingual Cities In Indonesia And The Philippines

As we've already had a look at Europe, Canada, the US, Mexico and the Caribbean, South America, Asia, and the Middle East and Africa, we thought that given the huge number of languages spoken in Southeast Asia that Indonesia and the Philippines deserved their own post.

Indonesia

Batam - The Indonesian city of Batam is home to the Indonesian, Batak, Minang, Javanese, Hokkien, and Teochew languages. It's also around the same size as Singapore. Having grown in what was once a forested area, Batam became an important harbour, industrial zone, and a bit of a tax haven. Unfortunately for Batam, it has recently been exposed as a facilitator of the ivory trade.

A fountain in the city of Balikpapan, Indonesia.

Balikpapan - Located on the east coast of the island of Borneo, the seaport city of Balikpapan has five major languages in the form of Indonesian, Banjar, Javanese, Lawangan, and Bugis. The city is home to a booming oil trade and as a result was an important target for both sets of belligerents during the Second World War.

Makassar - Indonesian, Bugis, and Makassarese are the languages spoken in the provincial capital of South Sulawesi in Indonesia. As a former precolonial fort, the city is now principally a port and major centre of the fishing industry in the region.

Medan - The capital of North Sumatra, Medan has a significant number of languages spoken in its streets every day. These include Indonesian, Batak, Javanese, Medan Hokkien, Tamil, and Minang, to name a few. The city is also the largest city in Indonesia outside of Java.

Surabaya - Indonesian, Javanese, and Madurese are spoken in Indonesia's second largest city and the capital of East Java. It's known as the "city of heroes" owing to its participation in the Indonesian National Revolution.

Currently the city, like many in Indonesia, operates principally as a port and is famed for being the first city in the world to breed orangutans in captivity.

Now that we've finished our look at multilingual cities in Indonesia, it's time to head over to Philippines.

The Philippines

A Spanish style street in Vigan, Philippines.

Vigan - In the Philippine city of Vigan, different languages can be heard everywhere, from Ilokano to English, Tagalog, and Spanish. Due to its Hispanic architecture and being one of several notably Spanish-looking cities in the Philippines, it holds a World Heritage Site status.

Baguio City - English, Tagalog, Ilokano, and Ifugao are the main languages spoken in Baguio City. Despite not being one of the largest cities in the world as it is only home to around 300,000 inhabitants, Baguio City is a centre of commerce, business, and education.

Are there any great multilingual cities that you feel we've left off our list? Let us know about them in the comments below.

The Best Multilingual Cities In The USA

Since we finished yesterday's post on the best multilingual cities in Canada in Montréal, we thought we'd start today's post by heading a few hours south into the state of New York, where we find ourselves in the Big Apple ready to experience best multiculturalism and multilingualism that the US has to offer.

The Statue of Liberty welcoming
immigrants to the United States.

New York City, New York - America's most famous city has a rich heritage of immigration and is the epitome of the US as a cultural melting pot. Aside from the obvious presence of English and America's second language, Spanish, New York City (NYC) boasts a huge Chinatown area complete with a large number of Mandarin speakers and, of course, amazing food!

There are up to 150 languages spoken in NYC, so we won't list them all. There are large numbers of Italian, Russian, Yiddish and Arabic speakers to name a few. What we can say is that if there's a language you would like to hear, then you should be able to find it here.

Miami, Florida - If Will Smith's song Miami hasn't given it away, Miami boasts a huge Hispanic community. The Spanish language is so prominent in Miami that it is accepted as an official language of the government. You can also find a good number of speakers of French Creole.

San Diego, California - If you know any Spanish, you can guess where we'll be going with San Diego. The city was historically Spanish, and aside from taking a Spanish name it also took a huge number of Spanish settlers and colonists. San Diego is also very close to the Mexican border and the popular city of Tijuana.

The entrance to the Chinese Theatre in LA.
Sadly, it has nothing to do with the language.

Los Angeles, California - Los Angeles (LA) has a huge proportion of Spanish-speaking residents. Nearly 40% are estimated to speak Spanish, and the city boasts several ethnic neighbourhoods where other languages are spoken such as Mandarin Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Thai, and Arabic.

Seattle, Washington - This city isn't just the home of Starbucks and the band Nirvana. Seattle boasts a multinational community and ranks as one of the most livable cities in the US. You can find English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Tagalog, Korean, Vietnamese, Russian and Japanese within its sometimes rainy streets. It's only a stone's throw away from Vancouver as well, so we're almost back where we started yesterday with Canada's best multilingual cities.

Are there any other multilingual cities in the US we may have missed? Tell us about them in the comments below!

The Best Multilingual Cities In Canada

Since we covered the best multilingual cities in Europe last week, we felt it was only right to look at some North American cities this weekend. Today we're covering Canada, and tomorrow we'll head south into the US. Let's start our visit with Vancouver.

English Bay, Vancouver

Vancouver, British Columbia - If you leave Vancouver heading west you'll end up in "the East". Vancouver's proximity (it is only a few thousand miles, after all!) to Asia has helped cultivate some of the immigration that has left one of the World's Most Livable Cities with a huge Asian population and, as a result, Chinese and Cantonese as very popular languages within the city.

Aside from Mandarin and Cantonese, Punjabi, Persian, Tagalog, Korean, Italian, German, and French can also be heard in Vancouver. Despite French also being an official language of Canada, Mandarin and Cantonese are more popular in this area.

Toronto, Ontario - Given that Ontario borders Québec, Canada's principally French-speaking province, you can expect Toronto to have a fairly mixed bag when it comes to languages. Often confused as being the capital by ignorant foreigners (and a few poorly-educated Canadians), Toronto has very multicultural surroundings which can be found leaking into the city and government.

Ottawa, Ontario - Sitting right next to Québec, Canada's actual capital city has its own motto in both English and French. Advance-Ottawa-En Avant represents the country's two official languages, and the University of Ottawa is the largest bilingual university in the world.

Olympic Stadium in Montréal, which features
the tallest inclined tower in the world.

Montréal, Québec - As you could guess by the accent on the letter e, Montréal, or Montreal when Anglicised, is the largest city in the province of Québec. Recently the city has been in the headlines as a centre of controversy following multilingual political upheaval and the language debate within Québec. The famed Pastagate scandal following the over-Francofication of the city and tensions between French-speaking and English-speaking communities has been tarnishing Montréal's reputation.

That said, Montréal is a wonderful melting pot of French and English cultures, not to mention that Spanish, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, and Arabic can also be heard around the streets of the world's second largest French-speaking city.

That concludes our quick trip across Canada. Are than any multilingual cities you feel we may have missed? Tell us about them in the comments below! Tomorrow we're heading south into the US.

Conlangs: Simlish

If you've ever played any of The Sims games, you know that the characters have their own language and spend most of their time crying, setting fire to their kitchens, pissing their pants and sleeping with everyone in their neighbourhood.

We're talking about Sims, not SIMs!

So why do they have their own language? If you've played the game as long as we have (yes, we have no life) then you'll know that it's quite repetitive, just like real life. You get up, make some food, go to the toilet, shower, go to work, come home, set fire to your house, sleep with your neighbour, go to bed, and repeat ad nauseam. Imagine how you'd feel if you heard the same dialogue for each of those activities.

This is where a conlang (constructed language) comes into play. We can hear the characters talking without understanding them, which makes it perfect background noise. It sounds like people talking, so we can just assume they are interacting. Though if you've spent as much time playing as we have, you probably know most of this gibberish inside-out anyway.

Their language is called Simlish. Okay, so it's not the most original name, and it's nothing compared to the languages that conlang god J.R.R. Tolkien constructed... but they still put some time and effort into it. Simlish was created from messing about with fragmented versions of English, Fijian, Finnish, French, Latin, Tagalog and Ukranian.

It was a brilliant idea for them to create their own language instead of using an existing language in the game and then having to translate it for sale in other markets. Translating a game with as much dialogue as The Sims would have been incredibly expensive... and since the dialogue is little more than ambience, the accountant would most likely have refused to let them do it anyway!

Imagine all the costs associated with translating video games...
we're glad we're not accountants!

While most of the Simlish in the game is dialogue, it can also be found in the music the characters listen to. Since the Sims 2, instead of creating unique music the game creators have had famous musicians record new versions of their songs in Simlish. Artists from around the world including The Black Eyed Peas, Depeche Mode, Katy Perry, Nelly Furtado, Cansei de Ser Sexy and La Oreja de Van Gogh have recorded their songs in Simlish. We wonder what those recording sessions are like and what kind of linguistic preparations the artists have to undertake before doing this... it sounds like fun, though!