One thing I noticed in New York was that there was a lot of Spanish around – in bilingual English/Spanish signs at the airport, and on trains and boats. There were also multilingual signs on the subway in English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Korean and Haitian Creole. I heard many languages being spoken by local people around the city, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Gujarati, Croatian, Italian, and others I didn’t recognise, as well as all the languages spoken by tourists. So New York certainly is a multilingual city.
Are other parts of the USA like this?
Is it common for there to be bilingual signs in English and Spanish, or other combinations of languages?
I recently visited many different hospitals in Orange County, California (part of the greater Los Angeles area). Lots of them had all official signs in English + Spanish, but there was one where all the signs were in English + Vietnamese + Spanish. It was located smack in the middle of Little Saigon, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.
It varies from place to place, depending on the size and composition of the local immigrant population and local politics. It’s common in the big cities along the West Coast. It’s also easy to get copies of state government publications (tax forms, voter guides, that sort of thing) in Spanish in the West Coast states.
In the Portland, Oregon area, where I live, the automated announcements on the light-rail trains are in both English and Spanish.
Washington DC and its environs certainly can be. Since all the embassies are here, on the Metro you often hear lots of different languages. And in DC and in the DMV area, there are definite pockets where most businesses have signage in Korean, Chinese, Amharic…
More on the coasts than in the interior, although you may find Spanish signage in any big city. It varies. In my area (metro Detroit) you can hear not only Arabic but Aramaic—if Jesus came back and felt like speaking his native language he’d probably go down to one of our “coney island” restaurants (which are unknown on Coney Island). There aren’t a lot of Arabic signs, but there are some.
I have seen handwashing notices in Portland restaurant restrooms printed in a multilingual format: English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, and a few others I can’t recall.