Look at the image below. How many of these eleven languages can you identify? No fair asking Dr. Google! And I don’t think we can count English, since if you’re reading this blog you obviously can identify English. So how many of the other ten can you identify?

Most of the readers of this blog can identify Spanish or French. Perhaps, for all I know, most readers can identify both—but then what? If you need some context, read the sentence at the top of the flyer as well as the material in the footer.

You may conjecture, as I did, that these are the eleven most widely spoken (or read) languages in the city of Boston; but are they?

If you look carefully, there are a lot of unintentional hints here. I’m pretty sure I identified nine correctly; how did you do? Remember: no help from Google!

Categories: Dorchester/Boston, Linguistics