SF’s Lingual Map

If you’re headed for a walk from the Marina Green through the Mission to Hunters Point you may want to bring a polyglot or at least a phone equipped with Google Translate. A lingual map of your route through San Francisco would reveal the city’s historic and present role as a port of entry for people from around the globe. As you ascended Fillmore and crossed onto Market you’d hear Spanish, Chinese, some Tagalog, and perhaps Hindi or another “Indo-European” language. Your ears would not deceive you; U.S. Census data makes clear that English is far from San Francisco’s default language.

The numbers also show that lingual shifts are underway in several San Francisco neighborhoods. For example, the number of Asian language speakers in Hunters Point and the Bayview — the 94124 zip code — jumped by 6.1 percentage points since 2011. These shifts suggest that language development should be among officials’ chief priorities for young San Franciscans. As language diversity increases, so does the need for a multilingual populace. By speaking each others’ languages, we can create new connections between communities.

U.S. Census datasets bunch languages into four broad categories: Spanish, Indo-European, Asian and Pacific Islander, and English. Such broad categories limit the usefulness of Census information; for example, the Indo-European classification includes Russian, French, Hindi, Punjabi and at least 23 other languages. Nevertheless, a review of language data from 2011 to 2016 for three zip codes — 94123 (the Marina), 94104 (the Mission), and 94124 (Hunters Point and the Bayview) — gives a picture of San Francisco’s dynamic lingual fabric.

The flow of languages through San Francisco mirrors other demographic shifts. In the Marina, language diversity appears to be in an ebb. From 2011, the area recorded a six percent average annual decrease in the number of residents capable of speaking a language other than English. As a result, 84.3 percent of Marina households in 2016 only spoke English. Spanish speaking specifically diminished in the 94123. In 2011, 5.3 percent of Marina residents spoke Spanish; six years later that number dropped to 3.4.

When compared to 2011, Spanish speakers also made up a smaller part of the Mission and Hunters Point and the Bayview in 2016. In the span of six years, these zip codes experienced annual average drops in Spanish speaking of 1.3 percent and 1.9 percent, respectively: as of 2016, just 16.6 percent of Mission residents spoke Spanish; and, solemente 18.7 por ciento de los residentes de Hunters Point Y el Bayview hablaba Espanol. Notably, 11.6 percent of all San Franciscan households spoke Spanish in 2016, which means both 94104 and 94124 still contained a disproportionately higher number of Spanish speakers than other zip codes.

In contrast to the downward trend in Spanish across the three zip codes, the number of Indo-European speakers remained stable. These languages filled 6.9 percent of Marina households in 2016, 6.0 in the Mission, and 1.9 in Hunters Point and Bayview. The Mission marked the largest gain in such speakers over the six years — 1.1 percentage points. The other two zip codes experienced marginal, positive gains.

The areas diverged, though, in Asian and Pacific Islander language trends. Whereas Hunters Point and the Bayview saw annual increases of nearly 4 percent — amassing to a total of 33.3 percent of all households, the Mission and Marina witnessed declines of 1.92 and 1.23 percent, respectively, in their stock of Asian and Pacific Islander language speakers. To place the high proportion of Asian and Pacific Islander language speakers residing in Hunters Point and the Bayview in context, in 2016, 18.4 percent of San Franciscans spoke Chinese. Comparatively, just 4.6 percent of 2016 Marina residents claimed language proficiency in this category.

Parsing the data language-by-language obscures a larger stat that should stick with city officials committed to community connections: there was a 38.7 percentage point difference in the number of English-only households in the Marina (84.3 percent) and Hunters Point and the Bayview (45.6) in 2016 (the Mission rate was 55 percent).

In the short run, such a vast difference in language profiles within the city necessitates that officials pay more attention to the language profile of each zip code. In the long run, city officials should channel the city’s impressive stock of languages into a nation-leading effort to improve the lingual capacity of its students. Officials can start by advocating for a requirement that each student learn two foreign languages in elementary school — a norm in many European countries.

Imagine taking your same walk through the city ten years from now and hearing young Mission residents banter with tourists from India, Bayview students help a new Taiwanese resident find a good spot to eat, and kids in the Marina order their Bonita tacos and guac in Spanish. Es possible…