Dutch?

While running in Central Park today, I started wondering whether I should replace one of my non-European languages with Dutch. Even though not many people speak it here now, it was important in New York history, and that could be interesting.

Studying it would make a lot of place names, and people names, more meaningful and recognizable to me, too. Not to mention pronounceable.

But what language could I replace?

Alas, once home I discovered (not too surprisingly) that Dutch does not even make an appearance on the Modern Language Association’s list of New York City languages. I will have to consider this issue more carefully.

The MLA, by the way, has a map of languages spoken throughout the United States. It’s good stuff, available at www.mla.org/map_main.