Ever wondered where to visit in London if you want to practice your non-English language skills with a native speaker? If so, this map will help you.
Strangely, it doesn’t feature Spanish, and I know there are a lot of Spanish speakers in town. But maybe they don’t congregate in one area?
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Reblogged from Mapping London.
SECOND LANGUAGES, Ollie, June 2013
A map full of striking patterns, from Savills’ analyst Neal Hudson. It shows the areas of London where, for each area, the second most popular language is spoken by more than 5% of residents there, based on the 2011 Census. It clearly reveals London’s linguistic clusters, from Arabic to Yiddish and Lithuanian to Tamil.
The full-size map is no longer on Neal’s website but you can download it here.
Note that this is not a map of people’s own second languages, but rather of the second most popular language spoken in each area. The areas used are Middle Super Output Areas which have a typical population of around 10000 people, so, as a guide at least 500 people within each area speak the language shown as their primary language. Middle Super Output Areas are a statistical grouping of areas. They are somewhat analogous to political wards, except that they change if their populations decrease below, or increase above, thresholds, whereas wards tend to remain constant.
Thanks to Neal for creating this map and allowing us to host it here.
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Travel with Intent 
Ah yes, I used to live in a little Japanese enclave denoted on the map, but I notice that Greek is missing…! I was surrounded by Cypriots.
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WOW, what a MASSIVE Polish commune, but no Russian at all, that I can see – despite all the tales of Russians buying up all of London.
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They don’t congregate en masse and settle (visa problems). It’s only the ones with money who buy expensive properties in posh parts of town. With economic immigrants, they huddle very closely wherever it is that they can afford to live. Plenty of Germans in London, too, but, like the Russians, they are spread out all over. Although in the less expensive neighbourhoods. I know you know all this 😉
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Haha, still, I figured there’d be more. Straight up immigrants from USSR. Like in NYC.
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Nah, that was just you there. Your departure left a big gaping hole.
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AWWWWW *blush*
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