That is, “There are more Irish in Boston than in Dublin”, “There are more Polish in Chicago than in Warsaw”, etc. Have any of these statements ever actually been true? I’m sure you’ve heard others.
The only way I can think these would have been true was, maybe sometime in the 19th century, when Dublin and other European cities were way smaller, and migration from Ireland, Poland and other countries much larger.
As for the present day, I can imagine there are some constructions like that that would work if you consider small nations, or nations with small capital cities.
I think so too. And also, ethnicities have diffused in the US and so you can find someone in the US that is Polish, Irish, and French and arguably “qualifies” as a person of all those ethnicities all at once, meaning potentially that the total number of Poles in the US plus the total number of Irish people in the US plus the total number of Scots in the US plus the total number of Germans in the US plus the total number of Italians in the US plus the total number of Swedes in the US plus the total number of people of English decent in the US is greater than the total number of white people in the US.
I’m part German, like a huge number of white Americans. Am I a “German” that would count in a statement that “There are more Germans in “US region” than in Berlin”?
The way I’ve always heard it is that, say Chicago has the most people of Polish decent outside Warsaw, Cleveland has the most people of Hungarian decent outside Budapest, etc. (From what I can tell, the latter isn’t true, but the former is true if you count the Chicago metropolitan area, not just Chicago itself.)
It is often said that 2nd largest urban Cypriot population after the (divided) capital Nicosia/Lefkosha is in North London. I don’t know if that’s true, but there’s certainly suburbs in North London that contain concentrated Cypriot populations (often mixed Greek and Turkish) that would rival the populations of the some of the largest Cypriot towns. And it’s alos estimated there’s more Turkish Cypriots in the Uk as a whole than there is in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
According to the 2000 census, over 800,000 folks of Polish decent are living in Chicago or its suburbs. That puts it ahead of Krakow. However, if you want to compare it to metropolitan areas (which you probably should do), it falls to like number nine or so.
That cites to Chisholm, Hugh, ed. “New York (City)”. The Encyclopedia Britannica. 11th ed. Vol. XIX. New York: Encyclopedia Britannica Company, 1911. p. 617.
(And for all that, the Irish are still second to the Germans in terms of self-reported ethnicity in America.)
A similar claim was that at the end of the 19th century you could hear more Gaelic in Butte, MT than in Dublin. Which I find believable, since the bulk of the Butte Irish came from the west of Ireland, where Gaelic was more likely to be spoken.
(A similar story had to do with a Persian rug dealer who wanted to fit in, so he had his name changed. To Mohammed Murphy.)
Not even close, in 2008 the estimate was only 58,000 NZ-born residents in the entire UK. Assuming two-thirds live in London that’s about the populaiton of Gisborne…
This is the way I’ve always heard it; the US city being second only to the capital of the original country. But when you consider that many countries have only one large capital and then a bunch of tiny little burgs, that isn’t particularly surprising.
