Signs written in Spanish are becoming less common along North Philadelphia’s Golden Block, or El Bloque de Oro – which runs along North Fifth Street from Lehigh Avenue to Allegheny Avenue and is considered the cultural center of the city’s long-standing Puerto Rican community.
Meanwhile, Spanish and multilingual signs are rapidly increasing in the Italian Market area of South Philadelphia, which in recent decades has become a stronghold of the Mexican immigrant community.
And in Olney, the heart of Philadelphia’s Colombian diaspora, in upper North Philadelphia, Spanish signs are displayed among signs written in English and Korean – but have decreased and then increased again in recent years.
I am a Ph.D. candidate in Hispanic linguistics at Temple University, and I conducted what’s called a linguistic landscapes study in these three neighborhoods from 2021 to 2023. I wandered through each neighborhood on foot several times each year, taking photographs of written signs in public spaces. By the end of my research, I had collected a total of 3,356 signs. These included business signage, posters and handwritten signs. My findings were published in the April 2024 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Languages.
I found that across all three neighborhoods, English dominates the linguistic landscape. Of the total 3,356 signs, about 62% were in English, while 24% were in Spanish and 13% were written in both Spanish and English. Only 29 signs – less than 1% – were multilingual, or written in three or more languages. Among these, Vietnamese was the most common third language.
Spanish signs became more common during my study, increasing from 19% in 2021 to 23% in 2022 and then jumping to 30% in 2023. Meanwhile, the number of signs in English dropped from 70% in 2021 to 61% in 2022 and then to 55% in 2023. Bilingual signs also increased, going from 10% in 2021 to 16% in 2022 and then dropping a bit to 14% in 2023.
The most dramatic shift I observed was in South Philadelphia, where English signs decreased steadily from 72% in 2021 to 51% in 2023, while Spanish signs doubled from 18% to 36%.
This linguistic shift most likely reflects the presence of immigrant communities that are still growing, particularly those from Cambodia and Mexico.
Why it matters
The Golden Block has been a political and cultural hub of Philadelphia’s Hispanic community since the mid 1970s. For decades, many have viewed it as the heart of Philadelphia’s Latino community.