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New York was the nation's principal gateway to the West during
the great European immigrations of the 19th and early 20th centuries
and it remains the most polyglot of all American cities. Of its almost
eight million inhabitants more than one quarter are of Jewish extraction,
a fact that makes it the world's largest Jewish city. There are, in addition,
enormous numbers of New Yorkers of Italian, Irish and German
ancestry who together make up perhaps 30 per cent of the population.
Negro and Puerto Rican New Yorkers account for another quarter of
the whole. The remainder is composed of people who come from just
above everywhere - Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Hungarians,
Lithuanians, Greeks, Slovaks, Cypriots, Syrians, Lebanese, French,
Dutch, Czechs, Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans - and even Anglo-Saxons.
Now you can observe old Chinese with fined ivory cheekbones
sit in a circle on the summer sidewalk, some still wearing the wide
trousers and side-clasped shirts of China, talking and chanting
quietly.
Across the divide of East Houston Street begins the Slavic city
of Polish sausage and "Warsaw" bakeries, of Greek Orthodox
Churches, Ukrainian embroideries, and shop signs in Cyrillic letters,
kerchiefed old ladies in long, loose skirts cracking sunflower seeds
as they gossip on the stoops.
Not far from the Times Square you can feel the odour of Greek
goat cheese and honeyed pastries. Small French restaurants still
remember the strong gullets and winy, homesick songs of the sailors
and merchantmen off the French piers in the Hudson.
This great ethnic diversity continues to provide New York,
despite the homogenization of American culture, with a variety of
life styles. That is one of the city's most exciting qualities.

FIVE BOROUGHS OF NEW YORK

Words and their meanings:

borough - міський район
wayward - норовливий
jostle - штовхати (ся)
jaywalk -необережно переходити вулицю
array - мережа
rapid-transit - швидкісний переїзд