Languages of New York City Map

Site Details

廣東話

Cantonese

Bensonhurst +3

Eastern Asia

China

Hong Kong

Census

Community Profile: Most Chinese speakers in the city, from the first half of the 19th century until the second half of the 20th, spoke southern Chinese varieties, notably forms of Taishanese and Cantonese, but significant numbers of speakers of northern Chinese varieties, including official Mandarin, began arriving especially after the Second World War. Many were from Taiwan and established a community in and around Flushing, where other Chinese immigrants from all over gradually joined them. Today, with the largest Chinese population outside of Asia, the city is home to an extraordinary variety of Sinitic (Chinese) languages even beyond the most widely spoken (Mandarin, Cantonese, Fujianese, Taishanese, Wenzhounese, Hakka). Some represent distinct but related varieties of these (e.g. Northern Fujianese, Taiwanese, Teochew, and Hainanese are all part of the Min group, with the Fuzhou variety of Fujianese by far the most common in New York) but others are highly distinct. Reports about other smaller Chinese languages communities in the city are scarce, but within the Mandarin subgroup there seem to be substantial numbers of speakers of Northeastern Mandarin and Sichuanese, and within the Wu subgroup substantial numbers of speakers of Shanghainese and Changzhounese. There are an unknown number of speakers of Gan (Jiangxi) and Xiang (Hunan) and probably many other varieties, likely not living as distinct communities, but within a larger Chinese matrix where Mandarin (as in China itself) is increasingly the lingua franca and valorized standard.

longside the related variety Taishanese, Cantonese was one of the first Chinese languages to be widely spoken in New York City, decades before Mandarin became dominant following large-scale immigration from Taiwan and Chinese provinces beyond the southeast. Through at least the 1980s, the Cantonese varieties of China's Guangdong (Canton) province and Hong Kong remained the most common language in Manhattan's Chinatown, but most Cantonese speakers today live in the new Chinatowns of Sunset Park, Bensonhurst, Sheepshead Bay, and beyond in Brooklyn. Cantonese remains a major language throughout the metropolitan area including suburbs, but Mandarin and other varieties have become increasingly important in all the city's Chinatowns, particularly in Queens, reflecting language policies in China itself and a global shift in the composition of the Chinese diaspora.

Note that the language above may be used throughout the New York area — this is just one significant site.

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