Language

Garifuna

  • Global speakers: 175,000
  • Glottocode: gari1256
  • ISO 639-3: cab
CaribbeanHonduras flagHondurasBelize flagBelizeGuatemala flagGuatemalaNative America
The most widely accepted account of the origins of the Garifuna people is that they are largely descended from West Africans who were transported to South America as slaves but escaped due to a fortuitous shipwreck off the island of St. Vincent, in the Lesser Antilles. Having arrived at St. Vincent, they intermarried with a local Indigenous Arawak tribe, adopting many elements from their culture such as the cultivation of cassava and its related technology, as well as their singing styles and language. Today, the Garifuna language is spoken primarily in Honduras and Belize, with smaller numbers of speakers in Nicaragua and Guatemala. A large population now lives in the United States as well, particularly New York City — with most Honduran Garifunas in the Bronx and most Belizean Garifunas in Brooklyn.
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Sites

NYC neighborhoods or towns in the metro region where the language community has a significant site, marked by a point on the map:

Bronx

Charlotte Gardens
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Manhattan

East Harlem
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Queens

Far Rockaway
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Brooklyn

Ocean Hill-Brownsville
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Additional neighborhoods (NYC only)

  • Melrose
  • Morrisania
  • Bedford-Stuyvesant
  • Bushwick
  • Canarsie
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An urban language map

Welcome to Languages of New York City, a free and interactive digital map of the world’s most linguistically diverse metropolitan area.

All data, unless otherwise specified, is from the Endangered Language Alliance (ELA), based on information from communities, speakers, and other sources.

The map is a work in progress and a partial snapshot, focused on significant sites for Indigenous, minority, and endangered languages. Larger languages are represented selectively. To protect the privacy of speakers, some locations are slightly altered. Social media users, note that LANGUAGEMAP.NYC works best in a separate browser. We apologize that the map may not be fully accessible to all users, including the visually impaired.

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