Languages of New York City Map

Site Details

普通话, 國語

Mandarin

Elmhurst

Eastern Asia

China

Taiwan

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.

lthough it was not widely spoken in New York until recent decades, Mandarin today is probably today the city's third most widely spoken language and a lingua franca connecting Chinese New Yorkers from a variety of linguistic backgrounds—though not all speak it and in certain neighborhoods Cantonese or Fujianese, for example, remain important. Numerous, largely mutually intelligible Mandarin varieties are spoken in the city, from the originally Beijing-based standard "Putonghua" promoted by the mainland government to the Taiwanese Mandarin most widely used there. Particularly in Flushing there are also many speakers of Northeast Mandarin (from the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang) as well as of Southwest Mandarin (particularly those from Sichuan), as well as a growing community of Hui (Muslim) Chinese who speak forms of Northwestern Mandarin related historically to Dungan.

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

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