wahili speakers in New York typically hail from Kenya or Tanzania, though the language is also a lingua franca more widely across East Africa, so there are also speakers from Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Comoros, and other nations. Swahili is also one of the most commonly learned African languages by non-Africans. While more Swahili speakers may live in other U.S. cities such as Chicago and Washington D.C., the language in New York has a cosmopolitan user base, including in Harlem, Brooklyn, New Jersey, and elsewhere. A number of Kenyans live in various Central New Jersey towns, as well as Paterson and Jersey City, where there are 1,513 Swahili speakers according to 2015-2019 American Community Survey data.