Site Details

Me'phaa

Tlapanec
Mott Haven
Central AmericaMexico flagMexicoNative America
Community Profile: NYC's Mexican population tripled in the 1990s, with the largest numbers arriving from Puebla and later Guerrero, south-central states with large Indigenous communities. One informal survey found that up to 17 percent of Mexican New Yorkers may speak an Indigenous language, with Mixtec and Nahuatl varieties the most widely spoken, possibly by tens of thousands. Indigenous Mexicans have generally settled among other Mexicans, and Mexicans have generally settled among other Spanish speakers in neighborhoods across the city and the region.
Read more
K

nown to speakers themselves as Me'phaa, Tlapanec is an Indigenous Oto-Manguean language, with at least four distinct varieties, spoken in western central Mexico. The Malinaltepec variety spoken in the state of Guererro is estimated to have 37,500 speakers. Me'phaa activist and writer Zenaida Cantú is aware of at least 50 speakers of her language now living across New York, with some 30 or so from the municipio of Malinaltepec alone, some of whom have formed a band. There may be others who speak the very different (not always mutually intelligible) varieties from Acatepec and Tlacoapa. The largest concentrations of Me'phaa speakers live in upper Manhattan and the Bronx. Read more here.

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

© Mapbox © OpenStreetMap Improve this map

Data

Search
Local community data
View in map
County
Language
Endonym
World Region
Country
Global Speakers
Language Family
Video
Audio
Location
Size
Status
Filter
Filter
Filter
Filter
Filter
Filter
​
​
No communities found. Try fewer criteria or click the "Clear filters" button to reset the table.

Rows per page:

20 rows

0-0 of 0

0-0 of 0
Press space bar to start a drag. When dragging you can use the arrow keys to move the item around and escape to cancel. Some screen readers may require you to be in focus mode or to use your pass through key

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.

This map was created by the Mapping Linguistic Diversity team, with core support from the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies and the Endangered Language Alliance. Please send feedback!

By continuing I acknowledge that I have read and accept the above information.