Èdè Yorùbá
Yoruba
Kensington +2Community Profile: New York's Nigerian population started growing in the 1970s and 80s, accelerating since 2000 in part thanks to the Diversity Visa program. Nigerians from a wide variety of backgrounds—though a significant percentage are middle-class and highly educated— now make up a large percentage of the city's massive West African community, particularly in East New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Flatbush, Clifton, and Concourse. Numerous evangelical churches now serve Christian Nigerian New Yorkers, and there are a number of restaurants, markets, and other businesses for the wider community. Community and hometown organizations also represent those with ties to particular Nigerian states like Edo and Akwa Ibom. The multilingualism of Nigerian New Yorkers testifies to the country's extraordinary linguistic diversity, though Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, and Edo varieties appear to be the most common, with Nigerian English sometimes a lingua franca. Smaller language groups are also present, including some with substantial and well-organized communities: Afenmai, Anaang, Edo, Efik, Esan, Ibibio, Kalabari, Tiv, Urhobo, and likely others.
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epresenting what may be the largest Nigerian community, a range of speakers of different Yoruba varieties live across the metropolitan area, with significant concentrations in a stretch of Brooklyn across Bed-Stuy, Flatbush, and East New York, in southeast Queens, in the Bronx, and in Staten Island. Yoruba-language churches, often Pentecostal, are significant hubs, with some like CAC in Brooklyn having served the community for decades, as are Nigerian markets. A distinct form of Yoruba spread across the Black Atlantic to become Lukumí, a liturgical language of Santeria also widely used across the city.
Note that the language above may be used throughout the New York area — this is just one significant site.