Neighborhood

Bay Ridge

Brooklyn
In the Census-defined PUMA including Bay Ridge & Dyker Heights, according to recent Census data, (in descending order), Cantonese, Russian, Greek, Italian, Mandarin, Polish, and Urdu each have more than 1000 speakers. Varieties of English, Spanish, and Chinese are commonly spoken in the area as well.
De-select
Languages with a significant site in this neighborhood, marked by a point on the map:

Chaldean Neo-Aramaic

ܣܘܼܪܲܝܬ
A small number of Chaldean Aramaic speakers have come to the New York area in recent years from the Mosul Plain in Iraq. Read more here.

Egyptian Arabic

مصرى
Egyptian Arabic speakers, including a substantial number of Coptic Christians fleeing sectarian violence in Egypt, have come to the metro area in recent decades. The "Little Egypt" on Steinway Street in Astoria is home to a range of institutions and now includes many other North African New Yorkers, but there are also Egyptian clusters in Bay Ridge, Ridgewood, Jersey City (home to the Ghabour Brothers market), and in much of Staten Island.

Greek

Ελληνικά
Beginning in the late 19th century, one early Greek-speaking cluster had formed around Madison Street on the Lower East Side (where a community of Greek Jews appears to have also used Judeo-Greek) and in the east and west 20s and 30s, where a section of 8th Avenue was home to nightclubs where Armenian, Greek, and Turkish musicians peformed. Besides the central hub in Queens, Greek clusters also formed in Bay Ridge (with its numerous Greek institutions), in the Bronx (still home to the Kassian Brotherhood for those from Kasos), New Jersey, and beyond. Greek Orthodox Churches, where Koine Greek is the liturgical language, are found in Greek communities across the region.

Iraqi Arabic

اللهجة العراقية
A broad representation of the world's Arabic varieties, as used by Muslims, Christians, and Jews from West Africa to Iraq, can be found across the metropolitan area — although many of them are mutually unintelligible with each other, speakers are able to communicate in the Modern Standard Arabic known as al-fuṣḥā ("the purest", and there is often widespread familiarity with larger varieties like Egyptian Arabic. In the second half of the 20th century, what had been primarily a Levantine Arabic speaking community (by then mostly in Brooklyn) was joined by significant numbers of Egyptian Arabic and Yemeni Arabic speakers, as well as smaller numbers of many other varieties found throughout the city. Significant Arabic-speaking areas include Bay Ridge, Astoria, the Bronx (for West African Arabic speakers), Yonkers, and Paterson, New Jersey. Classical (or Qu'ranic) Arabic flourishes widely at mosques like the Islamic Cultural Center on the Upper East Side and the Jamaica Muslim Center in Queens as well schools like Al-Noor in Brooklyn. Jewish varieties of Arabic, often linked to the local variety of the particular country of origin, are still spoken to some degree among the sizeable Middle Eastern and North African Jewish communities in the city, especially in Brooklyn.

Moroccan Arabic

الدارجة المغربية
Though smaller the communities from Egypt, Yemen, and the Levant, Moroccan New Yorkers form a substantial and growing group within Arabic-speaking parts of the city, with institutions to match such as the Moroccan American Association House in Bay Ridge and Moroccan-American Cultural Association in Morris Park in the Bronx. Some Moroccan New Yorkers are also speakers of French (still a language of higher education in the country) as well as Indigenous Amazigh languages such as Tashelhyt.

North Levantine Arabic

(اللهجة الشامية (الشمالية
Most early Arabic speakers in New York, primarily Levantine Christians from the Ottoman Province of Lebanon, began to arrive in the 19th century, originally settling in the "Little Syria" along Washington Street in a then deeply diverse pocket of lower Manhattan. As the "Syrians in New York" research initiative demonstrated, many factors, ultimately including construction of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, drove the community to Brooklyn — first South Ferry (now known as Boerum Hill) and later primarily Bay Ridge (where Palestinian New Yorkers have formed the organization Beit Hanania). Yonkers, and Paterson, New Jersey also have significant Levantine-Arabic speaking communities.

Norwegian

Norsk
Danish and Norwegian New Yorkers came together in 1704 to build a small Lutheran church in lower Manhattan at Broadway and Rector, but it was between 1930 and 1960 that the New York Norwegian community reached its peak of up to 62,000 members. This community, at one time the third largest Norwegian-speaking city in the world after Oslo and Bergen, Norway, had grown into a city unto itself with a full range of institutions and services, centered in Sunset Park and Bay Ridge. The decline of shipping and the Great Depression caused hundreds of Norwegian sailors to seek shelter in makeshift shacks in the rubble of a dump in Red Hook, known by some as "Ørkenen Sur" (Bitter Desert) and knocked down in 1934 to make way for the current athletic fields. A Norwegian presence remains in Bay Ridge through a few remaining institutions, as well as an annual Norwegian Day Parade that brings back those who grew up here. Other Norwegian and Scandinavian hubs existed around the city, including in Eltingville on Staten Island.

South Levantine Arabic

(اللهجة الشامية (الجنوبية
Most early Arabic speakers in New York, primarily Levantine Christians from the Ottoman Province of Lebanon, began to arrive in the 19th century, originally settling in the "Little Syria" along Washington Street in a then deeply diverse pocket of lower Manhattan. As the "Syrians in New York" research initiative demonstrated, many factors, ultimately including construction of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, drove the community to Brooklyn — first South Ferry (now known as Boerum Hill) and later primarily Bay Ridge (where Palestinian New Yorkers have formed the organization Beit Hanania). Yonkers, and Paterson, New Jersey also have significant Levantine-Arabic speaking communities.

Yemeni Arabic

لهجة يمنية
Bay Ridge, especially 5th Avenue in the 60s, is a hub for Arabic speakers originally hailing from across the Middle East, including a significant Yemeni population represented by institutions such as the Yemeni American Merchants Association.
Additional languages spoken in this neighborhood:
  • Algerian Arabic
  • Danish
  • Finnish
  • Kabyle
  • Nahuatl
  • Shughni
  • Swedish
  • Wakhi
SearchExploreDataCensusInfo

© Mapbox © OpenStreetMap Improve this map

Bay Ridge

Brooklyn

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
​
​
AbakuáAbakuá

Caribbean

  • Cuba flag
    Cuba
Lower East Side

Smallest

Liturgical
AbazaАбаза

Western Asia

  • Turkey flag
    Turkey
  • Russia flag
    Russia
49,800
Abkhaz-Adyge
Wayne (NJ)

Smallest

Residential
AbruzzeseAbbruzzésə

Southern Europe

  • Italy flag
    Italy
Indo-European
Astoria

Small

Residential
AbruzzeseAbbruzzésə

Southern Europe

  • Italy flag
    Italy
Indo-European
Little Italy

Small

Historical
AcehneseBahsa Acèh

Southeastern Asia

  • Indonesia flag
    Indonesia
3,500,000
Austronesian
Astoria

Smallest

Community
AcehneseBahsa Acèh

Southeastern Asia

  • Indonesia flag
    Indonesia
3,500,000
Austronesian
Elmhurst

Smallest

Residential
AdjoukrouMɔjukru

Western Africa

  • Ivory Coast flag
    Ivory Coast
140,000
Atlantic-Congo
Concourse

Smallest

Residential
AdygheК|ахыбзэ

Western Asia

  • Turkey flag
    Turkey
  • Russia flag
    Russia
117,500
Abkhaz-Adyge
Wayne (NJ)

Small

Residential
AfenmaiAfenmai

Western Africa

  • Nigeria flag
    Nigeria
270,000
Atlantic-Congo
Castle Hill

Smallest

Residential
African-American EnglishBlack English

Northern America

  • United States flag
    United States
45,109,521
Indo-European
Bedford-Stuyvesant

Largest

Residential
African-American EnglishBlack English

Northern America

  • United States flag
    United States
45,109,521
Indo-European
Newark (NJ)

Largest

Residential
African-American EnglishBlack English

Northern America

  • United States flag
    United States
45,109,521
Indo-European
Clifton

Largest

Residential
African-American EnglishBlack English

Northern America

  • United States flag
    United States
45,109,521
Indo-European
Hollis

Largest

Residential
African-American EnglishBlack English

Northern America

  • United States flag
    United States
45,109,521
Indo-European
Edenwald

Largest

Residential
African-American EnglishBlack English

Northern America

  • United States flag
    United States
45,109,521
Indo-European
Central Harlem

Largest

Residential
African-American EnglishBlack English

Northern America

  • United States flag
    United States
45,109,521
Indo-European
Hempstead (NY)

Large

Residential
AfrikaansAfrikaans

Southern Africa

  • South Africa flag
    South Africa
  • Zimbabwe flag
    Zimbabwe
17,543,580
Indo-European
Murray Hill

Small

Community
AkanAkan

Western Africa

  • Ghana flag
    Ghana
9,231,300
Atlantic-Congo
Flatbush

Small

Residential
AkanAkan

Western Africa

  • Ghana flag
    Ghana
9,231,300
Atlantic-Congo
Shore Acres

Small

Residential
AkanAkan

Western Africa

  • Ghana flag
    Ghana
9,231,300
Atlantic-Congo
University Heights

Large

Residential

Rows per page:

20 rows

1-20 of 1299

1-20 of 1299
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.